Overview
Exploiting website vulnerabilities is Number One problem in the world. This is solely because website are open to internet and hence can potentially expose sensitive data which interests the evil hackers. Thats the reason web security testing services are so important for organizations
Websites are typically vulnerable to code based or network based attacks. This enables hackers to take over and control system components such as routers, firewalls, switches and servers and in worst cases, the website code. Even though the website is plain simple and static html based, it needs detailed pen-testing (VAPT testing), and is often forgotten by IT management. Thus security testing of websites or web portals or web applications is highly required. It must be carried out by certified best penetration testing (pentest) companies who follow security testing methodologies based on OWASP Top-10 model.
Some Facts
Web application vulnerability assessment and penetration testing is a type of security testing.
Vulnerability Assessment involves finding security holes i.e. vulnerabilities in the web application.
Penetration Testing involves exploiting the found vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to the data or the system itself or making the data unavailable to access or making changes to the data compromising its integrity.
Web VAPT helps find out weaknesses before they are exploited making web applications secure.
More info can be found on:
Web App VAPT
Web Application Security Testing Services
Web VAPT can be either be done manually or with the use of automated tools. There are multiple diverse automated tools available in the market. Automated tools reduce the time and effort required for testing. Also, with wide range of features that these tools offer, it becomes easy to find out the loopholes in the application.
Few of pen-tester's favorite tools are mentioned below:
With easy access to internet and its growing popularity, every small and big business is vying to make its mark on the web. Web has proved to be a boon for the mankind but it has also become hacker's favorite place to exploit the innocent.
There has been rise in the number of web application attack lately. Web application attack is nothing but exploiting the unattended and unpatched vulnerabilities in an application to either steal the data, alter the data or making the data or website unavailable to the people in need. Such attacks are proven to be really costly for the businesses and often they were shut completely because of the inability to contain such incidents.
Listed below are some popular attacks down below that are more deadly.
Web vulnerability scanner is an automated tool that scans web applications to find out vulnerabilities such as poorly configured server designs, injection attacks and more.
There are 2 types of scanners available.
Website hacking is becoming a serious issue day by day. Attackers are becoming very advanced and tactical with their modus operandi and hence it becomes vital to safeguard your websites and detect any malicious activity in time.
Every activity leaves a trail and it is important to look for the right signs. If you see following signs it is time you take a hard look at your website.
With growing attacks on websites, it is really important to browse the applications safely.
Malicious websites may look like legitimate ones but have the potential to do a lot damage to the user. Malicious website may redirect an user to some different website and can trick them into giving them their username and password.
A malicious website can also download malware on user's machine without him knowing and do further damage to the machine.
It is really important to become vigilant while surfing on the web. If you have any doubt about the website you are visiting then get the URL tested for its authenticity. There are multiple online tools available which will scan the URL and give you the results. One of the famous ones is VirusTotal which not only scans the URL but also has the feature of testing attachments for its contents.
You can also turn on Google's safe browsing feature from Settings in Chrome Browser. Google will notify you of any suspicious activity on the website.
You can also opt for WebofTrust extension. It will let you know which site is trustworthy and which is not.
Also, make sure that you do not submit any personal or banking information on the sites which are HTTP. HTTP does not encrypt the communication between you and the server and hence anyone with the wrong intent can sniff the traffic and ultimately your data.
Web security ultimately means implementing measures and strategies to keep websites secure from malicious attackers.
The one way to achieve the security is by timely scanning the websites while they are in development stage and later when they are up and running. This helps capturing both coding flaws in the software code and run time errors by keeping it guarded.
More information can be found on:
Top 5 Reasons To Perform VAPT Of Your Web Application
Web server in simplest terms is a physical machine or a virtual machine that hosts a website which is then accessed by user over World Wide Web.
Web server security is tightening the measures taken to protect a web server itself along with the database it is connected to, the network it is placed in.
Web server security is as vital as securing your web applications. Poorly configured web server can pose a huge risk to the business. The few measures you can take to protect your web server are mentioned below.
With growing number and varieties of applications in the market, attackers have also become smart and are continuously finding brand new ways of exploiting the applications for their benefit. Hence, it becomes absolutely necessary to protect the application and implement security strategies that will secure the application from inside out.
