Web application penetration testing refers to a set of services used to detect various security issues with web applications and identify vulnerabilities and risks, including:
- Known vulnerabilities in COTS applications
- Technical vulnerabilities: URL manipulation, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, back-end authentication, password in memory, session hijacking, buffer overflow, web server configuration, credential management, Clickjacking, etc.,
- Business logic errors: Day-to-Day threat analysis, unauthorized logins, personal information modification, pricelist modification, unauthorized funds transfer, breach of customer trust etc.
OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project, an open source web application security documentation project, has produced documents such as the OWASP Guide and the widely adopted OWASP Top 10 awareness document.
The Firefox browser is a popular web application penetration testing tool, with many plugins specifically designed for web application penetration testing.
Foundstone's Hacme Bank simulates a banking application. It helps developers and auditors practice web application attacks, including input validation flaws such as SQL injection and Cross Site Scripting (XSS).
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