Application Security Testing

overview

Overview

Application security testing evaluates the security of web and mobile applications to protect against cyber-attacks. From source-code, all the way up to the browser – an application security assessment measures the effectiveness of your in-house developed application. By simulating a hack, we assess the controls you currently have in place.

What you'll get:

  • DAST & SAST testing

  • Coverage beyond OWASP Top 10

  • Web, mobile & API testing

  • A comprehensive report with detailed findings and remediation steps

Why conduct Application Security Testing?

Beyond OWASP Top 10 Coverage

Thorough Application Security Testing of your web, mobile and APIs following an enhanced version of the OWASP-testing methodology. Our testing follows a 200+ line-item checklist that goes beyond industry standards.

Documentation of attacks

Documentation of attacks involving multiple exploits compiled to outline how an attacker could chain vulnerabilities together to compromise your application.

Strategic recommendations

A root-cause analysis to provide both tactical and strategic recommendations

Reduce the risk of a breach within a web or mobile application.

  • Going beyond automated testing

    Our extensive manual processes provide one of the most thorough services the industry offers.

  • Developing a threat model

    We study the overall purpose, the components, and their interaction with sensitive information or functionality.

  • Protect proactively

    We explore opportunities for more advanced attackers, mimicking a real-world scenario.

  • Detailed application security report

    After a thorough analysis, we manually compromise each layer of defence within the environment to generate a detailed report.

    During the test the engineer assigned to our case would notify us of any high-priority findings with detailed explanations of the risks right away. They were also quickly responsive to our emails during the test.

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  • Adam B.
    • Adam B.
    • V.P. Engineering

    PacketLabs gives the partner peace of mind and reassurance that their cybersecurity needs taken care of. Their team is full of experts who go above and beyond the scope of the engagement.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • Director of IT

    The result report was easy to follow and insightful, with recommendations on risk exposure and remediation. We would definitely recommend working with PacketLabs.

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  • Charlene
    • Charlene
    • Small Business Owner

    Our experience with Packetlabs was very positive. They offer excellent service, communicated clearly with us throughout the process, and were very accomodating regarding our timelines. We highly recommend Packetlabs.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • Human Resources

    Since engaging Packetlabs, we've been confident in our ability to bid for Pentest engagements no matter the scenario, environment or requirement - they've made the whole process of scoping, quoting, and delivering (on time and on budget) seamless.

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  • Ian W.
    • Ian W.
    • Security Sales Specialist

    They shared the results with us in a management report. We discussed all the findings and how we could fix them in meetings, and they also provided us with optional solutions. They did everything remotely.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • IT Infrastructure Manager

    The team worked quickly to identify any issues, write up reports, and offer recommendations. Their friendliness set them apart and made them more of a partner than merely a service provider.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • IT Director

    Thanks to Packetlabs Ltd.'s excellent cybersecurity efforts, the company was able to resolve its vulnerabilities and establish its secure VPN tunnel. Their responsiveness and diligence were hallmarks of their work.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • Manager

    After performing extensive tests, Packetlabs Ltd. produced a thorough report that explained any potential security flaws. Accommodating schedule changes, the team supported effective collaboration.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • Project Manager, ECEBC

    Packetlabs Ltd. successfully identified new and preexisting issues, making it easy for the client to resolve them. The team often went above and beyond to explore issues further and provide valuable information for the client.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • Sr Director Technology

    From the first phone call to the tech interview and progress updates, they have demonstrated a complete understanding of our needs, are very proactive and responsive, and have clear communication.

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  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • Small Business Owner

    Packetlabs Ltd. delivered exactly as requested, meeting the objectives of the project. Not only was the team able to complete the analysis quickly, but they were also open and honest throughout the entire process.

