Re; Comparison report on web app security scanners

[<jack.jonburg () hushmail com>]

First off great bit of work. Its about time marketing crap is 
sliced up like a hot turd it is. 

My German is not that great. Can I assume the basic summary from 
page 149 is as follows?

Sanctum / Watchfire could only find 1 in 5 issues or 20%
WebInspect about 6%
Accuntix was so bad it wasn't worth reporting results

All had so many false positives it wasnt funny. This basicaly 
echoes Arian Evans great work presented at OWASP last year so is 
consistent with what I hear from people who have bought these 
things and used them and polar opposite from the marketing hype. 

What I didnt see was a comparison of types of issues ie bugs and 
flaws? I imagine they are basically all at 0% on flaws but ....

so based on this I know where my money is not going on my renewal 
license. I suspected this all along but never knew how to proove 
it. 

Again great stuff !






As I had mentioned in another posting to this list some time ago, a 
few months ago I completed a fairly extensive review of various
tools: AppScan, WebInspect, Acunetix, (note AppScan and WebInspect 
have produced new versions since then), Burp, WebScarab, Spike 
Proxy, and some minor remarks on a few other tools. I used two 
applications as
benchmarks: WebGoat and a proprietary application in production 
use. 
The report totals to about 170 pages.

A number of people have expressed their interest in this report.
Today I have finally attained a publication permit. You can 
download the report at http://fhgonline.fraunhofer.de/server?suche-
publica&num=048.06/D&iese
(that page will give the abstract and bibliographic information; 
click on the red link named "Volltext" to get at the actual PDF). 
However, note that the report is in German. I regret that I do not 
have the time to translate it, but anyone is invited to volunteer 
(and some people already have). If you want to help in translating, 
drop me a line (this applies even to those who already did, just to 
give me an updated picture); I will collect all volunteer addresses 
and distribute them next week, and from then on, you'll be on your 
own.

Kind regards,
Holger Peine

--
Dr. Holger Peine, Security and Safety
Fraunhofer IESE, Fraunhofer-Platz 1, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany 
Phone +49-631-6800-2134, Fax -1299 (shared) PGP key via 
http://pgp.mit.edu ; fingerprint is 1BFA 30CB E3ED BA99 E7AE 2BBB 
C126 A592 48EA F9F8
  


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