Security testing

Last updated December 19, 2023

Security testing is a process intended to detect flaws in the security mechanisms of an information system and as such help enable it to protect data and maintain functionality as intended.^[1] Due to the logical limitations of security testing, passing the security testing process is not an indication that no flaws exist or that the system adequately satisfies the security requirements.

Typical security requirements may include specific elements of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization and non-repudiation.^[2] Actual security requirements tested depend on the security requirements implemented by the system. Security testing as a term has a number of different meanings and can be completed in a number of different ways. As such, a Security Taxonomy helps us to understand these different approaches and meanings by providing a base level to work from.

Confidentiality

A security measure which protects against the disclosure of information to parties other than the intended recipient is by no means the only way of ensuring the security.

Integrity

Integrity of information refers to protecting information from being modified by unauthorized parties

A measure intended to allow the receiver to determine that the information provided by a system is correct.
Integrity schemes often use some of the same underlying technologies as confidentiality schemes, but they usually involve adding information to a communication, to form the basis of an algorithmic check, rather than the encoding all of the communication.
To check if the correct information is transferred from one application to other.

Authentication

This might involve confirming the identity of a person, tracing the origins of an artifact, ensuring that a product is what its packaging and labelling claims to be, or assuring that a computer program is a trusted one.

Authorization

The process of determining that a requester is allowed to receive a service or perform an operation.
Access control is an example of authorization.

Availability

Assuring information and communications services will be ready for use when expected.
Information must be kept available to authorized persons when they need it.

Non-repudiation

In reference to digital security, non-repudiation means to ensure that a transferred message has been sent and received by the parties claiming to have sent and received the message. Non-repudiation is a way to guarantee that the sender of a message cannot later deny having sent the message and that the recipient cannot deny having received the message.
A sender-id is usually a header transmitted along with message which recognises the message source.

Taxonomy

Common terms used for the delivery of security testing:

Discovery - The purpose of this stage is to identify systems within scope and the services in use. It is not intended to discover vulnerabilities, but version detection may highlight deprecated versions of software / firmware and thus indicate potential vulnerabilities.
Vulnerability Scan - Following the discovery stage this looks for known security issues by using automated tools to match conditions with known vulnerabilities. The reported risk level is set automatically by the tool with no manual verification or interpretation by the test vendor. This can be supplemented with credential based scanning that looks to remove some common false positives by using supplied credentials to authenticate with a service (such as local windows accounts).
Vulnerability Assessment - This uses discovery and vulnerability scanning to identify security vulnerabilities and places the findings into the context of the environment under test. An example would be removing common false positives from the report and deciding risk levels that should be applied to each report finding to improve business understanding and context.
Security Assessment - Builds upon Vulnerability Assessment by adding manual verification to confirm exposure, but does not include the exploitation of vulnerabilities to gain further access. Verification could be in the form of authorized access to a system to confirm system settings and involve examining logs, system responses, error messages, codes, etc. A Security Assessment is looking to gain a broad coverage of the systems under test but not the depth of exposure that a specific vulnerability could lead to.
Penetration Test - Penetration test simulates an attack by a malicious party. Building on the previous stages and involves exploitation of found vulnerabilities to gain further access. Using this approach will result in an understanding of the ability of an attacker to gain access to confidential information, affect data integrity or availability of a service and the respective impact. Each test is approached using a consistent and complete methodology in a way that allows the tester to use their problem solving abilities, the output from a range of tools and their own knowledge of networking and systems to find vulnerabilities that would or could not be identified by automated tools. This approach looks at the depth of attack as compared to the Security Assessment approach that looks at the broader coverage.
Security Audit - Driven by an Audit and Risk function to look at a specific control or compliance issue. Characterized by a narrow scope, this type of engagement could make use of any of the earlier approaches discussed (vulnerability assessment, security assessment, penetration test).
Security Review - Verification that industry or internal security standards have been applied to system components or product. This is typically completed through gap analysis and utilizes build and code reviews or by reviewing design documents and architecture diagrams. This activity does not utilize any of the earlier approaches (Vulnerability Assessment, Security Assessment, Penetration Test, Security Audit)

