Penetration testing is a security method that allows organizations to identify, test, and prioritize vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks. Ethical hackers usually perform penetration tests—these may be internal employees or third-party contractors. Penetration testers imitate the tactics and behaviors of attackers to assess the security posture of an organization’s network, computer system, or web application. Organizations can also use penetration testing to test compliance with industry standards and regulations.
Vulnerability assessment (VA) is a process of defining, detecting, categorizing, and prioritizing security vulnerabilities in a computer system, application, or network. Organizations rely on vulnerability assessments to provide the crucial intelligence and risk context to understand and respond to cybersecurity threats. The vulnerability assessment process aims to identify threats and their associated risks. It usually involves using an automated testing tool, such as a network security scanner. At the end of the process, a vulnerability assessment report lists the results obtained from the assessment tool.
Vulnerability assessments provide organizations with detailed information about security vulnerabilities in their environment. They also offer guidelines for assessing the risks associated with these vulnerabilities. This process allows organizations to understand their assets, security vulnerabilities, and overall risk, making it less likely for attackers to compromise their systems and steal their information.
Vulnerability assessments help identify flaws and threats as soon as possible and take remedial action to patch the gaps in the organization’s infrastructure. Vulnerability assessments are also important for ensuring organizations meet cybersecurity compliance requirements, such as the HIPAA and PCI DSS standards.
Vulnerability assessments can incorporate different methods, tools, and scanning mechanisms to identify the vulnerable parts of different systems and networks. The type of vulnerability assessment may differ depending on the discoverability of vulnerabilities in a particular system.
The incidence of distributed denial of service (DoS), phishing, and ransomware attacks is increasing rapidly, placing all internet-based businesses at risk. The consequences of successful cyberattacks are greater than ever, given businesses’ reliance on digital technologies.
Penetration testing leverages a hacker’s perspective to identify, prevent, and mitigate security risks before a malicious actor can exploit them. It helps the IT leadership implement smart security upgrades to minimize the chance of a successful attack.
Businesses must be able to update their security measures simultaneously to protect their assets from penetration attacks effectively. It is important to note that it might be difficult to determine which methods to use or how to use them in an attack. However, an ethical hacker can help organizations quickly and accurately identify, update, and replace the vulnerable parts of their systems.
Penetration Testing vs. Vulnerability Assessment
Here are some of the main areas in which vulnerability assessment differs from penetration testing.
Coverage
Vulnerability assessments are more internally-oriented than penetration tests. They emphasize the identification of all security vulnerabilities in a system and the strengthening of internal defense mechanisms.
Penetration testing is more external and focuses on identifying vulnerable areas of the system from the outside. It involves external tests to determine the system’s level of exposure to unknown threats.
Applicability
Vulnerability assessments are ideal for organizations that use an insecure network and want to identify known security threats. They usually involve an assessment process designed to identify all possible security holes in the system. Organizations typically run assessments of their entire central resource base and regularly assess endpoint samples.
Penetration tests are useful for organizations that claim to have strong security defenses but want to determine the hackability of their systems and identify the unknown mechanisms exposing the system to a potential attack or compromise. Pentesting helps organizations test their existing defenses and is especially useful for organizations with a strong security posture. Organizations typically only perform penetration testing for critical infrastructure (servers, databases, firewalls).
Process
The vulnerability assessment process begins with discovering assets in a computing environment. The assessment team identifies flaws in networks and applications, ranks the risk level of each vulnerability, and prioritizes high-risk issues. It then provides reports that highlight problem areas and suggest improvements. Vulnerability remediation typically involves reconfiguring the system, managing patches, and security infrastructure hardening.
The penetration testing process begins with determining the scope of testing and the level of exploitation. Pentesters can then identify vulnerabilities and assess the severity of the associated risks. They simulate real-world attacks and exploit the identified vulnerabilities, injecting agents to enable access to the system for a specified period. Next, the testers perform a risk analysis to understand the level of access to the system the attack achieved. After the initial test and analysis, the pentesting team submits a report highlighting any identified risks, assessing their severity, and recommending remediation actions. Once the organization Implements the suggested fixes and fixes the vulnerabilities in their security system, the pentesters retest it to ensure the recommended fixes work.
Organizations regularly schedule vulnerability assessments, especially when the affected systems, networks, and controls change frequently. Internal technicians can perform these assessments using their company credentials and vulnerability management tools to identify known threats affecting internal applications networks. Organizations may also engage third-party vendors to evaluate, identify, and review results manually.
Organizations can implement penetration annually or address specific, major changes to their systems, networks, and controls. An experienced, qualified penetration tester must perform the tests (this usually involves an external pentesting service provider). Pentesters are usually qualified ethical hackers with the ability to hack secure systems and networks and identify weaknesses allowing access from external networks and applications.
VAPT: Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) is a comprehensive suite of security assessment services that help identify and mitigate cybersecurity threats and the associated risks to an organization’s IT assets.
VAPT provides businesses with a highly detailed assessment of their applications, offering deeper insights than individual penetration tests. The VAPT approach helps organizations better understand the threats their applications face, allowing them to protect their data and systems from malicious attacks.
Vulnerabilities are often present in internally created or third-party applications and software. However, most issues are easy to fix once discovered. VAPT providers allow security teams to focus on addressing critical flaws while the providers continue to discover, triage, and prioritize vulnerabilities.
9 Critical Web Application Vulnerabilities and How to Prevent Them
What Are Web Application Vulnerabilities?
A web application vulnerability is any system flaw that an attacker can exploit to compromise a web application. Web applications are becoming increasingly important in both business and personal life—if a web application vulnerability is exploited, it can result in the loss of sensitive data, disruption of business operations, reputational damage, and legal exposure. Continuous security testing is critical to identify security vulnerabilities and protect your organization.
Common types of web application vulnerabilities include:
SQL injection occurs when data enters an application from an untrusted source and is used to dynamically construct a SQL query. This can result in data loss or corruption, lack of accountability, or denial of access.
Cross-site scripting (XSS) occurs when untrusted data is included in a web page without validation. This can allow attackers to inject malicious code into the web application and execute it on the client side.
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) is a vulnerability that occurs when a website executes malicious computer code that allows a hacker to steal information and control user behavior.
Session fixation is where an attacker forces a user’s session ID to a specific value that the attacker knows. The victim unknowingly uses this fixed session ID to authenticate themselves on a web application.
Local file inclusion occurs when a web application accepts user input, such as a parameter or a URL, and uses it to include a file dynamically. The attacker can manipulate this functionality to include a file containing malicious code.
Security misconfigurations can occur when an aspect of the web application that is important for security is not configured correctly. This can include default passwords and accounts, insecure passwords, and unpatched flaws.
XML External Entities (XXE) vulnerabilities occur when poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within the XML documents and send sensitive data to an unauthorized external entity.
Path traversal attacks happen when a web application does not properly validate user input. This can allow an attacker to traverse up and down directory structures to access sensitive files.
Insecure cryptographic storage is a vulnerability that occurs when sensitive data is not stored securely. This can include user credentials, profile information, health details, and credit card information.
Many applications use Structured Query Language (SQL) to manage communications with the database. SQL vulnerabilities allow attackers to insert malicious SQL commands to exfiltrate, modify, or delete data. Some hackers use SQL to gain root access to the target system.
SQL injection attacks target servers that hold critical data used by web applications or services. They are particularly dangerous when they expose critical or sensitive data, such as user credentials and personal information. The most common vulnerability enabling SQL injection attacks is using unsanitized user inputs. It is important to strip out any element in user-supplied inputs that the server could execute as SQL code.
XSS attacks are similar to SQL injection attacks and involve the injection of malicious scripts into websites or web applications. The point of difference is that the malicious code runs in the browser only when the user visits a compromised website or app. Attackers often carry out XSS attacks by injecting code into input fields that the target page runs when visitors view the page (e.g., embedded JavaScript link).
An XSS attack can expose user data without indicating a compromise, impacting business reputation in the long run. Attackers can steal any sensitive data sent to the infected app, and the users may remain oblivious.
A CSRF attack occurs when an attacker forces the victim to perform unintended actions on the web application. The victim first logs into the web app, which has deemed the user and browser trustworthy. Therefore, the app will execute malicious actions that the attacker tricks the victim into forwarding a request to the web app. The motivation for CSRF ranges from simple pranks to enabling illicit financial transactions.
A session fixation attack involves forcing a user’s session ID to a specified value. Depending on the target web application’s functionality, attackers may use various techniques to fix session ID values. Examples of session fixation techniques include cross-site scripting exploits and reusing HTTP requests.
