Introduction to Security Testing Tools
Security has become an important concern these days. With the increase in the IT sector, an ample number of new websites are launching daily, so the new methods of hacking are increasing. Therefore, it has become very important to secure the website and its data having private information of users and the organizations to get leaked or access for unauthorized users. Most of the organizations hire people for security testing of their website as it helps to find the flaws and loopholes in their website before releasing it in the production environment. Whether paid, free, open-source, numerous tools are now available in the market for security testing of web applications.
Tools of Security testing
Let’s understand some of the Security Testing Tools one by one.
1. Netsparker
Netsparker is one of the best and accurate tools used in the market for web
application security. It used bulletproof Scanning to automatically verify the false positives. It is used to find vulnerabilities like SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting in web applications. It covers more than 1000 vulnerabilities and easily integrates with any CI/CD application in which the process of finding vulnerabilities is fully automated and posted on a bug tracking system. The tool is very easy to set up and use, and it displays vulnerabilities on a dashboard which is very easy to read and understand.
2. SonarQube
- SonarQube is an open-source software testing tool used to measure the quality of code and find the vulnerabilities. It also highlights serious memory issues in the code. SonarQube is written in Java but can do analysis in more than 20 languages.
- SonarQube is capable of finding vulnerabilities like Cross-Site Scripting, SQL Injection, Memory Issues, HTTP response splitting, etc. In addition, it is capable of finding tricky defects like null pointer exceptions, logical errors, etc. SonarQube can easily integrate with any CI/CD application. It provides the special Quality Gate, which tells the quality of the whole application whether it is applicable to be released in production or not.
3. W3af
W3af is one of the popular and open-source web security application tools available in the market. It is written in Python and covers more than 200 security issues. It covers issues like Blind SQL injection, Buffer Overflow, Cross-Site Scripting, CSRF, etc.
W3af provides the GUI for new people, whereas, for experts, it has a console interface too. In addition, it provides fantastic authentication support to users and offers the facility to log the output in a file, email or console according to the specific requirements.
4. ZED Attack Proxy (ZAP)
ZAP is an open-source security testing tool that can run on multiple platforms. It is written in Java and covers so many security vulnerabilities. It provides both GUI and command line to ease working for both new people and experts. ZAP exposes XSS injections, SQL injection, Application error disclosure, Private IP disclosure, etc. In addition, it provides Application Scanner, Authentication Support, Web socket support, AJAX spiders, etc. It can also be used as a scanner/filter for an application.
5. Burp Suite
Burp Suite is a Web Penetration Testing Framework that is written in Java. It has various editions like Community Edition, Professional and Enterprise Edition. Although the community edition is free, the Professional and Enterprise edition is charged after the trial period. The paid version has many advanced tools like the spider, repeater, decoder, etc., whereas the free version provides only basic services.
Burp Suite covers more than 100 vulnerabilities and provides the results in a very analyzed and interactive way. Results in a Burp Suite are displayed in a tree manner, i.e. one can have the detail of vulnerability by drilling down in the particular branch. It also provides Javascript analysis using static and dynamic techniques.
6. Wapiti
Wapiti is one of the efficient, open-source tools available for testing the security of an
application. It provides only a command-line interface and no GUI, making it difficult for beginners to work on it. One should have complete knowledge of the commands before working on Wapiti. It is different from other tools in the market as it helps in the black box testing of an application.
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Wapiti injects the payload at different locations to check the security of the application. It also allows the GET and POST methods for security testing. Wapiti identifies Database injection, File Disclosure, XSS injection, XXE injection, Potentially dangerous Files, etc. It can generate the vulnerability report in various formats (like HTML, XML, .txt, etc).
7. SQLMap
SQLMap is an open-source software used to find the SQL injection vulnerability. It
automates the whole process of detecting and exploiting the SQL injection in the database of
any application. It supports a wide range of databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, SQLite, MySQL, Oracle, etc. Furthermore, it supports the download and upload of any file from the database server.
SQLMap can connect directly with the database bypassing the SQL injections. It supports various SQL injection techniques like time-based blind, error-based, stacked queries, boolean-based blind, and out-of-band. In addition, it has a strong search mechanism and is capable of searching specific database names and their columns across database tables.
8. Vega
Vega is an open-source web security tool to test the security of an application. It is written in Java and supports GUI, which makes it easier to use for both new people and experienced ones. It can help to find Cross-Site Scripting, find and validate SQL injection, shell injection, remote file include, etc. It contains an automated scanner that helps in quick tests. Vega can run on multiple platforms like Windows, Unix, Linux, and Mac OS. Vega is written in Javascript, and It is extensible, i.e. user can create multiple attack modules according to specific requirements using rich API. It can also perform SSL interception for Http websites.
Conclusion
There are a lot of security testing tools available in the market and that is too open source. I hope the above-mentioned tools give you an idea that how different testing tools provide their own specific testing services. Before using any tool for security testing of your application, it is very important to understand the tool in detail and to know whether that serves a particular purpose or not. Very neat and clean, rich documented websites are available on the internet for every tool proving the complete guide to the users. Now almost all the tools are released with their nice GUI so as to ease the new people working on them.
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