Web application security scanner

A web application security scanner is a program which communicates with a web application through the web front-end in order to identify potential security vulnerabilities in the web application and architectural weaknesses. It performs a black-box test. Unlike source code scanners, web application scanners don't have access to the source code and therefore detect vulnerabilities by actually performing attacks.

Web applications have been highly popular since 2000 because they allow users to have an interactive experience on the Internet. Rather than just view static web pages, users are able to create personal accounts, add content, query databases and complete transactions. In the process of providing an interactive experience web applications frequently collect, store and use sensitive personal data to deliver their service.

Customers benefit from the convenience of these applications, while tacitly taking on risk that private information stored in web applications will be compromised through hacker attacks, insider leaks etc. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 18 million customer records have been compromised in 2012 due to insufficient security controls on corporate data and web applications.

A web application security scanner facilitates the automated review of a web application with the expressed purpose of discovering security vulnerabilities, and are required to comply with various regulatory requirements. Web application scanners can look for a wide variety of vulnerabilities, such as input/output validation: (e.g. cross-site scripting and SQL injection), specific application problems and server configuration mistakes.

In a copyrighted report published in March 2012 by security vendor Cenzic, the most common application vulnerabilities in recently tested applications include:

Security researcher Shay Chen maintains an up-to-date and exhaustive list of both commercial and open-source web application security scanners. The list also highlights how each of the scanners performed during his benchmarking tests against the WAVSEP.

The WAVSEP platform is publicly available and can be used to evaluate the various aspects of web application scanners: technology support, performance, accuracy, coverage and result consistency.

As with all testing tools, web application security scanners are not perfect, and have strengths and weaknesses.

These tools can detect vulnerabilities of the finalized release candidate versions prior to shipping. Scanners simulate a malicious user by attacking and probing, identifying results which are not part of the expected result set.

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Wikipedia