First, an attacker fixes the victim’s user session ID. Then, the user logs in and inadvertently exposes the online identity. The attacker can then hijack the victim’s user identity using the fixed session ID value.
Any web application that authenticates users with sessions is vulnerable to session fixation attacks without adequate defenses. Web apps that use session IDs typically use cookies, though they can also use hidden form fields or URLs. Cookie-based user sessions are the most popular and the easiest to compromise. Most fixation attacks target cookie-based sessions.
5. Local File Inclusion (LFI)
An LFI attack exploits the dynamic file inclusion mechanisms in a web application. It may occur when a web application takes user input, such as a parameter value or URL, and passes it to a file inclusion command. An attacker can use this mechanism to trick the app into including a remote file containing malicious code.
Most web application frameworks enable file inclusion, which is useful primarily to package shared code into different files for later reference by the application’s main modules. If a web app references a file for inclusion, it might execute the code in the file explicitly or implicitly (i.e., by calling a specific procedure). The application could be vulnerable to LFI attacks if the module-to-load choice is based on HTTP request elements.
Security misconfigurations are some of the most serious web application vulnerabilities because they provide attacks with opportunities to infiltrate the application easily. Attackers could exploit a wide range of security configuration vulnerabilities. These include unchanged default configurations, data stored in the cloud, ad hoc or incomplete configurations, plaintext error messages containing sensitive information, and HTTP header misconfigurations. Security misconfigurations may be present in any operating system, library, framework, or application.
An XXE attack occurs when an attacker abuses widely used features in XML parsers to gain access to remote or local files, typically resulting in Denial of Service (DoS). Attackers can also use XXE processing to carry out SSRF attacks, which force the web application to make external, malicious requests. XXE can also enable attackers to scan ports and execute malicious code remotely.
Path traversal attacks, or backtracking, involve exploiting how the web application receives data from a web server. Web apps often use Access Control Lists (ACLs) to restrict user access to specific files within the root directory. A malicious actor can identify the URL format the target application uses for file requests.
Insecure cryptographic storage refers to improper handling and storage of sensitive data within a web application. It arises when cryptographic functions are either poorly implemented or entirely neglected, leading to the exposure of sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, personal data, or other confidential information. Common issues in insecure cryptographic storage include the use of weak or outdated encryption algorithms, hard-coded cryptographic keys, and inadequate key management practices.
Solutions for Preventing Web Application Vulnerabilities
The most effective way to prevent web application vulnerabilities is to test your applications for vulnerabilities and remediate them. Here are four ways of identifying critical vulnerabilities in web applications.
SAST
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions scan source code for vulnerabilities and security risks. Many web applications incorporate code scanning at multiple stages of development, including while committing new code to the codebase and building new releases.
SAST is usually rules-based and scan results can contain false positives, so the results must be carefully analyzed and filtered to identify real security issues.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) can test an application that is deployed in a staging or production environment, and execute its code to check for vulnerabilities. Automated DAST tools find vulnerabilities by sending numerous requests, including unexpected and malicious inputs, to applications, and analyzing the results to identify security vulnerabilities.
Manual penetration testers usually perform similar tests to those performed by DAST tools, using tools like Burp Suite, Fiddler, and Postman.
Interactive application security testing (IAST) solutions combine dynamic testing (similar to DAST tools) with static analysis (similar to SAST tools) to help identify and manage security risks in web applications.
IAST solutions monitor application execution and gather information about functionality and performance. They identify vulnerabilities in real time by deploying agents and sensors that inspect running applications, and continuously analyzing all application interactions. In addition, many IAST solutions incorporate software configuration analysis (SCA) to identify open source components and frameworks and discover known vulnerabilities.
Penetration testing is a security technique that combines human security expertise with dynamic scanning tools to find vulnerabilities in web application security mechanisms.
Penetration testers operate from an attacker’s perspective. They perform reconnaissance, attempt to exploit vulnerabilities, gain unauthorized access, and demonstrate their ability to steal data or disrupt services. However, they operate ethically, without causing actual harm to the organization and within the scope of an agreement with the web application owner. Related content: Read our guide to penetration testing
Penetration Testing: Process, Types, and Key Tools
The term penetration testing (pentesting) refers to processes, tools, and services designed and implemented for the purpose of simulating attacks and data breaches, and finding security vulnerabilities. You can run a pentest for a computer system, an entire network, or a web application.
The main goal of a pentest is to discover vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. There are several ways to discover these vulnerabilities. You can opt for manual pentests performed by a team of white hat hackers, or automated penetration testing performed by a software solution.
The penetration testing process typically involves several phases. First, the tester (or solution) gathers information about the target and identifies possible entry points. Then, the tester attempts to breach the tested environment. Finally, the tester compiles a report detailing vulnerabilities found and suggestions for improving security of the tested environment.
This is part of an extensive series of guides about Cybersecurity.
Penetration testing attempts to compromise an organization’s system to discover security weaknesses. If the system has enough protection, security teams should be alerted during the test. Otherwise, the system is considered exposed to risk. Thus, penetration testing can contribute to improving information security practices.
A “blind” penetration test, meaning that security and operations teams are not aware it is going on, is the best test of an organization’s defenses. However, even if the test is known to internal teams, it can act as a security drill that evaluates how tools, people, and security practices interact in a real life situation.
Penetration testing is usually unstructured and creative. For example, while one test could use a brute force attack, another test might attack company executives via spear phishing. This creativity is important, because sophisticated attackers will use the same skills and creativity to identify the organization’s security weaknesses.
Another benefit of penetration testers is that it is conducted by external contractors, and it is possible to determine how much information to divulge about internal systems. A penetration test can simulate an external attacker, with no knowledge of the internal network, or a privileged insider.
Penetration testing involves the following five stages:
Plan – start by defining the aim and scope of a test. To better understand the target, you should collect intelligence about how it functions and any possible weaknesses.
Scan – use static or dynamic analysis to scan the network. This informs pentesters how the application responds to various threats.
Gain access – locate vulnerabilities in the target application using pentesting strategies such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection.
Maintain access – check the ability of a cybercriminal to maintain a persistent presence through an exploited vulnerability or to gain deeper access.
Analyse – assess the outcome of the penetration test with a report detailing the exploited vulnerabilities, the sensitive data accessed, and how long it took the system to respond to the pentester’s infiltration.
Penetration Testing Use Cases
Organizations use penetration testing for large and complex business-critical operations, as well as for custom components. Pentesting is necessary when developing software that handles sensitive data, such as financial assets, customer information and transaction data. Sensitive sectors—including government, medical and financial services industries—are highly regulated and thus require strong security measures.
If your organization has been infiltrated, you can leverage pentesting to help identify the weaknesses that enabled the breach and learn how to remediate them. You can also detect other vulnerabilities, which may not have been exploited, to prevent further attacks in the future.
The term network services testing, also known as infrastructure testing, refers to a type of pentest performed for the purpose of protecting the organization from common network attacks.
The goal of a network services pentest is to discover the most exposed security weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the network—before attackers can exploit these blindspots.
A network services pentest typically checks various components of the infrastructure, including servers and firewalls, switches and routers, workstations and printers.
Ideally, a network services test can help you protect against common network attacks, such as firewall misconfiguration, router attacks, switching or routing-based attacks, database attacks, man in the middle (MITM) attacks, proxy server attacks, and more.
Since mission-critical systems rely on the health of the network for continuous availability, organizations should perform external and internal network services pentesting on an annual basis, at least.
The purpose of a web application pentest is to identify security weaknesses or vulnerabilities in web applications and their components, including the source code, the database, and any relevant backend network.
A web application penetration testing process typically performs the following three phases:
Reconnaissance—gathering information about the application. For example, the operating system (OS) and resources the application uses.
Discovery—attempts are made to detect vulnerabilities.
Exploitation—using the detected vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to the application and its pools of data.
The results of a web application pentest should provide information about detected vulnerabilities and any successful exploitation. This information can help the organization prioritize vulnerabilities and determine how to apply fixes.
A physical pentest is performed for the purpose of discovering any vulnerabilities and issues in physical assets, such as locks, cameras, sensors, and barriers, that may lead to a breach.
For example, a physical pentest can assess whether attackers can gain unauthorized access to a server room. This access can serve as a point of entry into the corporate network.
Physical penetration testing can also assess how the organization copes with physical security threats like social engineering, badge cloning, tail-gating, and more.
By the end of this pentest, the organization is supplied with information about discovered physical security flaws and suggestions for mitigation.
Social Engineering Penetration Testing
A social engineering attack targets employees of the company or parties with access to company assets, trying to persuade, trick, or blackmail them into disclosing information and credentials.
