What is the concept of security testing?

Today in the world of digitalization, as more and more people are getting dependent on technologies to meet their day to day tasks. Thus, in such scenariOS security testing of applications being used, becomes very vital.

Intro to security testing: Security testing is basically a process that tries to penetrate into an application to fetch user/owner sensitive data. Security testing is a part if software testing. It validates confidential data stays confidential. It is performed with the intention of finding out flaws in security mechanisms and revealing the vulnerabilities/weaknesses of software applications. Many software development companies invest thousands of dollars on software testing companies for security testing to ensure that the product delivered is of a high quality.

Concerns related to security are:

• Authentication: origin of the application and its data is genuine.
• Authorization: Only authorized users should get access to application authorized functions.
• Confidentiality: Data/information is secure from theft.
• Integrity: The application and its data is not altered during transmission

Thus, security testing makes applications reliable and reduces the risk of theft or misuse of confidential information that may lead to quality or business loss.

How is it done:

There are two types of people who investigate websites for security holes/vulnerabilities. They are:

1. Hackers: Those who try to penetrate through application for making personnel gains.
2. Crackers: Those who try to beat security measures in order to find out security holes.

They basically attempt to make different types of attacks on application such as SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), URL Manipulation, Session Hijacking and Brute Force Attack.

1. Usually secure Development Best Practices are used to ensure that an application is secure. Such as:

• PassWords are in encrypted form.
• Browser back-forward buttons do not break secure login to different pages within application.
• Unauthorized user is unable to access page he is not authorized to.
• Sessions should be timed out after a specific time, if a user is not active.

2. Use of Automated Security Scanner tools to verify security holes. With the help of these probability of vulnerability reduces as they use high-level security tests. Various security testing tools are:Netsparker, Fiddler, ZED Attack Proxy (ZAP), Vega, wapiti, SQLMapetc. Sample Test scenariOS to give a glimpse of security test cases are:-

• Application should not allow invalid users.
• Verify cookies and session time for application.
• For financial sites, Browser back button should not work.