Introduction to Penetration Testing Tools

Penetration testing is the testing of the network, web application and computer system to identify the security vulnerabilities that might get exploited by the attackers. It is also known as Pen testing. In many systems, the system vulnerabilities referred to as Infra Vulnerability and Application vulnerability referred to as app vulnerability. This test can be performed manually and can be automated with software processor applications. In this article, we will learn the different types of Penetration Testing Tools.

The purpose or primary goal of penetration testing is to identify the weak spots in the security of different systems and apps. It will also measure the compliance of security and test security issues. This test mainly performs once in a year to ensure the security of network and systems. Penetration test depends on the various factors like the size of the company, a budget of organization and infrastructure.

Features

The features of a penetration testing tool should be:

It should be easy to deploy, configure and use.
The vulnerabilities should be categorized on the basis of severity and to get the information that needs to be fixed immediately.
The tool can scan the system easily.
The vulnerabilities should be verified automatically.
The previous exploits need to be re-verified.
The tool should generate detailed reports and logs.

Phases of Penetration Testing

The phases of penetration testing tool are mentioned below:

Information: The process of collecting information on the target system which is used to attack the target better. The search engines used to get the data for the attack on social media sites.
Scanning: The technical tools used to get the system knowledge by the attacker.
Access: After getting the data and scanning the target, it is easy for an attacker to get access to exploit the target system.
Maintaining Access: The access needs to be maintained to gather the information as much as possible and for a longer period of time.
Covering Tracks: The attacker mainly clears the trace of the system and other data to remain anonymous.

Penetration Testing Strategy

The penetration testing strategy is mentioned below:

The penetration team and organization IT team conduct targeted testing.
External testing is used to conduct the testing of external servers and devices like domain servers and email servers, firewalls or web servers to get the information of attacker can go, if able to access the system.
Internal testing is used to conduct the test behind the firewall from the authorized user having standard access privileges and get the information about how much damage an employee can do.
Blind testing is used to conduct to check the actions and procedures of the real attacker by providing limited information to the person and mainly pen testers having only the name of an organization.
Double-blind testing is useful for testing the organization’s security monitoring and incident identification and its response to procedures.
Black Box testing is conducted as blind testing. The pen tester has to find a way of testing the system.
White box testing is used to provide information about the target network that includes details like IP address, network, and other protocols.

Different Types of Penetration Testing Tool

The different types of penetration testing tool are:

1. Nmap

It is also known as network mapper and it is an open-source tool for scanning the computer network and system for vulnerabilities. It can run on all the operating system and is mainly suitable for all the small and large networks as well. This tool is mainly used for doing other activities like monitoring the host or service uptime and performing the mapping of network attack surfaces. The utility helps in understanding the various characteristics of any target network, host on network, operating system type and firewalls.

2. Metasploit

It is a collection of various penetration tools. It is used to solve many purposes like discovering vulnerabilities, managing security evaluations, and other defense methodologies. This tool can be used on servers, networks, and applications as well. It is mainly used to evaluate infrastructure security against old vulnerabilities.

3. Wireshark

It is the tool used for monitoring the very small details of the activities taking place in the network. It acts like a network analyzer, network sniffer or network protocol analyzer to assess the network vulnerabilities. The tool is used to capture the data packets and get the information from where these are coming and their destination etc.

4. NetSparker

It is a scanner that used to check the security of web application, which helps in finding the SQL injection automatically, XSS and other vulnerabilities. It requires minimal configuration and scanner detects the URL rules automatically. It is fully scalable.

5. Accunetix

It is a completely automated penetration testing tool. It accurately scans the HTML5, javascript, and single-page applications. It is used to scan complex, authenticated web apps and generates the report on web and network vulnerabilities and the system as well. It is fast and scalable, available on-premises, detects vulnerabilities huge in amount.

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6. OWASP

It is known as the Open Web Application Security Project. It is mainly focussed on improving software security. It has many tools to test the penetration for environment and protocols. ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy), OWASP dependency check and OWASP web testing environment project are the different tools available to scan the project dependencies and checks against the vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

The penetration-testing tool helps us in ensuring the security of application and system proactively and avoiding the attacks from attackers. It is a great technique to find out the leaks of the system before any attackers identify those leaks. There are many testing tools that are available in the market to test the vulnerabilities of the system. The choice or selection of the tool can be done on the basis of the organization and its budget. It is very costly and it has been noticed that small companies can’t afford that much. These testing tools are mostly easy to configure and run automatically or manually as per the requirement. It is better to use these tools to avoid any attacks on a system or application.