Web Application Pen Test

Secure Your Web Applications with Expert Pen Testing

Web Application Penetration Testing (Pen Test) typically involves the process of testing and evaluating a web application to find vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. The goal is to identify and assess potential security weaknesses in the web application, its components, and associated systems. Below is a general outline of the steps that might be involved in a web application penetration test, along with the corresponding actions.

Web Application Pen Test Overview

1. Planning and Scoping

Define Objectives: Establish the goals of the penetration test. Common goals are to assess the security posture, evaluate potential threats, and identify vulnerabilities in the web application.
Scope Definition: Determine which areas of the application, such as APIs, login systems, or other functionalities, will be in scope for testing. Clearly define what is out of scope.
Authorization: Obtain written permission from the application owner for penetration testing to avoid legal issues.

2. Information Gathering

Reconnaissance: Collect information about the target system, such as domain names, IP addresses, technologies used, and any other publicly available data.
Subdomain Enumeration: Discover subdomains and other associated services using tools like Sublist3r or Amass.
Fingerprinting: Identify the technologies and platforms used by the application (e.g., web servers, CMS, frameworks) with tools like Wappalyzer or WhatWeb.

3. Vulnerability Scanning

Automated Scanning: Use vulnerability scanning tools such as OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, or Nikto to find common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, insecure configurations, etc.
Manual Testing: Complement automated tools with manual testing to identify business logic flaws, complex vulnerabilities, and areas that automated tools might miss.

4. Exploitation

Test Vulnerabilities: Exploit identified vulnerabilities (e.g., SQL injection, XSS, file inclusion) to assess the impact on the application.
Privilege Escalation: Attempt to escalate privileges from a regular user to an admin, or compromise the underlying system if possible.
Session Management Flaws: Test how session management (e.g., cookies, sessions, JWTs) works and check for weaknesses.

5. Post-Exploitation

Maintain Access: If access is gained, assess the ability to maintain persistence through web shells, backdoors, or other techniques.
Data Exfiltration: Attempt to extract sensitive data such as user information, credentials, or database dumps to understand the severity of the issue.

6. Reporting

Document Findings: Create a detailed report with all findings, including vulnerabilities discovered, severity ratings, exploitation details, and evidence (e.g., screenshots, logs).
Recommendations: Provide clear remediation advice and recommended mitigation strategies to secure the web application.
Executive Summary: Summarize the findings for non-technical stakeholders, focusing on business impact and high-level risks.

7. Remediation and Re-Testing

After the client applies fixes, perform a follow-up test to verify that the vulnerabilities have been effectively addressed and mitigated.

1. Injection Attacks (SQL, Command, XPath

2. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

3. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

4. Security Misconfigurations

5. Insecure Deserialization

6. Broken Authentication and Session Management

7. Sensitive Data Exposure

8. XML External Entity (XXE)

9. XML External Entity (XXE)

1. Burp Suite

For manual testing, crawling, and intercepting requests/responses

2. OWASP ZAP

For vulnerability scanning and exploitation

3. Nikto

For web server scanning

4. Wfuzz

For brute force and fuzzing

5. Gobuster

For directory and file enumeration

6. Nmap

For network scanning and discovery