If you’re running a website, it’s important to make sure that it is secure. Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, and if they find one on your website, they could do a lot of damage. That’s why you need to perform website penetration testing regularly to identify and fix any security vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. In this post, we’ll define website penetration testing and its importance. We’ll also tell you about some of the most popular website penetration testing tools available on the market today.
Understanding What Website Penetration Testing Is
Table of Contents
Penetration testing, also known as website penetration testing or website penetration evaluation, is the study of a website or web application’s security vulnerabilities. It is usually done by ethical hackers, also known as white hat hackers, who use the same techniques as malicious hackers (black hat hackers) to find security flaws. However, instead of using the vulnerabilities to do harm, they report them to the website owner so that they can be fixed.
Why Do You Need Website Penetration Testing?
There are many reasons why you should perform website penetration tests regularly. First of all, it helps you to identify any security weaknesses in your website before they can be exploited by malicious hackers. This is important because if a hacker manages to exploit a vulnerability on your website, they could do a lot of damage, such as stealing sensitive data, defacing your website or even taking it offline.
Website penetration testing can also help you to achieve compliance with various security standards, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA. It’s crucial to ensure that your hosting provider adheres to HIPAA compliant hosting standards, especially if you handle sensitive healthcare data, to safeguard patient privacy and avoid potential legal repercussions.) This standard requires businesses to perform regular penetration tests on their website and web applications.” Need to make it “PCI DSS and HIPAA compliance. This standard requires businesses to perform regular penetration tests on their website and web applications.
You may even need specific tools to tackle the penetration testing process on certain platforms. For example, if you want to conduct penetration testing on AWS, you’ll need software that can detect threats in the AWS environment. A generic tool won’t cut it.
Moreover, website pentesting can also help you to assess the effectiveness of your website’s security measures. By trying to exploit vulnerabilities on your website, ethical hackers can see how well your website is defended against attacks and identify any areas that need improvement.
Top Website Penetration Testing Tools in the Contemporary Market
There are many website penetration testing tools available in the market today. Listed below are some of the most popular website penetration testing tools that are taking the current market by storm:
- Astra’s Pentest
- Nikto
- Virustotal
Website Penetration Testing: 3 Types
Black-box, white-box, and gray-box testing are the three types of website penetration testing.
- Black-box testing is a type of pentesting in which the ethical hacker does not have any prior knowledge of the website or web application being tested. They will only have access to the website’s public-facing interface, such as the homepage. From there, they will try to identify any security vulnerabilities by looking for weaknesses in the website’s design, coding or configuration.
- White-box testing is a type of pentesting in which the ethical hacker has full access to all information about the website or web application being tested. This includes things like source code, configuration files and database structures. They will be able to discover more flaws using this information than they would if they conducted black-box testing.
- Gray-box testing is a type of pentesting that lies somewhere between black-box and white-box testing. In gray-box testing, the ethical hacker has some limited knowledge of the website or web application being tested. For example, they may have access to the website’s source code but not its configuration files.
How is Website Penetration Testing Conducted?
Pre-Engagement Analysis
The first step in website penetration testing is pre-engagement analysis. In this phase, the ethical hacker will gather information about the website or web application to be tested, such as its purpose, functionality, architecture and technology stack. They will also assess the risks associated with the website or web application.
Intelligence Gathering
In the intelligence gathering phase, the ethical hacker will collect more information about the website or web application. This may involve things like using search engines to find publicly available information, such as website source code or configuration files. They may also try to find out more about the organization that owns the website or web application, such as its size, location and industry.
Vulnerability Assessment
Once all the information has been gathered, the ethical hacker will assess the website or web application for vulnerabilities. They will look for things like SQL injection flaws, cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and unpatched software.
Exploitation
If the ethical hacker finds any vulnerabilities, they will then try to exploit them to gain access to the website or web application. For example, if they find an SQL injection flaw, they may be able to run malicious SQL code on the website’s database.
Post-Exploitation
After successfully exploiting a vulnerability, the ethical hacker will try to maintain their access to the website or web application. They may do this by planting backdoors or installing malware.
Reporting
Finally, once the penetration test is complete, the ethical hacker will prepare a report detailing their findings. This document will cover any vulnerabilities discovered and how they were utilized.
Further Exploring the Top Website Penetration Testing Tools
Now that you know more about website penetration testing, you may be interested in learning about some of the most popular website penetration testing tools. So, here we go!
Astra Pentest
The malware checks the website for security flaws, but it can also carry out more than 3000 security tests to identify internet vulnerabilities. Astra also supplies you with actionable learnings that you may use right away.
Astra provides a free malware scanner that examines the scripts on your site. Astra’s Website Blacklist Checker, on the other hand, is skilled at finding the key security flaws that caused Google to blacklist your website. It can scan more than 66 blacklists for you.
Astra Pentest is a powerful pen testing software with a comprehensive vulnerability scan and manual penetration tests. It’s undoubtedly one of the best pen testing tools available.
Nikto
Nikto is an open-source security tool that runs a variety of checks on web servers for a variety of concerns. It can detect over 7,000 potentially hazardous applications and files.
It also does comprehensive checks for over 1250 servers with outdated versions. It’s a template engine that makes reports easy to customize, and it has full HTTP support. It is great at scanning many ports on a server to guarantee security.
Virustotal
Virustotal is one of the most popular online antivirus analysis services. It’s a tool that examines files and URLs to look for virus threats. It’s worth noting that Virustotal is a free service with numerous capabilities, making it a versatile vulnerability-finding instrument on websites.
It’s worth noting that Virustotal has the ability to save the analysis. It offers an API through which users may query the data. Furthermore, you don’t need an HTML website interface to use this pentest tool.
Conclusion
Website penetration testing is a great way to find vulnerabilities in your website or web application. By hiring an ethical hacker to conduct a pentest, you can be sure that your website or web application is secure. It’s important to note that penetration testing and vulnerability scanning are not the same. Vulnerability scanning is a tool that can help you find vulnerabilities in your website or web application. However, it cannot exploit these vulnerabilities. Only website penetration testing can do that.