A social engineering pentest tries to determine how the organization copes during a social engineering attack. In the end of this test, the organization is provided with information that can help create or improve a social engineering awareness program and related security protocols.
Client Side Penetration Testing
A client-side pentest is performed for the purpose of detecting software vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited on a client device like workstations and web browsers.
A client-side pentest can typically identify specific attacks. For example, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, form hijacking, HTML injections, clickjacking attacks, and malware infections.
A mobile application pentest attempts to discover vulnerabilities in mobile applications. This test does not include servers and mobile APIs.
Mobile application penetration testing usually involves the use of the two following test:
Static analysis—involves extracting elements like source code and metadata, for the purpose of performing reverse engineering.
Dynamic analysis—involves looking for vulnerabilities during runtime. The tester, for example, may try to extract data from the RAM or bypass controls.
Penetration Testing Services
There are two types of penetration testing services: manual and automatic.
Manual penetration testing is extensive and systematic. It is usually performed by a contractor or security consultancy, who agree on a specific testing scope with the client. Within that scope, an ethical hacker searches for vulnerabilities, attempts to breach the organization’s systems, and prepares a detailed report showing what they discovered and suggesting remediations.
Penetration testing as a service (PTaaS) is a new model, which provides an automated platform organizations can use to perform penetration testing on their systems. PTaaS systems use technologies like automated vulnerability scanning, dynamic application security testing (DAST) and fuzzing, to find security weaknesses and attempt to exploit them, without human intervention.
Uncovers business logic vulnerabilities, as opposed to generic vulnerabilities which are easy to discover via automated tools
Human penetration testers still use automated tools, so they are able to combine automated scans with manual exploration and analysis
False positives are not a concern, because the penetration tester validates all findings before producing their report
Ability to simulate complex attack campaigns involving multiple threat vectors
Ability to identify zero-day vulnerabilities
Manual penetration testing cons
Strongly depends on the skills of the tester. An unskilled tester, or one without relevant experience in the organization’s industry or technology stack, can miss important vulnerabilities and insights.
Complex setup from the organization’s perspective, requiring contracts, detailed definition of scope, and coordination with internal stakeholders.
High cost and large effort required to perform each penetration test
Typically only possible to perform tests on a quarterly or annual basis, leaving the organization open to zero day threats or vulnerabilities resulting from changes to production systems
Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) Pros and Cons
PTaaS pros
Self service model, letting the client specify via a web interface on which systems, and at which frequency, to perform each test
Makes penetration testing practical for companies with a smaller security team, or no security team
Lower costs and flexible payment models – most services provide subscription or pay-per-use pricing
PTaaS platforms can provide automated reporting that suits the needs of the organization, including specific compliance requirements
PTaaS cons
Places more responsibility on the organization, as they need to determine the testing schedule and review findings independently
Some cloud providers require permission to run automated penetration testing on their infrastructure, and limit testing to a specific time window
If encryption is used for systems under test, this can complicate the use of PTaaS services
Most services cannot identify business logic vulnerabilities
More false positives compared to manual testing
Bright – a PTaaS service that automates many aspects of manual penetration testing
Bright provides PTaaS platform, which overcomes many of the disadvantages of manual PTaaS services. It uses artificial intelligence (AI), fuzzing techniques, and rich threat intelligence to detect a long list of known vulnerabilities in addition to zero-day attacks and business logic vulnerabilities.
In addition, Bright utilizes browser automation to provide zero false positives – it scans multiple layers of your environment including web applications and APIs and provides comprehensive reports, on par with reports provided by manual penetration testers.
Penetration Testing Tools
The types of pentesting tools you chose significantly impact the quality and results of the test. A tool might be able to catch a vulnerability, or it could miss it altogether. Typically, a pentest leverages several types of tools to ensure visibility into a greater scope of vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Here are several tools commonly used for pentesting:
Pentesting Tools
Value
Pentesting Use Cases
Vulnerability Scanner
Scans the environment and attempts to detect known vulnerabilities and configuration errors.
Analyze the report generated by the scanner. The goal is to find an exploitable vulnerability to help penetrate the environment.
Web Proxy
An intermediary server that separates end users from the web pages they attempt to browse.
Intercept and modify traffic as it flows between the web server of the organization and the browser of the pentester. The goal is typically to detect and exploit HTML vulnerabilities and then use them to launch attacks.
Network Sniffer
Collects and analyzes network traffic.
Locate active applications. The goal is to hunt exposed credentials or sensitive data that is currently flowing across the network.
Port Scanner
Detects open ports.
Open ports provide information about applications and operating systems (OS) with network access. The goal is to identify potential attack vectors.
Password Cracker
A program that attempts to recover passwords that are either stored or transmitted in a scrambled form.
Find weak passwords that can provide access to the network. The goal is to leverage passwords to elevate or expand the level privileges and gain unauthorized access to the network and its assets.
Penetration Testing Best Practices
Here are a few best practices you can use to improve the effectiveness of penetration testing activity.
Reconnaissance and Planning is Crucial
Penetration tests should start with vulnerability scans, and an open exploration for security gaps. Just like a real attacker, a penetration tester should perform reconnaissance against the target organization, gathering information from available resources, and planning the most effective exploits.
It is advisable to carefully record this stage, including vulnerabilities which were discovered and not exploited in the actual test. This can allow developers to reproduce and fix defects in the future.
A penetration tester should think and act as an attacker. They should consider the cyber attackers motivation, goals, and skills. Motivation is an important factor in understanding hacker behavior. For example, a hacker looking to perform financial fraud will act differently from one seeking to exfiltrate sensitive data, or a hacktivist looking to do damage.
Before performing penetration tests, the organization should identify the personas of its most likely attackers, rank them, and focus tests on the most appropriate persona.
Freeze Development in Penetration Testing Environment
Successful penetration testing requires a known, stable state of the system under test. Adding a new patch or software package, changing a hardware component, or changing configuration, will invalidate the penetration test, because vulnerabilities discovered may not exist after the update.
It is not always possible to predict the positive or negative security consequences of an update—which is the reason to perform penetration testing in the first place. If there is no choice and systems must be modified during a test, this should be communicated to the attacker and taken into account in the penetration test report.
Bright enables organizations to automate black-box testing for a long list of vulnerabilities across both applications and APIs. These tests include both technical vulnerabilities and business logic vulnerabilities. This combination goes a long way towards providing unparalleled coverage that previously could only be achieved by conducting manual penetration testing.
Moreover, the automated solution enables organizations to run targeted scans early in the SDLC and remediate issues before they make it to production. This is far superior to having to detect vulnerabilities in a production environment with manual tests.
Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of cybersecurity.
DNS is a fundamental form of communication. It takes user-inputted domains and matches them with an IP address. DNS attacks use this mechanism in order to perform malicious activities.
For example, DNS tunneling techniques enable threat actors to compromise network connectivity and gain remote access to a targeted server. Other forms of DNS attacks can enable threat actors to take down servers, steal data, lead users to fraudulent sites, and perform Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
This is part of an extensive series of guides about Cybersecurity.
What Is DNS?
Domain name system (DNS) is a protocol that translates a domain name, such as website.com, into an IP address such as 208.38.05.149.
When users type the domain name website.com into a browser, a DNS resolver (a program in the operating system) searches for the numerical IP address or website.com. Here is how it works:
The DNS resolver looks up the IP address in its local cache.
If the DNS resolver does not find the address in the cache, it queries a DNS server.
The recursive nature of DNS servers enables them to query one another to find a DNS server that has the correct IP address or to find an authoritative DNS server that stores the canonical mapping of the domain name to its IP address.
Once the resolver finds the IP address, it returns it to the requesting program and also caches the address for future use.
Why Perform an Attack on the DNS?
DNS is a fundamental service of the IP network and the internet. This means DNS is required during most exchanges. Communication generally begins with a DNS resolution. If the resolution service becomes unavailable, the majority of applications can no longer function.
Attackers often try to deny the DNS service by bypassing the protocol standard function, or using bug exploits and flaws. DNS is accepted by all security tools with limited verification on the protocol or the usage. This can open doors to tunneling, data exfiltration and other exploits employing underground communications.
What Are the 5 Major DNS Attack Types?
Here are some of the techniques used for DNS attacks.
1. DNS Tunneling
DNS tunneling involves encoding the data of other programs or protocols within DNS queries and responses. It usually features data payloads that can take over a DNS server and allow attackers to manage the remote server and applications.
DNS tunneling often relies on the external network connectivity of a compromised system, which provides a way into an internal DNS server with network access. It also requires controlling a server and a domain, which functions as an authoritative server that carries out data payload executable programs as well as server-side tunneling.
DNS amplification attacks perform Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) on a targeted server. This involves exploiting open DNS servers that are publicly available, in order to overwhelm a target with DNS response traffic.
Typically, an attack starts with the threat actor sending a DNS lookup request to the open DNS server, spoofing the source address to become the target address. Once the DNS server returns the DNS record response, it is passed to the new target, which is controlled by the attacker.
DNS flood attacks involve using the DNS protocol to carry out a user datagram protocol (UDP) flood. Threat actors deploy valid (but spoofed) DNS request packets at an extremely high packet rate and then create a massive group of source IP addresses.
Since the requests look valid, the DNS servers of the target start responding to all requests. Next, the DNS server can become overwhelmed by the massive amount of requests. A DNS attack requires a great amount of network resources, which tire out the targeted DNS infrastructure until it is taken offline. As a result, the target’s internet access also goes down.
4. DNS Spoofing
DNS spoofing, or DNS cache poisoning, involves using altered DNS records to redirect online traffic to a fraudulent site that impersonates the intended destination. Once users reach the fraudulent destination, they are prompted to login into their account.
Once they enter the information, they essentially give the threat actor the opportunity to steal access credentials as well as any sensitive information typed into the fraudulent login form. Additionally, these malicious websites are often used to install viruses or worms on end users’ computers, providing the threat actor with long-term access to the machine and any data it stores.
A DNS NXDOMAIN flood DDoS attack attempts to overwhelm the DNS server using a large volume of requests for invalid or non-existent records. These attacks are often handled by a DNS proxy server that uses up most (or all) of its resources to query the DNS authoritative server. This causes both the DNS Authoritative server and the DNS proxy server to use up all their time handling bad requests. As a result, the response time for legitimate requests slows down until it eventually stops altogether.
DNS Attack Prevention
Here are several ways that can help you protect your organization against DNS attacks:
Keep DNS Resolver Private and Protected
Restrict DNS resolver usage to only users on the network and never leave it open to external users. This can prevent its cache from being poisoned by external actors.
Configure Your DNS Against Cache Poisoning
Configure security into your DNS software in order to protect your organization against cache poisoning. You can add variability to outgoing requests in order to make it difficult for threat actors to slip in a bogus response and get it accepted. Try randomizing the query ID, for example, or use a random source port instead of UDP port 53.
Securely Manage Your DNS servers
Authoritative servers can be hosted in-house, by a service provider, or through the help of a domain registrar. If you have the required skills and expertise for in-house hosting, you can have full control. If you do not have the required skills and scale, you might benefit from outsourcing this aspect.
Test Your Web Applications and APIs for DNS Vulnerabilities
Bright automatically scans your apps and APIs for hundreds of vulnerabilities, including DNS security issues.
The generated reports are false-positive free, as Bright validates every finding before reporting it to you. The reports come with clear remediation guidelines for your team. Thanks to Bright’s integration with ticketing tools like JIRA, it is easy to assign issues directly to your developers, for rapid remediation.
How DNS Attacks Can Disrupt Business Operations
DNS issues rarely announce themselves clearly. It usually starts with vague complaints – someone says the app feels slow, another says the site won’t load, and support tickets begin to trickle in. By the time teams realize DNS is involved, users are already impacted.
When DNS fails, it doesn’t just affect one service. Everything that depends on name resolution starts breaking at once – websites, APIs, login flows, email delivery, even internal tooling. From the outside, it looks like the entire system is down, even if the underlying infrastructure is perfectly fine.
That’s what makes DNS attacks so disruptive for businesses. Engineering teams may be chasing application bugs while traffic never even reaches the servers. Meanwhile, customers lose trust quickly. For revenue-facing systems, even short DNS disruptions can translate directly into lost transactions and reputational damage.
DNS Attacks vs DDoS: What’s the Difference?
DNS attacks are often described as a type of DDoS, but in practice, they behave very differently. A classic DDoS attack is about volume – overwhelm a service until it can’t respond anymore. You see traffic spikes, CPU usage jumps, and dashboards light up.
DNS attacks don’t always look like that. Instead of hitting the application, attackers interfere with how users find it in the first place. That might mean poisoning records, abusing resolvers, or overwhelming authoritative DNS servers. The traffic levels may not look extreme, but the effect is the same: users can’t reach the application.
The tricky part is visibility. DDoS problems are noisy and obvious. DNS problems are quiet. Requests just fail or go somewhere unexpected. Without DNS-specific monitoring, teams often waste time debugging the wrong layer before realizing that resolution is the real issue.
Best Practices for DNS Security Configuration
Most DNS problems aren’t caused by sophisticated attackers. They’re caused by assumptions. DNS is often treated as background infrastructure – set it up once and move on. Years later, that configuration is still running while the environment around it has changed completely.
Using a reliable DNS provider with redundancy and built-in protection is usually the first practical step. Running your own DNS can work, but only if you’re prepared to maintain it like any other critical system.
Access control is another common weak spot. DNS records are powerful, yet they’re sometimes editable by too many people or automated processes without safeguards. A single mistake or compromised credential can redirect traffic just as effectively as an external attack.
DNSSEC helps in certain scenarios, especially for public domains, but it’s not a silver bullet. What matters more is treating DNS as production infrastructure – monitored, reviewed, and protected – not something that only gets attention when it breaks.
How to Detect Early Signs of a DNS Attack
DNS attacks are hardest to deal with when you notice them late. Once users start reporting outages, you’re already in response mode. Early detection comes down to watching for subtle changes that usually get ignored.
Resolution failures that spike suddenly, odd increases in NXDOMAIN responses, or DNS lookups that start taking longer than usual are often early signals. On their own, they don’t always look alarming, which is why they get missed.
Another warning sign is inconsistency. If users in one region can access a service while others can’t, DNS should be one of the first things checked. These partial failures are common during DNS-based attacks.
Teams that log and review DNS behavior regularly have a big advantage here. When you know what “normal” looks like, it’s much easier to spot when something starts drifting – and react before it turns into a full outage.
See Additional Guides on Key Cybersecurity Topics
Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of cybersecurity.
Security testing involves evaluating a computing system’s security features to ensure they function properly and protect the application’s users and data. It typically involves checking for vulnerabilities, identifying risks, and assessing other aspects of security. The goal of the process is to discover potential security breaches, misconfigurations, and malicious code which could compromise the system. Security testing methods include penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and code reviewss.
Conducting security tests is crucial to secure computing systems and applications against both internal and external threats. It shifts the focus from just delivering functional software or IT services to delivering secure, functional systems. By incorporating these tests during the development and delivery lifecycle, teams can rectify vulnerabilities early, reducing potential damage and costs associated with post-deployment fixes.
Key benefits of security testing include:
Sensitive data protection: Security testing identifies and mitigates vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches. Sensitive information such as personal details, financial data, and intellectual property must be safeguarded to prevent unauthorized access, data leaks, and other security incidents.
Improves stakeholder trust: When customers and other stakeholders know their data is protected, they are more likely to trust and engage with a company’s products and services. Conversely, security breaches can severely damage a company’s reputation, customer trust, and financial standing.
Supports compliance efforts: Regulations and industry standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS require organizations to adhere to strict security standards. Security testing helps in ensuring that the application meets these legal and regulatory requirements, avoiding costly fines and penalties for non-compliance.
7 Criteria to Test for in Security Testing
1. Confidentiality
Confidentiality in security testing ensures that sensitive data is accessed only by authorized users. Security measures such as encryption, authentication, and access controls help maintain this confidentiality. Regular testing verifies that these measures are effective, thereby preventing unauthorized access to confidential information.
2. Integrity
Integrity in security testing guarantees that the data remains unaltered and accurate, safeguarding it from unauthorized modifications. Hash functions, checksums, and digital signatures are techniques used to ensure data integrity. Testing these methods ensures that only authorized alterations can be made and all data remains trustworthy.
3. Authentication
Authentication verifies the identity of users accessing the system, ensuring only authorized individuals gain access. Various techniques such as passwords, biometric scans, and multi-factor authentication are employed. Security testing evaluates the effectiveness of these authentication mechanisms to guard against unauthorized access.
4. Authorization
Authorization determines what resources and data an authenticated user can access. Role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) are common methods. Security testing verifies that these authorization policies are correctly implemented and enforced, thereby safeguarding sensitive information and resources.
5. Availability
Availability ensures that systems and applications are accessible and functional when needed. This involves testing for potential downtime, assessing resilience against attacks such as distributed denial of service (DDoS), and ensuring redundant systems are in place. Security testing also checks for quick recovery mechanisms to restore services promptly after an incident.
6. Non-Repudiation
Non-repudiation in security testing ensures that actions and transactions can be traced back to their origin. Techniques such as digital signatures and audit logs help maintain this non-repudiation. Regular security testing checks these traces for authenticity and ensures that they have not been tampered with.
7. Resilience
Resilience in security testing refers to the system’s ability to withstand and recover from security incidents. This includes testing incident response plans, backup systems, and recovery processes. Regular resilience testing ensures that the organization’s response to incidents is swift and effective, minimizing damage and downtime.
Common Types of Security Testing Tools
SAST (Static Application Security Testing)
Static application security testing (SAST) analyzes source code for vulnerabilities without executing the application. It identifies coding errors that could lead to security breaches. This method enables developers to detect and fix issues early in the development lifecycle, which reduces the cost and complexity of resolving these vulnerabilities later.
SAST tools integrate with development environments, providing real-time feedback. They help enforce secure coding practices consistently, leading to more secure applications. Regular use of SAST tools ensures that code remains secure from the outset, enhancing overall application security.
DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)
Dynamic application security testing (DAST) evaluates applications in their running state. Unlike SAST, DAST tests for security flaws while the application is operational. This method mimics the actions of an attacker to uncover vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other runtime issues.
DAST tools do not require access to the source code, making them suitable for testing web services and APIs. Continuous DAST testing helps identify and mitigate security flaws in real-time, reducing the risk of exploitation in live environments.
IAST (Interactive Application Security Testing)
Interactive application security testing (IAST) combines SAST and DAST methodologies to provide a security analysis. IAST tools work inside the application, analyzing and continuously monitoring the code flow and interactions. This method offers detailed insights into where vulnerabilities occur and allows for immediate remediation.
IAST is particularly effective in finding complex vulnerabilities that static and dynamic tests may miss. By combining both methodologies, IAST provides a more accurate assessment of the application’s security posture, enabling more targeted and effective mitigation strategies.
SCA (Software Composition Analysis)
Software composition analysis (SCA) identifies vulnerabilities in third-party components and open-source libraries integrated into an application. SCA tools scan the application’s dependencies and notify developers about known vulnerabilities, license compliance issues, and outdated components.
By using SCA tools, organizations can proactively manage the security and legal risks associated with using third-party software. Regular scans help ensure that all components are up-to-date and compliant, significantly reducing the threat landscape.
MAST (Mobile Application Security Testing)
Mobile application security testing (MAST) focuses on identifying vulnerabilities in mobile applications. MAST tools test for platform-specific vulnerabilities, insecure data storage, improper session handling, and other mobile-specific security issues. Both static and dynamic analysis methods are used to ensure comprehensive testing.
Ensuring mobile application security is crucial, given the increasing use of mobile devices for sensitive transactions. MAST helps organizations protect user data and maintain trust by providing a secure mobile app environment.
RASP (Runtime Application Self-Protection)
Runtime application self-protection (RASP) monitors and protects applications in real-time by embedding security controls within the application during runtime. It can identify and mitigate attacks instantly, providing continuous protection without the need for external intervention.
RASP enhances the security posture by adapting to new threats and vulnerabilities dynamically. It offers immediate defense mechanisms, making applications resilient against attacks and reducing the response time to security incidents.
Best Practices for Effective Security Testing
Shift Security Testing Left
Shifting security testing left involves integrating security practices early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). By embedding security testing from the initial phases of design and coding, developers can identify and resolve vulnerabilities before they become critical issues. This proactive approach reduces the likelihood of security flaws making it to production, thereby minimizing the cost and effort required for post-deployment fixes.
Adopting a shift-left strategy encourages a security-first mindset among development teams. Tools like static application security testing (SAST) can be used during coding to catch vulnerabilities in real-time. Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines can include automated security checks, ensuring that each code change is verified for security compliance before merging. This integration leads to more secure software and fosters a culture of security awareness throughout the development process.
Conduct Comprehensive Testing Throughout Development
Conducting security tests at various stages of the SDLC is essential for uncovering different types of vulnerabilities. This includes static testing during development, dynamic testing during staging, and interactive testing in pre-production environments. Combining these approaches ensures that the application is scrutinized from multiple angles, improving the overall security posture.
Developers should employ tools like dynamic application security testing (DAST) to simulate attacks on running applications. Additionally, manual penetration testing by security experts can uncover complex vulnerabilities that automated tools might miss. Regular and thorough testing helps in identifying and mitigating risks promptly, ensuring that security is continuously validated throughout the development process.
Perform Comprehensive Risk Assessments
Comprehensive risk assessments involve evaluating the potential threats and vulnerabilities within an application and their potential impact. By understanding the risk landscape, organizations can prioritize their security efforts effectively, focusing on the most critical areas that could cause significant damage if exploited.
Risk assessments should be conducted periodically and include threat modeling, vulnerability scanning, and impact analysis. These assessments help in identifying the likelihood of various threats and their potential consequences, enabling the development of targeted mitigation strategies. A thorough risk assessment provides a clear understanding of the security posture, guiding the allocation of resources to areas that need the most attention.
Monitor and Analyze Security Metrics
Monitoring and analyzing security metrics is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of security measures and identifying areas for improvement. Key metrics such as the number of vulnerabilities detected, time to resolve security issues, and the frequency of security incidents provide valuable insights into the application’s security health.
Organizations should implement continuous monitoring tools to track these metrics in real-time. Analyzing trends over time helps in identifying patterns, understanding the root causes of recurring issues, and measuring the impact of security initiatives. Regularly reviewing and acting on these metrics ensures that security practices evolve to address emerging threats and vulnerabilities effectively.
Collaborating with Security Experts
Collaboration between developers, IT operations staff, and security experts, a paradigm known as DevSecOps, brings specialized knowledge and skills to the development process, enhancing the overall security of the application. Security experts can provide valuable insights into potential vulnerabilities, best practices, and the latest threat landscape, ensuring that the development team is well-informed and prepared.
Regular engagement with security professionals through code reviews, penetration testing, and security training sessions helps in building a robust security framework. This collaboration ensures that security is not just an afterthought but an integral part of the development process, leading to more secure and resilient applications.
Regularly Updating and Maintaining Security Measures
Regular updates and maintenance of security measures are essential to protect against evolving threats. Security is a dynamic field, with new vulnerabilities and attack vectors emerging constantly. Keeping security tools, libraries, and protocols up-to-date is crucial for maintaining a robust defense against these threats.
Organizations should establish a routine schedule for updating software dependencies, applying security patches, and revisiting security policies. Continuous education and training for development teams on the latest security practices and threat intelligence ensure that they are equipped to handle new challenges. Regular maintenance and updates reinforce the security posture, making the application resilient to both known and emerging threats.
Why Security Testing Is Essential for Risk Reduction
Most security problems don’t start with a big exploit. They start with something small that no one paid attention to. A feature behaves slightly differently than expected. An edge case slips through. An assumption turns out to be wrong. Security testing exists to catch those moments before they turn into incidents.
Teams often think risk comes from “bad code,” but that’s rarely the full story. Risk comes from how systems behave once they’re running. Once users interact with an application, once APIs are chained together, once permissions overlap, things don’t always behave the way the original design intended. Security testing forces teams to look at that reality instead of the plan.
When testing is done properly, it changes how teams think about risk. Instead of guessing which issues matter, they can see which ones are actually reachable and exploitable. That shift alone reduces risk more than chasing long lists of theoretical problems that never show up in practice.
How Security Testing Fits into DevSecOps Workflows
In a DevSecOps setup, security testing works best when it feels boring. Not because it’s unimportant, but because it runs quietly in the background without disrupting delivery. The moment security testing becomes a blocker or a surprise at the end of a sprint, teams start working around it.
Modern workflows move too fast for manual reviews and one-off scans. Security testing has to run alongside builds, deployments, and updates, using the same pipelines developers already rely on. When a change introduces a real issue, the feedback should show up close to that change, not weeks later when context is lost.
The goal isn’t to slow developers down or force them to learn security theory. It’s to surface real problems at the right moment, with enough context that fixing them feels straightforward. When security testing fits naturally into DevSecOps, it stops being “security’s job” and becomes part of how software gets shipped.
Key Metrics to Evaluate Security Testing Effectiveness
If the main success metric for security testing is “number of findings,” something is wrong. High numbers usually mean noise, not protection. The more useful question is whether the testing helps teams make better decisions.
One practical signal is how often findings turn into real fixes. If developers regularly look at results and say, “Yes, this makes sense,” the testing is doing its job. Another signal is time. When testing is effective, issues don’t bounce back and forth between teams. They get fixed without long debates about severity or relevance.
False positives matter more than most teams admit. Every wasted investigation makes the next alert easier to ignore. Over time, good security testing earns trust by being accurate, consistent, and grounded in observable behavior. That trust is what actually makes testing effective.
Differences Between Security Testing and Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability assessments and security testing are often treated as the same thing, but they answer different questions. A vulnerability assessment is about coverage. It tells you what might be wrong based on known patterns, configurations, or signatures.
Security testing is about behavior. It asks whether those issues can actually be triggered, abused, or chained together in a real environment. Many findings from assessments never turn into real risk, especially in complex applications where context matters.
Both approaches have value, but they solve different problems. Assessments help teams understand their exposure at a high level. Security testing helps them understand the impact. When teams rely on only one, they either drown in noise or miss issues that only show up at runtime.
Security Testing with Bright Security
Bright Security helps address the shortage of security personnel, enabling AppSec teams to provide governance for security testing, and enabling every developer to run their own security tests.
Brightempowers developers to incorporate an automated Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), earlier than ever before, into their unit testing process so they can resolve security concerns as part of their agile development process. Bright’s DAST platform integrates into the SDLC fully and seamlessly:
Test results are provided to the CISO and the security team, providing complete visibility into vulnerabilities found and remediated
Tickets are automatically opened for developers in their bug tracking system so they can be fixed quickly
Every security finding is automatically validated, removing false positives and the need for manual validation
Bright Security can scan any target, whether Web Apps, APIs (REST/GraphQL) to help enhance DevSecOps and achieve regulatory compliance with our real-time, false positive free actionable reports of vulnerabilities. In addition, our ML-based DAST solution provides an automated solution to identify Business Logic Vulnerabilities.Learn more about Bright Security testing solutions.
4 Unit Testing Examples: Android, Angular, Node, and React
What Is Unit Testing?
Unit tests are automated tests created by developers to verify that individual components of an application, known as units, are error-free and behave as expected.
Unit testing is an excellent first step for testing a complex application—developers create unit tests for the smallest testable units, and verify that they are working in isolation. Then they can add integration and acceptance tests to verify that these units are working well together and satisfying user requirements.
A unit can be a function, a procedure, an object, or an entire module. When building unit tests for object-oriented programming (OOP), the unit of testing is typically a complete interface, such as a class or a single method.
Structural testing is a white box testing technique in which a developer designs test cases based on the internal structure of the code, in a white box approach. The approach requires identifying all possible paths through the code. The tester selects test case inputs, executes them, and determines the appropriate output.
Primary structural testing techniques include:
Statement, branch, and path testing—each statement, branch, or path in a program is executed by a test at least once. Statement testing is the most granular option.
Conditional testing—allows a developer to selectively determine the path executed by a test, by executing code based on value comparisons.
Expression testing—tests the application against different values of a regular expression.
Functional Unit Testing
Functional unit testing is a black box testing technique for testing the functionality of an application component.
Main functional techniques include:
Input domain testing—tests the size and type of input objects and compares objects to equivalence classes.
Boundary value analysis—tests are designed to check whether software correctly responds to inputs that go beyond boundary values.
Syntax checking—tests that check whether the software correctly interprets input syntax.
Equivalent partitioning—a software testing technique that divides the input data of a software unit into data partitions, applying test cases to each partition.
Error-based Techniques
Error-based unit tests should preferably be built by the developers who originally designed the code. Techniques include:
Fault seeding—putting known bugs into the code and testing until they are found.
Mutation testing—changing certain statements in the source code to see if the test code can detect errors. Mutation tests are expensive to run, especially in very large applications.
Historical test data—uses historical information from previous test case executions to calculate the priority of each test case.
Unit Testing Examples
Here are some examples of unit tests in different operating systems.
Unit Tests in Android
You can perform instrumented or local unit tests on Android devices. With instrumented tests, you build and install the app alongside a testing app (these are typically UI tests that launch and interact with the app). Local tests are typically small and focused, running on the host side (e.g., the development server).
You can build an instrumented test that interacts with the UI on an Android device. For example, you can use a code snippet to click on a “Start” element and verify that it triggers a welcome message element:
// When the Start button is selected onView(withText("Start")) .perform(select())
// Then the Hello message appears onView(withText("Hello")) .check(matches(isDisplayed()))
Related content: Read our guide to unit testing in Android (coming soon)
Unit Tests in Angular
Angular unit tests can uncover various issues, including logic flaws and malfunctions, by isolating code snippets. Angular helps you write code to test an application’s functions in isolation. Angular’s main testing utility package is TestBed (the other is async).
You can perform a unit test by running the “beforeEach” block and then running a sequence of other blocks such as “it” or “xit” blocks. The other blocks must follow the “beforeEach” block but are otherwise independent.
For example, the first block in the “describe” container is always “beforeEach”—you can then run additional blocks to compile components and verify that the system creates the tested component. The second block might demonstrate the accessibility of the component’s properties—only the title property is added by default.
The following code will reveal if the component’s title remains the same as the title you set:
it(`title should be 'example-unit-test'`, async(() => { const fixture = TestBed.createComponent(ExampleComponent); const app = fixture.debugElement.componentInstance; expect(app.title).toEqual('example-unit-test'); }));
You can use a third block to show how your test behaves in a browser environment. Once you’ve created the testing component, the system calls an instance of your component to simulate how it runs on the browser. You can then access child elements of the rendered component by accessing its nativeElement object:
it('title should render in a h2 tag', async(() => { const fixture = TestBed.createComponent(ExampleComponent); fixture.detectChanges(); const compiled = fixture.debugElement.nativeElement; expect(compiled.querySelector('h2').textContent).toContain(‘Start example-unit-test'); }));
Related content: Read our guide to unit testing in Angular (coming soon)
Unit Tests in Node.js
You can use the Node.js framework to execute server-side JavaScript. This open source platform supports the Mocha JavaScript testing framework (among others). You can use special Mocha keywords in the test API to indicate that your code is a unit test. For example, describe() indicates a group of test cases (arbitrarily nested), while it() indicates a single unit test.
Here is an example of a simple test suiting containing a single test case, using the Chai assertion library:
const {describe} = require('mocha');
const chai = require('chai');
describe('Example test suite:', function() { it('2 === 2 should be true', function() { chai(2 === 2); }); });
The test’s output should confirm the it( function (in this case, 2 === 2 should be true) with a tick and indicate the passing time in milliseconds. You can use any assertion library, including the built-in Assert library (although this is not recommended).
Related content: Read our guide to unit testing in Node.js (coming soon)
Unit Tests in React
You can use the open source React Native framework to build and test mobile applications. React offers built-in Jest, a JavaScript test framework with a simple unit testing solution. Because Jest is usually pre-installed in most React Native applications, you only need to open the package.json file and set the Jest preset to React.
In this example, you create a sum function adding two numbers—this should be a simple equation where you already know the answer. You import the sum function into the test file under the title ExampleSumTest.js:
Related content: Read our guide to unit testing in React (coming soon)
Unit Testing with Bright
Bright is a developer-first Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scanner, the first of its kind to integrate into unit testing, revolutionizing the ability to shift security testing even further left. You can now start to test every component / function at the speed of unit tests, baking security testing across development and CI/CD pipelines to minimize security and technical debt, by scanning early and often, spearheaded by developers. With NO false positives, start trusting your scanner when testing your applications and APIs (SOAP, REST, GraphQL), built for modern technologies and architectures. Sign up now for a free account and read our docs to learn more.
What Is Fuzzing? A Guide to Fuzz Testing for Application Security
Fuzzing is the art of automatic bug detection. The goal of fuzzing is to stress the application and cause unexpected behavior, resource leaks, or crashes.
The process involves throwing invalid, unexpected, or random data as inputs at a computer. Fuzzers repeat this process and monitor the environment until they detect a vulnerability.
Threat actors use fuzzing to find zero-day exploits – this is known as a fuzzing attack. Security professionals, on the other hand, leverage fuzzing techniques to assess the security and stability of applications.
This is part of an extensive series of guides about machine learning.
Why are the World’s Biggest Companies Implementing Fuzz Testing?
Some of the world’s biggest and most respected organizations are implementing fuzzing as part of their quality control and cybersecurity operations:
Google uses fuzzing to check and protect millions of lines of code in Chrome. In 2019, Google discovered more than 20,000 vulnerabilities in Chrome via internal fuzz testing.
Microsoft uses fuzzing as one of the stages in its software development lifecycle, to find vulnerabilities and improve the stability of its products.
