What is meant by penetration testing?

The process of probing and identifying security vulnerabilities and the extent to which
they are used to a cracker’s advantage. It is a critical tool for assessing the security state
of an organization’s IT systems, including computers, network components, and
applications. Hackers of the White Hat variety are often hired by companies to do
penetration testing. It is money well spent, computer security experts contend.

Why we require penetration testing for WEB Application?

Penetration testing, also called pen testing, looks deeply into your business to see how
vulnerable it is to hackers. It goes far beyond ordinary security assessments or
compliance audits. Here are some of the ways that pen testing stands apart:

1) It doesn’t merely expose weaknesses; it simulates real-world attacks to show how your
sensitive data, business systems, financial assets and employees would fare in the event
of the real thing.
2) It tests your system’s ability to detect breaches, whether internal or external, when they
occur.
3) Although some functions may be automated, pen testing relies heavily on skilled,
experienced professionals who are able to analyse systems in the same way that hackers
would. Many, in fact, are certified ethical hackers. It takes one to know one.
4) Cyber criminals rarely target individual security tools. Instead, they look for gaps
between tools that don’t work especially well together. An in-depth pen test uncovers
these gaps.
5) It is completely unbiased. Sometimes, a fresh set of eyes reveals vulnerabilities that
were overlooked.
6) It ensures that your company is in full compliance with the new data breach
notification law.

Why are Penetration test Important?

It is important depends on the fallowing few points

1) They can give security personnel real experience in dealing with an intrusion. A
penetration test should be done without informing staff, and will allow an organisation to
test whether its security policies are truly effective. A penetration test can be imagined
much like a fire drill.
2) It can uncover aspects of security policy that are lacking. For example, many security
policies give a lot of focus to preventing and detecting an attack on an organisation's
systems, but neglect the process of evicting an attacker. You may uncover during a
penetration test that whilst your organisation detected attacks, that security personnel
could not effectively remove the attacker from the system in an efficient way before they
caused damage.
3) They provide feedback on the most at risk routes into your company or application.
Penetration testers think outside of the box, and will try to get into your system by any
means possible, like a real world attacker would. This could reveal lots of major
vulnerabilities your security or development team never considered. The reports
generated by penetration tests provide you with feedback on prioritising any future
security investment
.
4) Penetration testing reports can be used to help train developers to make fewer
mistakes. If developers can see how an outside attacker broke into an application or part
of an application they helped develop, they will be more motivated to improve their
security education, and avoid making similar errors in the future.

How it works

1) Pen testers, using both software applications and manual methods, start by doing a
little reconnaissance. They gather information about your business, from the perspective
of it being the potential target of a hacker. They then identify vulnerable entry points.
Finally, they attempt to break into your system, and they report back to you how
successful they were. Remember that pen testers are the good guys. These type of attacks,
sometimes called “white-hat” attacks, are highly educational.
2) After a thorough discussion of your needs and concerns, the testers will decide on the
best approach, which could include any or a combination of the following:
3) In targeted testing, your information technology team and the pen testers work together
to conduct experiments and analyze the results.
4) In external testing, attempts are made to hack into visible entities such as web servers,
email servers and domain name servers. The goal is to find out if these entities are prone
to external attacks. External tests also reveal how deeply a hacker could penetrate your
system after gaining access to it.
5) The objective of internal testing is to find gaps behind your firewall. Testers are given
the same authorization and levels of access that employees have. If there are weaknesses
that would allow unauthorized access to data, this test will expose them. Compromised or
disgruntled individuals within a company are just as dangerous as external hackers.
6) Some businesses request blind testing. This strategy forces pen testers to proceed with
very little information about the company they are testing. For example, they might be
provided with only the company’s name. The more information that they can unearth
about the company, the greater its security risks.
7) Double-blind testing is even more exhaustive. With the exception of one or two
individuals, no one is told that a test is being conducted. This type of test has the most
unbiased results, so it’s highly useful for evaluating security awareness and response
protocols.

Types Of Penetration Testing

There are three types of Penetration Testing
!) White Box Penetest
!!) Grey Box Penetest
!!!) Black Box Penetest
White Box Penetration Testing:-
This is a comprehensive testing, as tester has been provided with whole
range of information about the systems and/or network such as Schema,
Source code, OS details, IP address, etc. It is normally considered as a
simulation of an attack by an internal source. It is also known as and open
box testing.

Advantages of White Box Penetration Testing

White Box Penetest advantages −

1) It ensures that all independent paths of a module have been exercised.
2) It ensures that all logical decisions have been verified along with their true
and false value.
3) It discovers the typographical errors and does syntax checking.
4) It finds the design errors that may have occurred because of the
difference between logical flow of the program and the actual execution.

Grey Box Penetration Testing :-

In grey box testing a tester usually provides partial or limited information
about the internal details of the program of a system. It can be considered as
an attack by an external hacker who had gained illegitimate access to an
organization's network infrastructure documents.

Advantages of Grey Box Penetration Testing

Grey Box Penetest advantages −
1) As the tester does not require the access of source code, it is non-intrusive
and unbiased
2) As there is clear difference between a developer and a tester, so there is
least risk of personal conflict
3) You don’t need to provide the internal information about the program
functions and other operations

Black Box Penetest:-

The black box testing is nothing but hacker, where a hacker no need to
collect a data and credentials from client or employee.

Penetration Testing Methodologies