Tools

Container and Infrastructure Security Analysis^[3]^[4]
SAST - Static Application Security Testing
DAST - Dynamic Application Security Testing
IAST - Interactive Application Security Testing ^[5]
DLP - Data Loss Prevention
IDS, IPS - Intrusion Detection System, Intrusion Prevention System
OSS Scanning - Open Source Software Scanning (see Open-source software security)
RASP - Runtime Application Self-Protection
SCA - Software Composition Analysis ^[6]
WAF - Web Application Firewall

Related Research Articles

Vulnerabilities are flaws in a computer system that weaken the overall security of the device/system. Vulnerabilities can be weaknesses in either the hardware itself, or the software that runs on the hardware. Vulnerabilities can be exploited by a threat actor, such as an attacker, to cross privilege boundaries within a computer system. To exploit a vulnerability, an attacker must have at least one applicable tool or technique that can connect to a system weakness. In this frame, vulnerabilities are also known as the attack surface. Constructs in programming languages that are difficult to use properly can also manifest large numbers of vulnerabilities.

A penetration test, colloquially known as a pentest or ethical hacking, is an authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system, performed to evaluate the security of the system; this is not to be confused with a vulnerability assessment. The test is performed to identify weaknesses, including the potential for unauthorized parties to gain access to the system's features and data, as well as strengths, enabling a full risk assessment to be completed.

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is an online community that produces freely available articles, methodologies, documentation, tools, and technologies in the field of web application security. The OWASP provides free and open resources. It is led by a non-profit called The OWASP Foundation. The OWASP Top 10 - 2021 is the published result of recent research based on comprehensive data compiled from over 40 partner organizations.

Application security includes all tasks that introduce a secure software development life cycle to development teams. Its final goal is to improve security practices and, through that, to find, fix and preferably prevent security issues within applications. It encompasses the whole application life cycle from requirements analysis, design, implementation, verification as well as maintenance.

Software assurance (SwA) is a critical process in software development that ensures the reliability, safety, and security of software products. It involves a variety of activities, including requirements analysis, design reviews, code inspections, testing, and formal verification. One crucial component of software assurance is secure coding practices, which follow industry-accepted standards and best practices, such as those outlined by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in their CERT Secure Coding Standards (SCS).

Database security concerns the use of a broad range of information security controls to protect databases against compromises of their confidentiality, integrity and availability. It involves various types or categories of controls, such as technical, procedural/administrative and physical.

Software security assurance is a process that helps design and implement software that protects the data and resources contained in and controlled by that software. Software is itself a resource and thus must be afforded appropriate security.

Information assurance (IA) is the practice of assuring information and managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and transmission of information. Information assurance includes protection of the integrity, availability, authenticity, non-repudiation and confidentiality of user data. IA encompasses both digital protections and physical techniques. These methods apply to data in transit, both physical and electronic forms, as well as data at rest. IA is best thought of as a superset of information security, and as the business outcome of information risk management.

Defense in depth is a concept used in information security in which multiple layers of security controls (defense) are placed throughout an information technology (IT) system. Its intent is to provide redundancy in the event a security control fails or a vulnerability is exploited that can cover aspects of personnel, procedural, technical and physical security for the duration of the system's life cycle.

STRIDE is a model for identifying computer security threats developed by Praerit Garg and Loren Kohnfelder at Microsoft. It provides a mnemonic for security threats in six categories.

SAINT is computer software used for scanning computer networks for security vulnerabilities, and exploiting found vulnerabilities.

Cloud computing security or, more simply, cloud security, refers to a broad set of policies, technologies, applications, and controls utilized to protect virtualized IP, data, applications, services, and the associated infrastructure of cloud computing. It is a sub-domain of computer security, network security, and, more broadly, information security.

w3af Open-source web application security scanner

w3af is an open-source web application security scanner. The project provides a vulnerability scanner and exploitation tool for Web applications. It provides information about security vulnerabilities for use in penetration testing engagements. The scanner offers a graphical user interface and a command-line interface.

In computer security, a threat is a potential negative action or event facilitated by a vulnerability that results in an unwanted impact to a computer system or application.

IT risk management is the application of risk management methods to information technology in order to manage IT risk, i.e.:

In computer science, language-based security (LBS) is a set of techniques that may be used to strengthen the security of applications on a high level by using the properties of programming languages. LBS is considered to enforce computer security on an application-level, making it possible to prevent vulnerabilities which traditional operating system security is unable to handle.

