The seven main types of security testing as per Open Source Security Testing methodology manual are:
Vulnerability Scanning: Automated software scans a system against known vulnerabilities.
Security Scanning:Manual or automated technique to identify network and system weaknesses.
Penetration testing: Penetration testing is on the security testing which helps in identifying vulnerabilities in a system.
Risk Assessment: It involves analysis of possible risk in the system. Risks are classified as Low, Medium and High.
Security Auditing:Complete inspection of systems and applications to detect vulnerabilities.
Ethical hacking:Hacking done on a system to detect flaws in it rather than personal benefits.
Posture Assessment:This combines Security scanning, Ethical Hacking and Risk Assessments to show an overall security posture of an organization.
The parameters that define an SSL session connection are:
SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol is a XML-based protocol through which applications exchange information over HTTP. XML requests are send by web services in SOAP format then a SOAP client sends a SOAP message to the server. The server responds back again with a SOAP message along with the requested service.
Web Services Description Language (WSDL): is an XML formatted language used by UDDI. “Web Services Description Language describes Web services and how to access them”.
SSL or secured socket layer connection is a transient peer-to-peer communications link where each connection is associated with one SSL Session.
SSL session can be defines as association between client and server generally crated by handshake protocol. There are set of parameters are defined and it may be share by multiple SSL connections.
Intrusion detection is a system which helps in determining possible attacks and deal with it. Intrusion detection includes collecting information from many systems and sources, analysis of the information and find out the possible ways of attack on the system.
Intrusion detection check following:
Following are the participants:
Security testing can be considered most important in all type of software testing. Its main objective is to find vulnerabilities in any software (web or networking) based application and protect their data from possible attacks or intruders.
As many applications contains confidential data and needs to be protected being leaked. Software testing needs to be done periodically on such applications to identify threats and to take immediate action on them.
Ports are the point from where information goes in and out of any system. Scanning of the ports to find out any loop holes in the system are known as Port Scanning. There can be some weak points in the system to which hackers can attack and get the critical information. These points should be identified and prevented from any misuse.
Following are the types of port scans:
Factors causing vulnerabilities are:
XSS or cross site scripting is type of vulnerability that hackers used to attack web applications.
It allows hackers to inject HTML or JAVASCRIPT code into a web page which can steal the confidential information from the cookies and returns to the hackers. It is one of the most critical and common technique which needs to be prevented.
This kind of attack uses the forceful browsing with the URL manipulation attack. Hackers can manipulate the parameters in url string and can get the critical data which generally not open for public such as achieved data, old version or data which in under development.
Abbreviations related to software security are:
Methodologies in Security testing are:
White Box- All the information are provided to the testers.
Black Box- No information is provided to the testers and they can test the system in real world scenario.
Grey Box- Partial information is with the testers and rest they have to rest on their own.
ISO/IEC 17799 is originally published in UK and defines best practices for Information Security Management. It has guidelines for all organizations small or big for Information security.
The parameters that define an SSL session state are:
Two common techniques to protect a password file are- hashed passwords and a salt value or password file access control.
Types of Cookies are:
Honeypot is fake computer system which behaves like a real system and attracts hackers to attack on it. Honeypot is used to find out loop holes in the system and to provide solution for these kinds of attacks.
HIDS or Host Intrusion Detection system is a system in which snapshot of the existing system is taken and compares with the previous snap shot. It checks if critical files were modified or deleted then a alert is generated and send to the administrator.
Secure Sockets Layer protocol or SSL is used to make secure connection between client and computers.
Below are the component used in SSL:
Following are the three classes of intruders:
Network Intrusion Detection system generally known as NIDS. It is used for analysis of the passing traffic on the entire sub-net and to match with the known attacks. If any loop hole identified then administrator receives an alert.
There are three benefits of an intrusion detection system.
Cookie is a piece of information received from web server and stored in a web browser which can be read anytime later. Cookie can contain password information, some auto fill information and if any hackers get these details it can be dangerous.
There are following seven attributes of Security Testing: