Software Security Testing: Approach, Types, Tools

In today’s interconnected world, where everything is ruled by technology and the

internet, software security is of paramount importance to users, and even more to

the businesses. Further, in order to build secure applications, it is imperative to

consider and test Security throughout the software lifecycle.

2018 Application Security Statistics Report, WhiteHat Security, states that:

“The number of serious vulnerabilities in open-source software and third-party libraries, continues to increase at a rate that makes remediation nearly impossible for teams that don’t adopt measures for tracking third-party component use.”

Thus, it’s more critical now than ever before that businesses add a powerful

approach to security testing for their applications and any other digital product that

has a capability to receive critical data from customers, clients, and partners.

What is Software Security

Testing?

“Testing is an infinite process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous in order to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.”— James Bach

Security Testing is a type of software testing process that ensures the software to

be free of any kind of potential vulnerabilities or weakness, risks, or threats so that

the software might not cause any harm to the user system and data.

Performing software security tests, often multiple times, is essentially a

prerequisite of publishing software today.

Why is Security Testing

Required?

None of the users, businessmen, entrepreneurs or organizations want to lose any

information or data due to the security leaks of software in use. Just because a

piece of software meets quality requirements related to functionality and

performance, it does not necessarily mean that the software is secure. Software

testing, in today’s scenario, is a must to identify and address application security

vulnerabilities in order to maintain the following:

Security of information, databases,

data history, and servers

Customers’ trust and integrity

Protection of web applications from

future attacks

Security Testing: The

Approach

Wish it was that easy.

While preparing and planning for security tests, a developer can take the following

approaches:

1. Architecture Study & Analysis: The first step is to understand whether the

software is compliant with the requirements.

2. Classify Threats: All potential threats and risks factors that need to be tested

should be listed.

3. Test Planning: Based on the identified threats, vulnerabilities and security risks,

tests are to be run.

4. Testing Tool Identification: All testing tools can’t be executed manually; the

developer needs to identify the relevant tools to test the software.

5. Test Case Execution: After performing a security test, the developer should fix

them either manually or using any suitable open-source code.

6. Reports: A detailed test report of performed security tests should be prepared

that would contain a list of the vulnerabilities, threats, and the issues resolved and

the ones that are still pending.

Different Types of Security

Testing

Security tests are evolving constantly. The most common types of software security

tests used just a few years ago, might not be much effective today. Let’s take a look

at the different types of security tests that are relevant in the current times. Most

of the times a number of testing types are followed simultaneously.

1. Static Code Analysis: This is the oldest type of approach and the first type of

security testing most developers performs. This test can be performed manually,

and developers can read through the code to find any potential security flaw.

2. Compliance Testing: It’s important for software to meet a client’s predefined

policies. To ensure this, a Compliance Test is run. Compliance tests analyze a piece

of software by comparing the software with the actual configurations that are

considered safe.

3. Penetration Testing: This type of testing involves simulation attacks against

newly designed software in order to identify the weak points. Once detected, a

developer fixes the bugs within the codes.

4. Load Testing: This test measures how a piece of software performs under heavy

load. The reason behind this test is Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS), an attack

which aims to disrupt application availability by application or its host

infrastructure with traffic or other requests.

5. Origin Analysis Testing: The popularity of open-source software has grown in

the past few years. This type of testing helps developers and security admins

determine where a given piece of code originated from. This type of testing

becomes relevant when some of your source code came from a third-party project

or repository.

6. SQL Injection Testing: SQL Injection test can be done for Apostrophes, Brackets,

Commas or Quotation marks. These simple errors lead to attack by spammers. SQL

injection attacks are very critical because attackers can enter server database and

get vital information.

This is not a conclusive list of security tests, there are other types of security tests

too that enterprises might perform like Risk Assessment, Posture Assessment,

Security Auditing, and even Ethical Hacking.

Tools Used in Security Testing

Today many tools are available for software security testing. In fact, these tools are

software in themselves. Some of the tools are also open-source.

1. Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP): It is a multi-platform, open-source web application

software security testing tool, developed by OWASP (Open Web Application

Security Project).

Key features of ZAP

Automatic scanning

Easy to use

Multi-platform

Rest-based API

Support for authentication

2. Wfuzz: This tool is developed using Python and it has no GUI in its interface. One

problem of this tool is that this is usable only via command line.

Key features of Wfuzz

Authentication support

Cookies fuzzing

Multi-threading

Multiple injection points

Support for proxy and SOCK

3. Wapiti: It is one of the easiest tools to operate on for newcomers. Wapiti is one

of the leading web application security tools, free of cost and an open-source

project in SourceForge.

Wapiti injects payloads to check whether the script is vulnerable or not. Users can

find a whole lot of information and instructions in SourceForge.

Key Features of Wapiti

Supports both GET and POST-HTTP

methods for attacks

Can give colors in the terminal to

highlight vulnerabilities

Has different levels of verbosity

Fast and easy way to

activate/deactivate attack modules

Adding a payload can be as easy as

adding a line to a text file

4. W3af: It is another very popular tool which is built with python. This tool is

specifically very good for web applications. W3af can detect over 200 types of

security issues.

Besides, it can detect:

Blind SQL injection

Buffer overflow

Cross-site scripting

Insecure DAV configurations

5. SQLMap: It is entirely free to use the tool and allows automating the detection

of a vulnerability in a website’s database. With the help of a very powerful testing

engine, SQLMap can detect various security threads.

Key features of SQLMap

Automates the process of finding SQL

injection vulnerabilities

Can also be used for security testing a

website

Robust detection engine

Supports a range of databases,

including MySQL, Oracle, and

PostgreSQL

There are other tools too for software security testing which are not so efficient

but can be used for cross-testing – Arachni, Grabber, Nogotofail, SonarQube, and

IronWasp are worth mentioning.

Conclusion

The prime objective of security testing is to find out how vulnerable a system may

be and to determine whether its data and resources are protected from potential

intruders. Software security testing services help in identification of

implementation errors that were not discovered during the code reviews.

Thus, it becomes crucial to team up with a Digital Experience Agency that can help

build and grow your organizations’ reputation, customer confidence, and trust by

providing a thorough software security analysis supported by exhaustive reports

and dashboards, rendering remedial measures for your data security challenges.

Source - https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/software-security-testing/