In addition to being utilized by businesses, web-based payroll systems, shopping malls, banking, and stock trading software are now offered for sale as goods.
This indicates that users and customers now trust online programs because of their crucial security feature. Without a doubt, desktop apps also benefit greatly from that security feature.
On the other hand, security becomes even more crucial when discussing the internet. No one will ever consider using an online system if the transaction data is not protected. Security is neither a vague idea nor a term that has yet to be defined. We would like to offer a few security-related compliments, though.
Examples of Security flaws in an application
- A Student Management System is insecure if the Admission branch can edit the data of the ‘Exam’ branch.
- An ERP system is not secure if a DEO (data entry operator) can generate ‘Reports’.
- An online Shopping Mall has no security if the customer’s Credit Card Details are not encrypted.
- A custom software possesses inadequate security if an SQL query retrieves actual passwords of its users.
Security – Meaning
“Security means that unauthorized access is limited and authorized access is allowed to protected data.”
As a result, it includes two main components: data protection and grant access to that data. Furthermore, security is centered on the two previously mentioned factors regardless of whether the application is desktop or web-based.
Let’s review the security features of desktop and web-based software programs.
Desktop and Web Security Testing
A desktop program should be safe in terms of data management and storage in addition to security in terms of access.
In a similar vein, web applications require even more data protection and security regarding access. The application should be protected from Brute Force Attacks, SQL Injections, and XSS (cross-site scripting) by a web developer. In a similar vein, remote access points that the web application supports also need to be secure.
Additionally, remember that desktop software is susceptible to Brute Force Attacks, which are not limited to web apps.
Let me go right to the point, and I hope this foreword is sufficient. Please accept my apologies if you initially believed that you were reading about the subject of this article. Though I have briefly explained software security and its major concerns, my topic is “Security Testing”.
Recommended Reading=> Web Application Security Testing
I will now explain how the features of security are implemented in software applications and how these should be tested. My focus will be on what’s and how’s of security testing, not on security.
Recommended Security Testing Tools
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List of Top 8 Security Testing Techniques
#1) Access to Application
“Roles and Rights Management” implements access security for websites and desktop applications alike.When discussing functionality, it is frequently done implicitly.
For instance, a receptionist in a hospital management system is primarily responsible for patient registration and doctor appointment scheduling, therefore he is not overly concerned with laboratory testing.
Therefore, the role of “Receptionist” will not have access to any of the menus, forms, or screens pertaining to lab tests. Therefore, the security of access will be ensured by the appropriate application of roles and privileges.
How to Test: All roles and rights should be thoroughly tested in order to test this.
The tester should create several user accounts with different as well as multiple roles. He should then be able to use the application with the help of these accounts and should verify that every role has access to its own modules, screens, forms, and menus only. If the tester finds any conflict, then he should log a security issue with complete confidence.
This can also be understood as authentication and authorization testing which is very beautifully depicted in the below image:
In essence, you must test “who you are” and “what you can do” for various consumers.
The password quality rules test, the default login test, the password recovery test, the captcha test, the logout functionality test, the password change test, the security question/answer test, and others are among the authentication tests.
In a similar vein, some of the permission tests contain tests for horizontal access control issues, path traversal, and missing authorization.
#2) Data Protection
There are three aspects of data security. The first one is that a user can view or utilize only the data which he is supposed to use. This is also ensured by roles and rights
For Example, TSR (telesales representative) of a company can view the data of available stock, but cannot see how much raw material was purchased for production.
So, this aspect of security testing is already explained above. The second aspect of data protection is related to how that data is stored in the DB.
Further reading =>> What is Database Security Testing
To ensure security, all critical information must be encrypted. Strong encryption is essential, particularly for sensitive information such as credit card details, user account passwords, and other vital company data.
This second element is extended in the third and final aspect. When sensitive or business-critical data flows, appropriate security measures must be implemented. This data must be encrypted to ensure its security, regardless of whether it is transferred to other apps or floats between modules within the same application.
How to Test Data Protection: The tester should query the database for ‘passwords’ of the user account, billing information of clients, other business-critical and sensitive data, should verify that all such data is saved in encrypted form in the DB.
Similarly, he must verify that the data is transmitted between different forms or screens after proper encryption only. Moreover, the tester should ensure that the encrypted data is properly decrypted at the destination. Special attention should be paid to different ‘submit’ actions.
The tester must verify that when the information is being transmitted between the client and server, it is not displayed in the address bar of a web browser in an understandable format. If any of these verifications fail, then the application definitely has a security flaw.
The tester should also check for proper use of salting (appending an extra secret value to the end input like password and thus making it stronger and more difficult to be cracked).
Insecure randomness should also be tested as it is a kind of vulnerability. Another way to test data protection is to check for weak algorithm usage.
For example, since HTTP is a clear text protocol, if sensitive data like user credentials are transmitted via HTTP, then it is a threat to application security. Instead of HTTP, sensitive data should be transferred via HTTPS (secured through SSL and TLS tunnels).
However, HTTPS increases the attack surface and thus it should be tested that the server configurations are proper and certificate validity is ensured.
#3) Brute-Force Attack
Brute Force Attack is mostly done by some software tools. The concept is that by using a valid user ID, the software attempts to guess the associated password by trying to log in again and again.
