Modern-day application penetration testing (or pentesting) spans from traditional web and mobile app penetration testing to emerging IoT and blockchain penetration testing.
Application penetration testing is a descendant of the Ethical Hacking industry that emerged in late nineties. Both aimed to detect security vulnerabilities and verify security, integrity and availability of computer systems, they considerably differ. At the nostalgic epoch of Ethical Hacking, organizations were merely curious whether and how quickly their IT bastions can get hacked, oftentimes taking the findings with humor and carelessness. Very few penetration testing methodologies or security certifications existed at this point of time, triggering some confusion around the nature of the service.
A steadily growing penetration testing industry of a modern-day is, however, tremendously dissimilar, forming a multi-billion USD market of a mature structure according to numerous researches conducted by Gartner, Forrester and IDC in 2019 and 2020.
Differently from network penetration test, the application penetration test is mostly focused on the Application Layer of TCP/IP model. Within the context of application pentesting, this layer includes:
- All types of websites (e.g. opensource CMS such as WordPress or proprietary MS SharePoint)
- All types of web applications including e-commerce, e-banking and e-voting applications
- All types of web application residing in the cloud, or provided as a SaaS or PaaS
- All types of HTTP-based web services, microservices, REST and SOAP APIs
- All types of mobile applications, including e-payment and fintech apps
- All types of HTTP-based IoT applications and microservices
- Distributed applications (blockchain) and smart contracts
Application penetration test has a multitude of important features and distinguishing properties that we will elaborate below in ample details.
Application Penetration Testing Explained
Contrasted to web vulnerability scanning or automated application security testing, application penetration test implies intensive human testing and skillful labor. Modern web and mobile applications contain a great wealth of intricate security and privacy vulnerabilities that cannot be detected with an automated vulnerability scanner. Some require a complicated Web Application Firewall (WAF) bypass or a sophisticated combination of several vulnerabilities to get the Crown Jewels. Others are simply so deeply intertwined with innate business logic that no machine or software can ever comprehend it. Consequentially, application penetration testing is not cheap, however, the outcomes definitely worth the investment if planned and executed correctly.
To commence a first stage of penetration test, many penetration testers usually rely on a wide spectrum of application penetration testing tools, from opensource Nikto or WPScan to more sophisticated paid version of Burp Suite, Acunetix or Netsparker.
Manual application penetration testing equally provides such invaluable benefits as detailed remediation guidelines adopted for a particular organization, its internal processes and Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Furthermore, juxtaposed to automated application security scanning, penetration testing commonly has no false-positives and virtually no false-negatives condition to appropriately selected methodology and scope of the penetration test.
At the end of application penetration test, a detailed report is delivered to customer. This report gradually explains the methodologies and scope of the penetration test, itemizes detected security flaws and privacy issues, and then suggests viable recommendations for developers. At ImmuniWeb, on top of this, we provide unlimited patch verification tests to ascertain that the integrity of findings has been properly resolved.
Application Penetration Testing Goals
Business executives and risk professionals may reasonably question about the ultimate goals of application penetration testing, and notably how to transform them into some palpable value for organizations from a financial prospective.
A properly planned and executed penetration test brings:
- Assurance of Integrity and Compliance — it is pivotal to verify that your data is properly protected to ensure a well-informed decision-making process and budgeting. Most of the enacted data protection laws and regulations likewise impose regular penetration testing by independent third parties.
- Cyber Risk Reduction — skyrocketing data breaches oftentimes happen because of careless or negligent cybersecurity management, ignorance of novel risks, threats and vulnerabilities.
- Legal and Financial Liability Decrease — Western courts, both in Common and Civil law systems, consider such precautions as penetration testing and related processes when assessing penalties in data breach litigation, now spanning from penny individual complaints to multi-billion class action lawsuits.
- Cyber Insurance Reduction — currently trendy cybersecurity insurances scrutinize your penetration testing processes when evaluation your eligibility to get coverage in case of a security incident, data breach or leak.
- Cybersecurity Strategy Verification — penetration test is tenable and empiric manner to ascertain that the money you invest into your corporate cybersecurity and compliance strategies are spent efficiently and effectively, generating tangible value for the shareholders.
That is to say, continuous penetration testing in 2020 shall definitely be regarded thought the prism of a sustainable investment and not a cost.
Application Penetration Testing Scope
Definition of a pentest scope is crucial to ensure eventual success of the penetration test. Countless organizations are hacked every month because of incomplete or wrongly prioritized scope of testing. You cannot protect what you don’t know, however, shrewd attackers are well proficient to leverage passive and active reconnaissance techniques and OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) to ferret out forgotten, abandoned or test systems left without protection. Such shadow and legacy systems are a low-hanging fruit for cybercriminals.
Holistic visibility of your digital and IT assets exposed to the Internet is paramount prior to commencing application penetration testing.
At ImmuniWeb, we offer Attack Surface Management (ASM) service to illuminate your external attack surface and enable a well-informed, threat-aware and risk-based application penetration testing, proportional to your needs, existing risks and available budget.
Furthermore, we deliver actionable security ratings for your web applications, APIs and mobile apps so you can effortlessly prioritize your testing in a simple, coherent and predictable manner.
Application Penetration Testing Vulnerabilities
Traditionally, OWASP Top 10 is a de facto standard for web application penetration testing, encompassing the following classes of web application vulnerabilities:
- Injection
- Broken Authentication
- Sensitive Data Exposure
- XML External Entities (XXE)
- Broken Access Control
- Security Misconfiguration
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- Insecure Deserialization
- Using Components with Known Vulns
- Insufficient Logging & Monitoring
At ImmuniWeb, we go far beyond foundational OWASP Top 10, and cover SANS Top 25 and PCI DSS 6.5.1–6.5.10 items by combining our award-wining AI technology with scalable and rapid manual penetration testing.
Importantly, we also meticulously perform all tests and security checks from OWASP Testing Guide (OTGv4) and OWASP API Top 10.
In 2020, IoT devices and connected objects become an inalienable part of rapidly growing IT infrastructure in many organizations. For compatibility and usability purposes, most of these devices can be accessed via a web-based admin interface or control panel. Therefore, IoT penetration testing frequently involves application pentesting as a vital part of the process. Moreover, IoT and cloud penetration testing helps detecting the most dangerous attack vectors against the IoT infrastructure that are connected and accessible from the Internet. ImmuniWeb Discovery will rapidly illuminate all your external IoT devices and smart objects for a well-informed IoT penetration testing.
Mobile applications have a similar ranking by OWASP Mobile Top 10 project. It is commonly used for mobile application penetration testing of iOS and Android apps, purported to detect the following categories of mobile security weaknesses:
- Improper Platform Usage
- Insecure Data Storage
- Insecure Communication
- Insecure Authentication
- Insufficient Cryptography
- Insecure Authorization
- Client Code Quality
- Code Tampering
- Reverse Engineering
- Extraneous Functionality
Human element of application penetration testing ensures that the most untrivial combinations and variations of the aforementioned security and privacy issues will be spotted.
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