The US Department of Defence (DoD) issued a DevSecOps Reference Design and a Application Security Guide which both requires fuzz testing as a standard part of software development processes.
These and many other organizations are adopting fuzzing into their standard development processes for several reasons:
Fuzzing does not just identify the problem, it also shows the cause of the problem and how an attacker may interact with it in a real-life attack.
Fuzzing proves a vulnerability exists, identifying problems without having to sift through false positives.
Fuzzing is fully automated, and can run independently for days or even weeks, identifying more and more vulnerabilities in a system under test.
Fuzzing is highly useful for developers. The role of developers is to develop and improve product features. While traditional security tools only point out flaws, fuzzers show the result of the flaw and demonstrate the impact of solving it.
Types of Fuzzing Tools
Fuzzing tools can be grouped into four basic types.
Grammar-Based F vs. Mutuation Fuzzing
Grammer-based or mutation fuzzers are defined by the way they handle test case generation. Some fuzzers combine both approaches.
Grammar-based fuzzers generate new test cases from a supplied model. The tester defines a “grammar”, specifying the format of inputs accepted by the application, and can define which parts of the input should be fuzzed. The fuzzer uses this model to generate a large number of inputs, which are similar to legitimate inputs, but violate some of the application’s constraints.
Mutation fuzzers randomly mutate a supplied seed input object. They are not constrained by a specific model, and “go crazy” by generating large numbers of unusual inputs. This can be very successful at identifying new bugs or execution paths that may have not been specified by the user in a grammar-based fuzzer.
Black-Box vs. White-Box Fuzzing
Fuzzers can also be grouped into either black-box or white-box approaches.
Black-box fuzzers don’t have access to program artifacts and are more commonly used by cybersecurity researchers looking for vulnerabilities in commercial products. Black-box fuzzing randomly mutates program inputs and sees how the program reacts to it. It can be highly effective in finding new bugs and security issues.
White-box fuzzers by definition require access to program source code. They are commonly used by red teams working for organizations responsible for systems or by software testing groups.
White-box fuzzing involves sweeping the program and identifying conditional branches and constraints on inputs. The fuzzer then systematically violates each of the constraints and evaluates the response.
This is a very comprehensive process that, in theory, can access all possible execution paths of the program. It can usually discover more bugs than a black-box approach, but is lacking in that it does not test the software from an external, attacker perspective.
How Does Application Fuzzing Work?
As we established above, fuzzing software is a great tool capable of finding zero-day vulnerabilities, but how does a fuzzer work?
1. Generating Test Cases
First, test cases are generated. Each security test case can be generated as a random, or semi-random data set, and then sent as input to the application.
The data set can be either generated in conformance to the format requirements of the system’s input, or as a completely malformed chunk of data the system was not meant to understand or process.
What do you think would happen to an application if negative numbers, null characters, or even special characters, were sent to some input fields? Do you know how your application would behave?
2. Interfacing with the Target to Deliver the Input
While fuzz testing, a fuzzer can interface with an application, a protocol, or a file format. While doing that, a fuzzer sends test cases to the target over the network or via a command-line argument of a running application.
Imaginative use cases can reveal ways to expose a relevant piece of code with the right specific data.
3. Monitoring the System to Detect Crashes
The success of a fuzz test is measured by the ability to confirm the impact that a fuzzer has on the targeted application.
Bright: Fuzz Testing for Application Security
Bright is the world’s first AI-Powered Application Security Fuzz-testing tool.
Bright offers the combination of the world’s leading DAST solution and a self-evolving, adaptive-learning fuzzer solution. Bright applies evolution strategies and reinforcement learning to extensively analyze the response of the application and the context of a given attack surface breaking the assumed scope of the target. Bright reports vulnerabilities that are invisible to other, unintelligent fuzz testing tools.
Bright combines different technologies to raise efficiency and performance as the most comprehensive, reliable, and accurate solution. Brightcomes with zero false-positives.
Learn more about Bright Dynamic Application Security Testing
Types of Fuzzing: Mutation, Generation, and Grammar-Based
When people ask what application fuzzing is, they usually want to know how it works in life. The answer usually starts with the types of application fuzzing.
Application fuzzing has types. Mutation-based application fuzzing is a common type of application fuzzing. It takes input and changes it a little. Like changing characters or adding weird values. To see how the application reacts to this new input. Generation-based application fuzzing is different. It makes inputs from scratch using predefined rules. This type of application fuzzing is more controlled. It also needs more setup.
Then there is grammar-based application fuzzing. This type of application fuzzing is useful for formats like XML or JSON. It knows the structure. Makes inputs that are technically good but still unusual. Each type of application fuzzing has its use depending on how the application handles input and where you think the weaknesses are in the application.
Common Application Fuzzing. Limitations
Understanding what application fuzzing is also means knowing where it does not work well. Application fuzzing is powerful. It is not a magic solution that fixes everything.
One common problem is that it does not cover everything. Application fuzzing tools might find inputs but miss deeper logic paths, especially in applications with authentication or multi-step workflows. Another challenge is that it can make a lot of noise. Application fuzzing can cause a lot of crashes or weird behavior that does not always mean there is a weakness.
There is also the problem of context. Application fuzzing tools do not always understand the business logic, so they may miss issues that only appear under certain conditions. Sometimes, setting it up becomes a barrier. Setting up effective application fuzzing takes time. So while application fuzzing is useful, it works best when used with testing approaches.
Fuzzing Tools and Frameworks You Should Know
If you are learning about application fuzzing, you will eventually learn about the tools that make it possible. There are tools, and each tool has a slightly different purpose.
For level or binary application fuzzing tools like American Fuzzy Lop are widely used. They focus on finding crashes by changing inputs. For web applications, tools like Burp Suite or OWASP ZAP have application fuzzing features that let you test parameters and endpoints.
There are also frameworks designed for APIs and structured data, where application fuzzing needs to respect formats. Some teams even build custom application fuzzing tools tailored to their applications. The choice really depends on what you are testing. Web apps, APIs, or system-level code. No single tool is good for every use case.
Interpreting Application Fuzzing Results and Reducing False Positives
Running an application fuzzer is one thing. Making sense of the results is another thing. When people ask what application fuzzing is, they often forget how much work goes into analyzing the output.
Application fuzzing can generate hundreds or even thousands of results. Not all of them are important. Some crashes are harmless while others point to weaknesses. The challenge is figuring out which one is which.
This is where validation becomes important. Of just flagging issues, teams need to confirm whether a finding is actually exploitable. Reproducing the issue, checking logs, and understanding application behavior all play a role.
Reducing positives is not about ignoring results. It is about filtering them intelligently so teams can focus on what really matters about application fuzzing.
See Additional Guides on Key Machine Learning Topics
Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of machine learning.
Dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools provide automated security testing for various real-world threat scenarios. You can use DAST tools to identify security vulnerabilities in running applications, and remediate them so external threat actors cannot exploit them.
Unlike white-box testing, which involves getting access to the source code, DAST takes a black-box approach, emulating an external attacker. DAST tools interact with web applications and APIs and identify which vulnerabilities can actually be exploited by attackers. They can then provide actionable insights to developers to help them remediate those vulnerabilities.
DAST software can help you identify security weaknesses and fix them, ideally before attackers can exploit them to hack your application. Here are several threats you can identify using DAST tools:
SQL injection (SQLi)—a web-based attack that enables threat actors to gain access and control over a web application database. Threat actors achieve this by inserting arbitrary SQL code into a database query.
Cross-site scripting (XSS)—this vulnerability enables threat actors to inject malicious code into a web application. Once they’re in, threat actors can steal session cookies, user credentials, or other sensitive information.
eCommerce attacks—threat actors look for vulnerabilities in eCommerce platforms and content management systems (CMS) that provide easy targets. They try to stay in for a long time to reach as many targets as possible.
Successful attacks on web applications can result in information theft, especially when the breach goes undetected. Threat actors can exploit web application vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to personally identifiable information (PII) and credit card information.
DAST tools provide visibility into potential weaknesses and application behaviors that threat actors can exploit. These tools aim to provide you with this information before threat actors can discover and capitalize on these vulnerabilities.
Bright Security tests every aspect of your apps. It enables you to scan any target, including web applications, internal applications, APIs (REST/SOAP/GraphQL), and server side mobile applications. It seamlessly integrates with the tools and workflows you already use, automatically triggering scans on every commit, pull request or build with unit testing. Scans are blazing fast, enabling Bright to work in a high velocity development environment.
Instead of just crawling applications and guessing, Bright interacts intelligently with applications and APIs. Our AI-powered engine understands application architecture and generates sophisticated and targeted attacks. By first verifying and exploiting the findings, we make sure we don’t report any false positives.