With the application security assessment it becomes easy to test the application architecture, software code for underlying weaknesses and fix those before anyone else can take advantage of it.
Timely assessment of application can also help us make the application comply with current and applicable compliance standards so as to avoid any legal disputes later.
Web servers and the application code running on those as a simple website or web portal, are vulnerable to various attacks. In one type of attack, the hacker can simply deface the pages, while in other serious types, the attacker can potentially steal data and disrupt website operations.
Web security testing is especially important in case of e-commerce based portals, wherein the entire business relies on website and its data contents. In case of recent trend the websites cater to mobile based applications which demands for an end to end testing for total app security. Its important to understand that merely having firewalls and Layer-7 devices are not enough because those cannot detect code level vulnerabilities, and hence a detailed website VAPT along with code security review is highly recommended.
We perform web application penetration testing using world standard OWASP Top 10 model. While we perform testing using automated web security scanners, we prefer to perform manual security testing for the following attacks. More details on OWASP Top 10 can be found here.
SQL injection vulnerabilities remain a headache for Web app developers, security professionals and database administrators . In a recent survey of 800 IT security pros and developers by the Ponemon Institute and app security firm Security Innovation, 42% of developers and 46% of security practitioners admitted SQL injection at the application layer had been exploited in a recent breach against their organizations. The responses made SQL injection the most-cited attack vector on a list that included cross-site scripting and privilege escalation.
SQL injection attacks exploit nonvalidated user input to issue commands through an application to a back-end database. Finding the holes through which these attacks can be launched isn't all that difficult. One of the first things attackers like to do is to see how an application handles errors. Another way to search for vulnerable sites is through Google hacking. Google hacking uses search engines to find security gaps by leveraging the mountains of data they index. An attacker might start by entering a search query called a Google Dork designed to locate results that could offer a clue about sites that might be vulnerable. There are a number of Google Dorks that can be useful for a hacker searching for a SQL injection vulnerability to exploit.
Cross site Scripting (XSS) attacks are a type of script injection in which malicious scripts are injected into web sites forms. XSS vulnerability is the most common flaw in web applications. Cross site scripting attacks occur when an attacker uses a web application to send malicious code, generally in the form of a browser side script, to a different end user. Flaws that allow these attacks to succeed are quite widespread and occur anywhere a web application uses input from a user in the output it generates without validating or encoding it.
Attackers frequently use a variety of methods to encode the malicious portion of the tag, such as using Unicode, so the request is less suspicious looking to the user. There are multiple ways these attacks could be initiated. but the most common XSS attacks usually are in the form of embedded JavaScript. XSS issues can also be present in the underlying web and application servers as well. Most web and application servers generate simple web pages to display in the case of various errors, such as a 404 page not found or a 500 internal server error.
CSRF vulnerabilities occur when a website allows an authenticated user to perform a sensitive action but does not verify that the user herself is invoking that action. The key to understanding CSRF attacks is to recognize that websites typically don't verify that a request came from an authorized user.
Instead they verify only that the request came from the browser of an authorized user. Because browsers run code sent by multiple sites, there is a danger that one site will send a request to a second site, and the second site will mistakenly think that the user authorized the request.
A file upload vulnerability is when an application does not accept uploads directly from site visitors. Instead, a visitor can provide a URL on the web that the application will use to fetch a file. That file will be saved to disk in a publicly accessible directory. An attacker may then access that file, execute it and gain access to the site.
Uploaded files represent a significant risk to applications. The first step in many attacks is to get some code to the system to be attacked. Then the attack only needs to find a way to get the code executed. Using a file upload helps the attacker accomplish the first step. While file upload problems are found typically in php code and frameworks, other platforms exhibit those too.
Session Fixation is an attack that permits an attacker to hijack a valid user session. The attack explores a limitation in the way the web application manages the session ID, more specifically the vulnerable web application. When authenticating a user, it doesn't assign a new session ID, making it possible to use an existent session ID.
The attack consists of obtaining a valid session ID (e.g. by connecting to the application), inducing a user to authenticate himself with that session ID, and then hijacking the user-validated session by the knowledge of the used session ID. The attacker has to provide a valid session ID and try to make the victim's browser use it.
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