Re: Application Assessment

[Jeremiah Grossman <jeremiah () whitehatsec com>]

Not withstanding the mischaracterization of WASC (www.webappsec.org),  
which is the consortium  I assume you were referring to, web  
application scanner performance reviews would be a good thing for the  
community. In fact at Black Hat I was speaking to a couple of the  
scanner vendors about doing exactly that. The response I got was  
positive.

The fundamental challenge is developing a fair and balanced criteria  
in which to test the products. Web application scanners of the open  
source and commercial variety have a largely differing features sets,  
including vulnerability identification capabilities. None of them are  
closely comparable and this inevitably skews results since there's no  
baseline. No one wants to be treated unfairly by someone publishing  
negative and biased performance reviews. I believe this is the  
primary concern on why the trial agreements prevent publishing  
performance results.

This isn't to say the initiative can't be done and the vendors don't  
want it to be done, but the interested product participants would  
first have to work together to develop a fair testing criteria.  
Without they're buy-in its never going to work.  WASC has a strong  
working relationship with many web application security  industry  
experts and vendors to make this possible.

In the web application firewall (WAF) world, WASC has begun this  
process:

 "Web Application Firewall Evaluation Criteria" Project (WAFEC)
Led by Ivan Ristic, author of "Apache Security" and Mod_Security
http://www.webappsec.org/projects/waf_evaluation/

Top vendors and experts are working together to develop the industry  
standard testing criteria for evaluating the quality of web  
application firewall solutions. The expectation is that anyone would  
be able to use the criteria to evaluate a WAF product in a consistent  
manner. Whether is be a customer, professional reviewer, vendors,  
consultant, etc.

I expect the web application scanner guys to follow suit, its really  
just a matter of when.


Regards,

Jeremiah Grossman-


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On Aug 11, 2005, at 8:52 AM, Mark Curphey wrote:

> Seems like it would be pretty valuable to publish an independent  
> (not by the
> vendors or the vendors consortium) review of performance the web app
> scanners.  Last time I looked the trial agreements prevented  
> publication of
> comparisons and results. I know of a few magazines that would be  
> happy to
> publish the results and I would volunteer to organize the testing.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ory Segal [mailto:osegal () watchfire com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 6:16 AM
> To: goenw
> Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com; Webappsec
> Subject: RE: Application Assessment
>
>  Hi,
>
> You should also check: http://www.webappsec.org (Web Application  
> Security
> Consortium)
>
> With regards to utilities, you can download the free Watchfire  
> Powertools
> (HTTP Proxy, HTTP request editor, etc.), here's the link:
> http://www.watchfire.com/securityzone/download/default.aspx
>
> At the same link, you can also download eval versions of  
> Watchfire's AppScan
> product (An automated application security scanner).
>
> You can also find basic and advanced whitepapers on the subject at:
> http://www.watchfire.com/news/whitepapers.aspx
>
> -Ory
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glyn Geoghegan [mailto:glyng () corsaire com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 4:48 AM
> To: goenw
> Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com; Webappsec
> Subject: Re: Application Assessment
>
> On 8 Aug 2005, at 12:53, goenw wrote:
>
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > anybody have experience with application assessment ? I am a network
> > guy, dont know much about the apps PT.
> > 1. is there any tools that allow me to do the assessment throughly ?
>
> If you're talking web-applications, check out www.owasp.org for a  
> wealth of
> information on the subject.  You may also want to take a look at the
> webappsec mailing list at www.securityfocus.com.
>
> Typically, the kind of tools you'll need are the personal-proxy  
> category,
> allowing you to intercept and modify communications between the  
> client and
> server - see Paros Proxy, Odysseus and Burp Proxy, for example.
>
> There are fully automated tools, but in my personal experience the  
> manual
> approach has worked more effectively.
>
> Fat client/binary assessment is a slightly different (and arguably  
> more
> complex) beast, and probably off-topic for this list.
>
>
> > 2. should i have external party conduct this, what are the things i
> > should expect from them (success criteria) ?
> > any comments are appriciated.
>
> That depends on how confident you are with your abilities, the  
> drivers for
> the assessment and a wealth of factors.  Normally, some coding or
> development background is essential to identify and understand  
> potential
> vulnerabilities.
>
> Check out www.application-testing.com for our guide on the world of
> Application Security Assessments.
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------
> G l y n   G e o g h e g a n                   BSc, ARCS
> Principal Consultant                       Corsaire Ltd
> 3 Tannery House, Tannery Lane
> Send, Surrey, GU23 7EF, UK      UK: +44 (0)1483 226 000
> http://www.corsaire.com        Fax: +44 (0)1483 226 001
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>
>
>
>
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