Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: Required Help on Automated Tools


From: Taufiq Ali <taufiq.ali () niiconsulting com>
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:24:54 +0530

Hey,

I agree to Matt. Being a pen tester I have faced this many times. Automated tools will help you work faster. But then no tool guarantees you accurate results. There could be chances of the tool throwing lot of false +ve. You could really miss out on critical vulnerabilities unless you don't test them manually. Most important of all no tools checks for the flaws in the logic if you are doing business logic pen testing. After all that's the only area where you need to put your creativity on test :)


Taufiq

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Required Help on Automated Tools
From: Dharmendra T <dbavale () gmail com>
To: Matt - MRS Security <matt () mrssecurity com>
CC: "pen-test () securityfocus com" <pen-test () securityfocus com>
Date: 10/16/2008 11:54 AM

Dear matt,

Can you give few points as to why we should not automate the assessments or testing? Don't you think the automation helps you in so many ways, one of the best I could think of is "it will be faster compared to manual"??

Regards,
Dharmendra T.

Matt - MRS Security wrote:
Vin Oxious wrote:
Hello Everyone,

                               Greetings !! ..Can you please list me
some tools that would allow automated testing of the below ...  (
while I have already got a few tools .. just wanted to know if there
are some good ones ) ..

SQL Injection -

XSS -

Improper Session Management -

URL Access -

Direct Object Reference -


regards,
Noxious

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Please, please, please, please, please dont automate this kind of testing and then based upon the results give the customer a pass if nothing found.

I never ever advise automated application assessments to anyone. I personally from the outset at the most automate the spidering of the site and then manually audit it.

Improper session management can really only be assessed manually by looking at the cookie or any session data passed as part of the URL.

There are a number of issues that automated tools will never discover.

Sorry to beat home this fact but at the most automated tools should be run at the end of the test to verify your results.

I know personally of a PCI ASV that i competed against during some work and they used automated scanning, they passed the merchant and i found SQL injection (XP_CMDSHELL level), XSS, CSRF, weak session management, data passed in the clear to name a few.

More than likely this email is going to cause an argument, but please do not automate testing from the outset. Use it to verify your results.

Thanks

Matt.



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