Security, as part of the software development process, is an ongoing process involving people and practices, and ensures application confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Secure software is the result of security aware software development processes where security is built in and thus software is developed with security in mind.

Vulnerability assessment is a process of defining, identifying and classifying the security holes in information technology systems. An attacker can exploit a vulnerability to violate the security of a system. Some known vulnerabilities are Authentication Vulnerability, Authorization Vulnerability and Input Validation Vulnerability.

Code Dx, Inc. was an American software technology company active from 2015 to 2021. The company's flagship product, Code Dx, is a vulnerability management system that combines and correlates the results generated by a wide variety of static and dynamic testing tools. In 2021, the company was acquired by Synopsys.

Data center security is the set of policies, precautions and practices adopted at a data center to avoid unauthorized access and manipulation of its resources. The data center houses the enterprise applications and data, hence why providing a proper security system is critical. Denial of service (DoS), theft of confidential information, data alteration, and data loss are some of the common security problems afflicting data center environments.

References

↑ M Martellini, & Malizia, A. (2017). Cyber and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosives challenges : threats and counter efforts. Springer.
↑ "Introduction to Information Security" US-CERT https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/introduction-information-security
↑ "Container Security Verification Standard". GitHub . 20 July 2022.
↑ "Infrastructure as Code Security - OWASP Cheat Sheet Series".
↑ "OWASP DevSecOps Guideline - v-0.2 | OWASP Foundation".
↑ "Component Analysis | OWASP Foundation".

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[1] M Martellini, & Malizia, A. (2017). Cyber and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosives challenges : threats and counter efforts. Springer.

[2] "Introduction to Information Security" US-CERT https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/introduction-information-security

[3] "Container Security Verification Standard". GitHub . 20 July 2022.

[4] "Infrastructure as Code Security - OWASP Cheat Sheet Series".

[5] "OWASP DevSecOps Guideline - v-0.2 | OWASP Foundation".

[6] "Component Analysis | OWASP Foundation".

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v t e Information security
Related security categories	Computer security Automotive security Cybercrime Cybersex trafficking Computer fraud Cybergeddon Cyberterrorism Cyberwarfare Electronic warfare Information warfare Internet security Mobile security Network security Copy protection Digital rights management	vectorial version
Threats	Adware Advanced persistent threat Arbitrary code execution Backdoors Hardware backdoors Code injection Crimeware Cross-site scripting Cross-site leaks DOM clobbering History sniffing Cryptojacking malware Botnets Data breach Drive-by download Browser helper objects Viruses Data scraping Denial of service Eavesdropping Email fraud Email spoofing Exploits Hacktivism Keyloggers Logic bombs Time bombs Fork bombs Zip bombs Fraudulent dialers Malware Payload Phishing Polymorphic engine Privilege escalation Ransomware Rootkits Bootkits Scareware Shellcode Spamming Social engineering Screen scraping Spyware Software bugs Trojan horses Hardware Trojans Remote access trojans Vulnerability Web shells Wiper Worms SQL injection Rogue security software Zombie
Defenses	Application security Secure coding Secure by default Secure by design Misuse case Computer access control Authentication Multi-factor authentication Authorization Computer security software Antivirus software Security-focused operating system Data-centric security Code obfuscation Data masking Encryption Firewall Intrusion detection system Host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) Anomaly detection Security information and event management (SIEM) Mobile secure gateway Runtime application self-protection

v t e Software testing
The "box" approach	Black-box testing All-pairs testing Exploratory testing Fuzz testing Model-based testing Scenario testing Grey-box testing White-box testing API testing Mutation testing Static testing
Testing levels	Acceptance testing Integration testing System testing Unit testing
Testing types, techniques, and tactics	A/B testing Benchmark Compatibility testing Concolic testing Concurrent testing Conformance testing Continuous testing Destructive testing Development testing Differential testing Dynamic program analysis Installation testing Negative testing Random testing Regression testing Security testing Smoke testing (software) Software performance testing Stress testing Symbolic execution Test automation Usability testing
See also	Graphical user interface testing Manual testing Orthogonal array testing Pair testing Soak testing Software reliability testing Stress testing Web testing