Application Security Testing

Application security testing can be categorized into three types: black-box, grey-box, and white-box testing.

LEARN MORE

3 Types of Application Security Testing

Application security testing can be categorized into three types: black-box, grey-box, and white-box testing.

Black-Box Security Testing

In black-box security testing, the tester or test automation application does not have information about the internal workings of the system. This allows the tester to simulate a real attack by an external entity.

Black box testing has the important advantage that it tests application security from end to end, including security misconfigurations and the integration between security systems. For example, if there is a misconfiguration in the firewall, a black box test will immediately discover it because it attempts to access the application like an outside attacker. The disadvantage is that it can miss vulnerabilities in the underlying applications.

Grey-Box Security Testing

In grey-box security testing, the tester or automated test application has limited information about the application. This simulates the case of a privileged insider who uses their knowledge to conduct a more sophisticated attack or a persistent threat conducting in-depth reconnaissance of the environment.

Grey box testing has the advantage that it balances between testing depth and efficiency. It can be fine-tuned to focus on the most important elements that need to be tested in your security posture. Its disadvantage is that, depending on the information provided to the tester, the test may be skewed or unrealistic.

White-Box Security Testing

In white-box security testing, a human tester or automated testing mechanism receives full access to the internals of the application. A classic example of white box testing is static application security testing (SAST), in which an automated tool scans application source code for bugs and security flaws.

White-box testing can help uncover many important security issues, such as security misconfiguration in the application itself, poor code quality, insecure coding practices, and business logic vulnerabilities. Its primary advantage is that it is comprehensive and can identify issues that other types of tests miss. However, white-box testing can uncover issues that cannot be easily exploited by an outside attacker, and thus have lower priority.

4 Application Security Testing (AST) Solutions

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

SAST is a form of white-box testing that involves analysing at-rest source code. SAST tools look for vulnerabilities in the source code that external parties can exploit.

You can use SAST to the source code of your applications, bytes, and binaries. After analysing your code, the tool flags exploitable design and coding flaws.

Most SAST scans use a collection of predefined rules to specify coding errors to address. You can also use a SAST scan to detect common security vulnerabilities, such as input validation errors, stack buffer overflow, and SQL injection.

You can implement SAST during development and quality assurance (QA) and integrate the tool with your integrated development environments (IDEs) and continuous integration (CI) servers.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

DAST is a form of black-box testing that simulates external attacks on a running application. DAST aims to find architectural weaknesses and security vulnerabilities.

DAST solutions attempt to penetrate the application from the outside, often by looking for vulnerabilities and flaws in exposed interfaces.

SAST tools perform a line-by-line scan of your application’s source code while it is at rest, while DAST is executed when the application is running. DAST can be used to test an application running in a development or testing environment, or while it is running in production.

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

IAST tools and testers scan the post-build source code of your application in a dynamic environment. The test is usually executed in a test or QA environment and in real-time while the application is running. You can employ IAST to identify problematic lines of code and get alerts that prompt immediate remediation.

IAST looks directly at the source code post-build in a dynamic environment through the instrumentation of the code. It involves deploying agents and sensors into the application and analysing the code to detect vulnerabilities. You can easily integrate IAST into your continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD).

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

SCA tools automatically scan the codebase of your application to provide visibility into open-source software usage. SCA tools can identify all open-source components in your codebase, the license compliance data of the components, and detect common security vulnerabilities. Some SCA tools can also prioritize open-source vulnerabilities and offer insights and automated remediation.

Application Security Testing with NeuraLegion

For a robust AppSec programme, it is important to ensure that security vulnerabilities are detected and remediated early and often. With agile development and CICD, security testing needs to shift left and into the hands of developers.

To succeed, you need to adopt developer friendly tools like NeuraLegion’s DAST scanner, built from the ground up to enable developers to own the security testing process, with the following key features:

Developer first – built for DevOps / CICD
Test everything – WebApps and APIs (SOAP, REST, GraphQL)
Accurate – NO false positives
Automation – integrated automatic validation of findings removes manual validation bottlenecks that stifle your release cycles and compound your technical and security debt
Feedback Loop – Easy to use, fast scans and integrates across your pipelines
Easy fixes – Developer friendly remediation guidelines, start fixing security issues early and often
Detect more – automatic Business Logic vulnerability detection.