Organizations today have web applications that support them in streamlining their operations. These applications allow for automation, collaboration and sharing of data. However, they are also vulnerable to malicious attacks. Security is a complicated and time-consuming task because modern applications depend on loosely connected components or services that are constantly communicating with each other.
The Online Web Application Security Project Foundation aims to assist organizations in developing secure applications by providing guidelines on tools, techniques, documentation, and other information. One of OWASP’s repositories is the Application Security Checklist. It provides guidance on how to identify and fix web security problems. This article examines the vulnerabilities of web applications, and outlines OWASP’s guidelines for testing these vulnerabilities.
How to choose the right application security tests
The application security checklist by OWASP is an indispensable guide for promoting repeatable, methodological testing of dynamic apps. This section explains the process and details involved in security testing web apps.
Workflow for Application Testing
An application security testing strategy that is common to all of them is one that uses a combination of common steps.
- To assess the technology and vulnerabilities of related technologies, gather comprehensive information about the platform and application.
- To test the severity of vulnerabilities discovered, we exploit the system
- Based on exploits and risks, ranking vulnerabilities
- Re-assessing the security of your application by using vulnerability risk data
- For mitigation, successful exploitations will be increased
Application Security Testing Checklist
The OWASP Application Safety Testing checklist is an iterative, systematic approach to evaluating security controls and active analysis for vulnerabilities. Here is a list containing key items and processes to be considered when evaluating the effectiveness of security controls for applications.
1. Information Gathering
Understanding the interactions between the Web server, users and apps is the key to a successful web application security strategy. Although application deployment platforms can vary widely, the infrastructure configuration is a weak link that allows threat actors to launch attacks.
Here are some key activities for gathering application security information:
- Manual site exploration
- Search for hidden content
- Checking files that store or expose content
- Scanning caches in search engines for public sites
- Web application fingerprinting
- Identification of user roles
- Identification of entry points for applications
- Identifying similar applications
- Identifying hostnames and ports
- Identifying content hosted by third parties
2. Configuration Deployment Management
Web server ecosystems are complex because they have many connected and heterogeneous components that work together. For strong security across multiple layers of an app, it is crucial to review and manage the configuration of the server.
Various configuration options of an application need to be secured
- Checking URLs that are commonly used
- Test network infrastructure configuration
- Enumerating administrator interfaces
- Cross-Site Tracing (XST), and Supported HTTP Methods Checking
- Reviewing unreferenced backup files and old documents for sensitive information
- Testing for Strict-Transport-Security
- Testing file permissions
- Test for non-production data within live environments and production data within dev/test environments
- Content security testing
- Evaluation of subdomain takeovers
- Analyzing client-side code for sensitive data
3. Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Securing organizational data involves defining appropriate access privileges and roles of the application’s users/administrators. Every user, app, or device is assigned a unique digital identity (also known as tokens). This can be tracked, maintained, and modified during their data access sessions. The following are some of the methods used to test the IAM’s security.
- Role definitions
- Registration of users
- Account provisioning processes
- Account enumeration, guessable account accounts
- Unenforced or weak username policies
4. Authentication Testing
Authentication ensures application security by enabling a web server to confirm that a network entity is the person they claim to be. Because attackers are known for devising unique ways to bypass authentication systems, not all authentication methods guarantee effective security controls. This requires continuous evaluation. Regular testing is required to assess authentication security.
- Default credentials
- Vulnerabilities in the “Remember Password “ feature
- Browser cache vulnerabilities
- Weak password policies
- Credentials sent over unencrypted channels
5. Session Management
After authentication, a session is used to manage the user’s interaction with the server. Inadequately managed sessions allow attackers to compromise access mechanisms and assume legitimate users’ identities. These compromised accesses can be exploited by attackers who escalate privileges and penetrate deeper within the system. As a best practice, it is recommended that you test the following procedures to avoid potential vulnerabilities during a session:
- Analyzing cookie flag session tokens
- Checking the session cookie durations
- Examining termination after a relative timeout
- Test for single-user multiple sessions
- Testing to ensure consistent session management
- Test cookies for randomness
6. Cryptography
Cryptography is a method of securing information exchange. It uses algorithms that convert human-readable data to a encrypted output. The process creates trust between web servers and network entities by using security keys. This is an important mechanism to maintain application security. This is how you test cryptography to maintain application security:
- Checking for sensitive and unencrypted data
- Testing to determine if an algorithm is being used incorrectly
- Strengthening the testing algorithm
- Analyzing functions to randomness
- Ensure salting is used in the right way
7. Client-Side Testing
Effective organizational security measures are often unable to stop full-blown attacks on the perimeter. This means that threat actors prefer smaller, more frequent attacks to gain access to web servers. Client-side and internal testing are used to examine vulnerabilities in applications that are installed on endpoints that connect with web servers. Client-side testing is used to identify weak points that could be exploited by authorized users. It includes the following:
- Cross-Site Scripting
- JavaScript execution
- Client-side URL redirects
- Cross-Site Flashing
- Web sockets and messaging
- Cross-Site script Inclusion (XSSI).
8. Error Handling
OWASP encourages developers include error handling messages and mechanisms that allow them to resolve user access issues. Incorrect error handling can expose sensitive information like database dumps, error codes and stack traces, which can be exploited to gain access.
You can test error handling mechanisms by:
- Test server behavior in response to resource requests that are not available
- Testing HTTP RFC Breaking ambush requests
- Observe server behavior when files/folders are requested that don’t exist
- Identifying data entry points for the application
- Listing and understanding services that respond to error messages
9. Validation of data
To ensure that any information entered into a web server’s network edge must be verified and tested, it should be in an acceptable format. Validation testing for data includes:
- Examining special Files
- Validating file uploads
- Validation of rich user content through testing
- Assessing content security policies
- Evaluation of the regular expressions list
10. Business Logic
Hackers often use an application’s original program flow to create breaches and other attacks. It is recommended that you assess your business and application’s configuration in order to find vulnerabilities in code or business logic that could lead to exploits.
The business logic testing process includes:
- Test for feature misuse
- Non-repudiation Testing
- Testing trust relationships
- Testing data integrity
- Testing for duty segregation
Summary
While maintaining robust security is essential, OWASP regularly updates its checklist to reflect changes in the security landscape and any mistakes made by organizations. The OWASP Top 10 App Testing Checklist provides a list of vulnerabilities that developers can use to enforce security at all levels of a workflow’s process. This project provides multiple resources and activities to help organizations ensure that web applications and their underlying parts don’t become a portal for malicious actors. This checklist helps teams to formalize their web-application security efforts and minimize the risk of being attacked.