What Is Website Penetration Testing?
A penetration test, also known as a “pen test”, is a simulated cyber attack on your computer system which aims to find flaws that can be exploited and corrected. Penetration testing is often used as a supplement to a web application firewall for web application security (WAF).
Pen testing tries to get into application systems (like APIs, frontend/backend servers and so on) to look for flaws, such as inputs that aren’t properly sanitized and can be used for code injection attacks.
The results of a penetration test can help you make changes to your WAF security settings and fix any problems found.
Stages
The pen testing procedure is divided into 5 stages:
1. Planning and Reconnaissance
The first stage involves:
- Defining the scope and objectives of the test, including what systems will be tested and how the test will be done.
- Getting information about a target (e.g., network and domain names, mail server) to understand better how it works and its flaws.
2. Scanning
The next step is to figure out how the target application will respond to different types of attacks. This is usually done by using:
- Static analysis looking at an application’s code to figure out how it will work when it’s running. These tools can go through the whole code in one go.
- Dynamic analysis when you look at an application’s code while running. In this way of scanning, you get a real-time look at how an application works.
3. Gaining Access
This stage uses web application attacks like cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and backdoors to look for holes in a target and find out where they are. Testers try to get them to do things they don’t want to do, like getting more power, stealing data or spying on them.
4. Maintaining Access
This step is to see if the vulnerability can be used to stay in the system long enough for a hacker to get more information. Attacks that stay in a system for a long time and steal important information are what the goal is to identify.
5. Analysis
A report is then produced which includes the following:
- Particular flaws used to get around them.
- Confidential information.
- Noting when the pen tester could stay in the system and not be seen by anyone.
This helps security professionals improve an organization’s WAF settings and other application security solutions, plus fix holes and protect against future attacks with the help of this data.
Methods
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External testing – In an external penetration test, the web application itself, the company’s website, and email and domain name servers are all looked at (DNS). The goal is to get into and obtain useful information.
- Internal testing – In an internal test, a tester who has access to an application that’s behind the company’s firewall looks like an insider attack. In fact, a renegade employee isn’t always the reason for this. A common starting point is an employee who had their credentials stolen in a phishing attack.
- Blind testing – During a blind test, a tester knows only the name of the business they will test. This gives security professionals a real-time look at how an application attack might happen.
- Double-blind testing – Security professionals in a double-blind test don’t know about the simulated attack before the test; they won’t have time to fix their defenses before someone tries to break in, just like in the real world.
- Targeted testing – In this case, the tester and the security staff work together and keep each other up to date as to where they’re going. This is a great training exercise because it gives a security team real-time feedback from a hacker’s point of view.
Penetration Testing and Web Application Firewalls
Penetration testing and WAFs are two security methods that work well together.
In most pen tests, the tester will look at data from the WAF, such as logs. This data will help the tester find and exploit the flaws in an application. WAF administrators can then use pen-testing data to make money. After a test, WAF settings can be changed to protect against flaws that were found during the test.
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