Penetration Testing and Its Stages

Penetration testing or pentest is a technique or cyber attack to introspect vulnerabilities in your computer system. It has wide use in web development as well. In web application development, pentest grows web application firewall (WAF). 

Penetration testing has its use in revealing unfiltered figures that are receptive to code injection interventions. 

Penetration Testing Methods

There are five methods of penetration testing.

1. Internal Testing: In this pentest method, a tester having passage to an application behind the firewall fakes an attack by a malicious insider. It could be an outcome of a phishing attack.

2. External Testing: It is a type of pentest that is crucial to the company's information on the internet, including web application, website domain name, email, and many more. 

3. Targeted Testing: In this penetration tester and security staff works closely to know each other's progress. It is a result of specialized training for security staff. At this point, security staff provides feedback to the testers as a hacker might risk the company's information.

4. Blind Testing: Blind here indicates, a tester is unaware of the information of the attack or breach and given the name of an enterprise. A penetration tester has to target that enterprise with security staff to witness an application attack.

5. Double-Blind Testing: It is a step ahead of the prior. In this, the security staff does not know the simulation attack. And nothing could take place until a data breach happens.

These are the methods of pentest. It concludes that the penetration tester works closely with security staff to figure out simulation attacks or real-time application-attack.

Stages Involved in Penetration Testing 

Pentest involves five different levels. These are: 

1. Planning: The first step in the software development life cycle is planning. Similarly, before testing takes place, a plan for defining the scope and final goal is drawn. In this stage, the collection of information about vulnerabilities and intelligence behind the domain name, mail server, etc.

2. Scanning: It has a further two types: 

1. Static Analysis: In this step, understanding of the target application takes place. This step is to find out how the application will behave while running live.

2. Dynamic Analysis: This is an advanced technique. It checks the behavior of the application while it is running. It provides a real-time experience of the application.

1. Gaining Access: In this stage, actual attacks are indulged and report vulnerabilities. These attacks may be cross-site scripting (CSS), SQL injection, and backdoors. Testers destroy these vulnerabilities by stealing data, intensifying privileges, blocking traffic, and so on. In this way, they can understand the damage and malicious activity that could have taken place.

2. Maintaining Access: At this stage, the aim is to reflect advanced persistent threats. These attacks remain in systems for a particular duration. There is a threat to an organization's most sensitive information.

3. Analysis: This is the final stage of penetration testing. It includes the preparation of the report based on the findings in the previous steps. The report points out the information, including accessed sensitive data, destroyed vulnerabilities, and duration for which penetration tester could stay in the system without being caught.

Wrapping Up

A penetration tester is responsible for performing pentest with a team of specialized IT employees, including software engineers, software developers, and many more. Pentest becomes a necessity at an initial stage of development to prevent unwanted or malicious activity in the IT system or database.