Holistic Approach to Security Testing of Web Applications

Security testing of Web Application is a necessary task in the web application development approach. It is due to the reason of increased data transactions and large data storage on the web.

Security Testing

Security testing is an approach to ensure data security in the IT systems. It prevents misuse of data. Security testing allows to detect vulnerabilities and viruses attacks in advance in development procedure.

Since the development process undergoes various steps and testing being one of them plays a crucial role in the entire process. Web application security testing takes place to maintain the confidentiality of data. Even if some vulnerability comes into detection, professionals like pentester or other testers try to revert those changes.

Security testing prevents misbehave by any user. It includes making unnecessary changes in web applications.

Security Testing Approach

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a powerful weapon for security tester. Professionals involved in web application security testing need to have profound knowledge of HTTP.

Testers have to understand how the client and server interact with the help of HTTP. A basic understanding of cross-site scripting (XSS), vulnerabilities, spoofing, and SQL injection attacks is necessary in this field. 

Security Testing Tools

Various security tools are available in the market to perform security in web applications. These are:

• Kiuwan: It detects and fixes security issues at every step of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It is a software as a Service (SaaS) dealing with software analytics, quality, security control, and measurement.

Usually, professionals integrate this tool in IDE to get instant feedback at the time of development.

• Acunetix:  It is another web application security tool. It is responsible for detecting vulnerabilities, including SQL injection and cross-site scripting (CSS).  

Acunetix is an automated web application security tool.

Methods of Web Security Testing

There are different methods in web application security testing. Some of the most common are:

• SQL Injection

Testing is an approach to find ways as to how security comes into danger. In the same scenario, SQL injection is one of the ways to detect security. SQL injection occurs when there is a database error due to user input. It may be in the form of a single quote.

It is dangerous for private data as hackers get the privilege to breach into server databases with SQL injection attacks. The best way to detect these attacks is by checking your codebase, including all MYSQL queries.

• Password Cracking

Hackers know it well to crack passwords for private accounts containing crucial data. The ways including username and password breaking are common, but professionals can avoid these. Several common usernames and passwords are available online with password crackers.

If your credentials get stored in cookies without encryption, it becomes easier for hackers to get access to those credentials.

• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

It is a type of injection attack. In this, malicious scripts adds to reputed sites commonly used. Its occurrence is visible when hackers send malicious information using the web application as a browser side script.  

• URL Manipulation

HTTP Get Methods can help in URL manipulation for hackers to get private information of the users. In this testing method, data comes in the form of the query string.

HTTP Get request can help hackers to get authentication information.

Final Thoughts

Web application security testing is necessary to prevent data breaches and cyber scams. You need to know various terminology and methods in security testing, including cross-scripting sites, SQL injection, and vulnerabilities.

Next time you proceed to web application development, make sure to acknowledge yourself with web application security testing.