A simple example of security against such an attack is account suspension for a short period of time, as all mailing applications like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail do. If a specific number of consecutive attempts (mostly 3) fail to log in successfully, then that account is blocked for some time (30 minutes to 24 hrs).
How to test Brute-Force Attack: The tester must verify that some mechanism of account suspension is available and is working accurately. (S)He must attempt to login with invalid user IDs and Passwords alternatively to make sure that the software application blocks the account if continuous attempts are made to login with invalid credentials.
If the application is doing so, then it is secure against brute-force attack. Otherwise, this security vulnerability must be reported by the tester.
Testing for brute force can also be divided into two parts – black box testing and grey-box testing.
In Black box testing, the authentication method employed by the application is discovered and tested. Furthermore, the grey box testing is based on partial knowledge of password & account details and memory trade-off attacks.
Click here to explore the black box & grey box brute force testing along with examples.
The above three security aspects should be taken into account for both web and desktop applications while the following points are related to web-based applications only.
#4) SQL Injection And XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
Conceptually speaking, the theme of both these hacking attempts is similar, hence these are discussed together. In this approach, the malicious script is used by hackers in order to manipulate a website.
There are several ways to immune against such attempts. For all input fields on the website, field lengths should be defined small enough to restrict the input of any script
For example, the Last Name should have a field length of 30 instead of 255. There may be some input fields where large data input is necessary, for such fields proper validation of input should be performed prior to saving that data in the application.
Moreover, in such fields, any HTML tags or script tag input must be prohibited. In order to provoke XSS attacks, the application should discard script redirects from unknown or untrusted applications.
How to test SQL Injection and XSS: Tester must ensure that maximum lengths of all input fields are defined and implemented. (S)He should also ensure that the defined length of input fields does not accommodate any script input as well as tag input. Both of these can be easily tested.
For Example, If 20 is the maximum length specified for the ‘Name’ field, and input string “<p>thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog” can verify both these constraints.
It should also be verified by the tester that the application does not support anonymous access methods. If any of these vulnerabilities exist, then the application is in danger.
Basically, SQL injection testing can be done through the following five ways:
- Detection techniques
- Standard SQL injection techniques
- Fingerprint the database
- Exploitation Techniques
- SQL Injection Signature Invasion Techniques
Click here to read in detail about the above ways to test SQL injection.
XSS is also a type of injection which injects malicious script into a website. Click here to explore in-depth about testing for XSS.
#5) Service Access Points (Sealed and Secure Open)
Businesses today rely on and work together, and this is true of applications, particularly websites. In this situation, both partners should specify and make public certain places of access for one another.
As of right now, the situation appears to be rather plain and uncomplicated, but for certain web-based products, such as stock trading, things are more complicated.
If there is a broad target audience, the access points should be secure enough to withstand any security trial, open enough to accommodate all users, and accommodating enough to meet all users’ requirements.
How to Test Service Access Points: Let me explain it with the example of the stock trading web application; an investor (who wants to purchase the shares) should have access to current and historical data on stock prices. The user should be given the facility to download this historical data. This demands that the application should be open enough.
By accommodating and secure, I mean that the application should facilitate investors to trade freely (under the legislative regulations). They may purchase or sale 24/7 and the data of transactions must be immune to any hacking attack.
Moreover, a large number of users will be interacting with the application simultaneously, so the application should provide enough access points to entertain all the users.
In some cases, these access points can be sealed for unwanted applications or people. This depends on the business domain of the application and its users.
For example, a custom web-based Office Management System may recognize its users on the basis of IP Addresses and denies establishing a connection with all the other systems (applications) that do not fall in the range of valid IPs for that application.
The tester must ensure that all inter-network and intra-network access to the application is through trusted applications, machines (IPs) and users.
In order to verify that an open access point is secure enough, the tester must try to access it from different machines having both trusted and untrusted IP addresses.
Different sorts of real-time transactions should be tried in bulk to have good confidence in the application’s performance. By doing so, the capacity of access points of the application will also be observed clearly.
The tester must ensure that the application entertains all communication requests from trusted IPs and applications only while all other requests are rejected.
Similarly, if the application has some open access point, then the tester should ensure that it allows (if required) uploading of data by users in a secure way. In this secure way, I mean about the file size limit, file type restriction and scanning of the uploaded file for viruses or other security threats.
This is how a tester can verify the security of an application with respect to its access points.
#6) Session Management
A series of HTTP requests and response transactions associated with a single user is called a web session. Session management tests examine the web application’s handling of session management.
You can check for session cookie scope and length, test whether a single user can have many concurrent sessions, test for session expiry after a specific idle time, test for session termination after a maximum lifetime, test for session termination after logout, etc.
#7) Error handling
Testing for Error handling includes:
Check for error codes: For example, test 408 request time-out, 400 bad requests, 404 not found, etc. To test this, you need to make certain requests on the page such that these error codes are returned.
The error code will be returned with a detailed message. This message should not contain any critical information that can be used for hacking purposes
Check for stack traces: It basically includes giving some exceptional input to the application such that the returned error message contains stack traces that have interesting information for hackers.
#8) Specific Risky Functionalities
Payments and file uploads are the two most dangerous features. It is important to thoroughly evaluate these features. You must first check to see if any malicious or undesired file uploads are blocked.
You should mainly check for injection vulnerabilities, buffer overflows, password guessing, unsafe cryptographic storage, etc. when it comes to payments.
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