Seamlessly integrates with existing tools and workflows—works with your existing CI/CD pipelines. Trigger scans on every commit, pull request or build with unit testing.
Spin-up, configure and control scans with code—one file, one command, one scan with no need for UI-based configuration.
Super-fast scans—interacts with applications and APIs, instead of just crawling them and guessing. Scans are made faster by an AI-powered engine that can understand application architecture and generate sophisticated and targeted attacks.
No false positives—uses AI analysis and fuzz testing to avoid returning false positives, so developers and testers can focus on releasing code.
OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is an open source web application security scanner. It is suitable both for experienced penetration testers and developers and QA testers who do not have security expertise.
ZAP is now the most active project maintained by OWASP, with thousands of individual contributors. It is available in 29 languages on Linux, Windows, and Mac. It also acts as a proxy server to handle HTTP/S requests, and includes a daemon mode that can be controlled using a REST API.
Nikto is an open source web server scanner that can check for:
Currently installed web server software
6700 potentially dangerous files on a web server
Old versions of 1250 server packages
Version-specific issues on 270 server packages
Misconfigurations such as multiple index files, content delivered over HTTP
The project is actively maintained with new scan items and plug-ins updated regularly. A downside is that this tool is not stealthy and scans might be blocked by IPS/IDS systems. For a more realistic test, you can try combining this tool with LibWhisker to circumvent IDS.
Nuclei provides security scanning for web protocols such as TCP, DNS, HTTP, SSL, File, Whois, and Websocket. It uses a flexible templating engine that lets it conduct a variety of security checks. Because the tool sends requests based on templates, it can enable fast scans across many hosts with no false positives.
Nuclei has a repository of vulnerability templates contributed by over 300 security researchers. These include:
1114 templates for specific CVEs
454 templates for LFI vulnerabilities
351 templates for XSS vulnerabilities
281 templates for RCE vulnerabilities
246 templates for testing vulnerable WordPress plugins
ThreatMapper automatically detects, identifies, and queries cloud-based infrastructure. It works with compute instances in public clouds, Kubernetes nodes, and serverless resources, helping to discover cloud native applications and containers and map their topology in real time. The tool can help discover and visualize attack surfaces in cloud native workloads.
Key features include:
Scanning build artifacts for vulnerabilities during builds and integrating with CI/CD pipelines.
Prioritization of vulnerabilities based on CVSS scores
Scanning container registries for vulnerable containers before deployment.
Scanning production environments for host, container, and application vulnerabilities.
Discovering production applications, including complex microservices applications, and mapping their topology.
Continuous scanning of production systems to identify new vulnerabilities.
Scanning hosts and containers and recommending how to harden configuration.
Capture and archive network traffic, including TLS decryption.
Conclusion
While there are many solutions out there, Bright Security is at the forefront of DAST technology. We have raised a $20 million funding round to continue pioneering the field, helping secure apps and APIs, without slowing down software development processes.
DAST vs Penetration Testing: What Is the Difference
What Is DAST?
What Is Penetration Testing?
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is a solution used to analyze web applications at runtime to identify security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. DAST tools provide an automated way to scan running applications and try to attack them from a hacker’s perspective. They can then offer valuable insights into how applications are behaving, identify where hackers can launch attacks, and provide actionable guidance on how to remediate vulnerabilities. DAST tools take a black box approach to testing. They run outside the application without having access to its source code or internal architecture. DAST can be used to identify and resolve all common web application vulnerabilities including broken access control, cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL Injection (SQLi), and cross site request forgery (CSRF).
Penetration testing (also called pentesting) is a cybersecurity technique used by organizations to identify, actively exploit, and remediate vulnerabilities in applications and their security controls. Penetration tests are usually conducted by ethical hackers, who can be internal employees or contractors of an organization. Ethical hackers use the same tactics and behaviors as real hackers to assess how an organization’s computer systems, networks, or web applications could be attacked. Organizations can use the resulting report of a penetration test to discover and remediate vulnerabilities, and for compliance purposes. Ethical hackers are security professionals who use a variety of methods, tools, and techniques to simulate cyberattacks against an organization. The term “penetration” refers to the degree to which a hypothetical threat actor or hacker can break past an organization’s security measures and cause damage.
Penetration testing begins with reconnaissance. At this stage, ethical hackers spend time gathering data they use to plan their simulated attack. Based on this data they identify vulnerabilities, find a viable attack vector, gain and maintain access to the target system.
Step 2: Exploitation
The penetration testing process requires an extensive set of tools. These include network and vulnerability scanning software, as well as tools that can launch specific attacks and exploits such as brute-force attacks or SQL injections. There is also hardware designed specifically for penetration testing. For example, there are hardware devices that connect to a computer on a network and give hackers remote access to that network.
Another tool in the pentesting arsenal is social engineering. Ethical hackers might use techniques like phishing emails, pretexting (pretending to be an authority or someone known by the victim), and tailgating (entering a building immediately after an authorized person).
Step 3: Disengagement
After a penetration tester achieves access to sensitive systems and demonstrates their ability to steal data or perform other damage, they disengage, covering their tracks to avoid detection.
Step 4: Report and resolution of discovered weaknesses
The final and most important stage of a penetration test is the pentest report. This is a detailed report the ethical hacker shares with the target company’s security team. It documents the pentesting process, vulnerabilities discovered, proof that they are exploitable, and actionable recommendations for remediating them.
Internal teams can then use this information to improve security measures and remediate vulnerabilities. This can include patching vulnerable systems. These upgrades include rate limiting, new firewall or WAF rules, DDoS mitigation, and stricter form validation.
How Does DAST Work?
DAST tools go into action when an application is deployed, either in a test or staging environment or in a real production environment. They can continuously scan applications to discover new vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that are introduced over time.
Most DAST tools only test the exposed HTTP and HTML interfaces of web-enabled applications, but some also support APIs and protocols like Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). DAST tools start by crawling web applications to identify URLs, forms, and other exploitable elements. A DAST tool attempts to find all the ways an application accepts input from users, testing these inputs one by one.
DAST tools can be automatically run at multiple stages of the testing and deployment process, allowing teams to quickly identify and address risks before security incidents occur. When a vulnerability is discovered, the DAST solution sends an automatic alert to the appropriate development team for the developer to fix. Some DAST solutions integrate directly with bug trackers to integrate smoothly into the development process.
DAST works best as part of a comprehensive approach to web application security testing. While DAST provides security teams with timely insight into how web applications behave in production environments, businesses often use DAST for application penetration testing and static application security testing (SAST) to discover additional vulnerabilities during early development stages.
DAST and penetration testing are often confused because of their role in helping detect application vulnerabilities. What they have in common is that both of them are black box testing techniques, which attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in applications. However, the similarities end there:
DAST uses a dynamic approach to testing web applications, while penetration testers can use both dynamic and static methods.
DAST tools are automatic, while penetration tests are usually manual (although there is a growing category of automated penetration testing tools)
DAST tools can be run at any time, enabling continuous testing and scanning of an application. Manual penetration tests are performed infrequently—typically quarterly or annually.
DAST tools are inexpensive and can typically be run as many times as needed (depending on the licensing model). Penetration tests conducted by ethical hackers are high-cost and limited to a single, well-scoped penetration test.
DAST tools can generate false positives—they might discover issues that are not real vulnerabilities. Penetration testing, by definition, does not result in false positives. However, modern DAST tools use artificial intelligence (AI) and fuzzing tools to close this gap and provide reports with zero false positives.
DAST tools can be run by anyone—security teams, developers, or even automatically with no human intervention. Pentesting requires deep expertise.
DAST tools have higher return on investment (ROI) because they can discover issues earlier in the development process. Pentesting is almost always conducted on production applications, so the cost of fixing issues is much higher.
Bright Security’s Next-Gen DAST Solution
Unlike other DAST solutions, Bright Security was built from the ground up with developers in mind. It lets developers automatically test their applications and APIs for vulnerabilities with every build.
Bright Security tests every aspect of your apps. It enables you to scan any target, including web applications, internal applications, APIs (REST/SOAP/GraphQL), and server side mobile applications. It seamlessly integrates with the tools and workflows you already use, automatically triggering scans on every commit, pull request or build with unit testing. Scans are blazing fast, enabling Bright to work in a high velocity development environment.
Instead of just crawling applications and guessing, Bright interacts intelligently with applications and APIs. Our AI-powered engine understands application architecture and generates sophisticated and targeted attacks. By first verifying and exploiting the findings, we make sure we don’t report any false positives.