    Read More  
  • Anonymous
    • Anonymous
    • VP Engineering & Founder

Application Security Testing Service Highlights

  • Service highlight icons for Configuration Management

    Configuration Management

    Assess supporting infrastructure and application configuration for weaknesses

  • Service highlight icons for Authentication and authorization

    Authentication

    Test for password policies and reset functionality

  • Icon

    Error Handling

    Ensure the application reacts appropriately to unwanted data

  • Service highlight icon for identity management

    Identity Management

    Assess account creation and enumeration possibilities

  • Service highlight icon for Input Validation

    Input Validation & Client-Side

    Test for insecure coding practices that could lead to injection attacks

  • Service highlight icon for Session Management

    Session Management

    Test for weaknesses in the session management schema

  • Service highlight icon for Cryptography

    Cryptography

    Identify weaknesses for cryptographic attacks

  • Service highlight icon for Business logic

    Business logic

    Prevent application misuse by ensuring business logic is secure within each flow

  • Collab Red Team icon

    Authorization

    Identify misconfigurations in the authorization schema to prevent privilege escalation

Application Security Testing Comparison Chart

  • Application Security Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)

  • SAST (Static Application Security Testing)

  • Coverage Beyond OWASP Top 10

  • Web, Mobile, API

  • Continuous, Full Development Lifecycle Support

  • CI/CD Integration

  • Defect Tracking

Download Resources

  • All
  • Methodologies & Sample Reports
  • Guides
  • Application Security Methodology Cover
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Frequently Asked Questions - Application Security Testing

  • How do I prepare for a web application penetration test?

    Web applications would only require the website URL and the user accounts to access the website. We always recommend testing against a non-production environment to ensure availability is maintained for your production website. No denial of service attacks are ever conducted but each application is built differently resulting in different responses to attacks. If production is your only environment, we take the proper precautions and work with your team to reduce the likelihood of any downtime.

  • Why perform security testing on web applications?

    Nearly every organization has an online footprint which often includes a web application, data breaches and hacks are all over the news each and every week, when it comes down to business securing your online presence means protecting your brand. Web application security testing is performed to help identify security weakness, ideally before an attacker can, and then fix the weaknesses to prevent an attacker from doing harm. Read more on 5 Reasons Why Hackers Target Your Website here.

  • What should I test in a web application?

    While ideally every aspect of a web application should be tested, realistically time and budget are two important factors. The web application itself needs to be tested for common vulnerabilities such SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) items in the OWASP Top 10, the servers and infrastructure hosting the web application also need to be tested as the application is only as secure as the server(s) it is hosted on. Authentication and session management, payment processing and business logic are all critical areas that should be tested.

  • Why do you need credentials to the web application? Why can’t you just “hack in?”

    Assessing a web application's security involves testing the entire features and capabilities, not just if a hacker can access the application without authorization. While it is rare or nearly impossible to find a perfectly secure web application, there is no guarantee that an application’s authentication process can be hacked, or the methods might be out of the scope of the test, such as phishing users and/or developers. As such, providing testers with credentials ensure the application can be tested in its entirety.

  • Why do you need so many accounts?

    Often web applications will have more than one type of users such as a read-only or regular user and a super-user or admin. Typically a minimum of two sets of credentials for each user role is provided for testing. This allows the tester to accurately test that the vertical permission controls (e.g. preventing read up’s) and horizontal permissions controls (e.g. impersonating other read-only users) are functioning as intended.

  • Why do you recommend whitelisting on Web Application Firewalls and similar countermeasures?

    While web application firewalls (WAF), rate-limiting, DDOS prevention and countermeasures, when properly implemented, configured and tuned, are great solutions in preventing or increasing the difficulty of attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications they do not fix the underlying vulnerabilities. Whitelisting testing activities allow thorough and unimpeded assessment of the application itself in order to identify underlying vulnerabilities. Once vulnerabilities have been identified they can be addressed and remediated.

  • Why does testing take so long?

    Web applications come in all shapes, sizes with different intended purposes and technologies they are built upon. As such, applications with large amounts of functionality, and multiple different user roles/permissions can generally take a greater amount of time to test than small applications with limited functionality and minimal user roles. Certain web application technologies can require different tool sets, and research in order to effectively evaluate. Some vendors take less time to perform a test because they run an automated tool and pass the generated report off as a penetration test, however, this is far from a proper penetration test and is sure to miss vulnerabilities. For more on automated vs manual testing read here, and for more on choosing the right pentesters click here.

  • What can our developers and admins do to help streamline testing?

    The majority of penetration tests we perform against web applications lean more towards a white-box test than a black-box test as developers and admins can often help answers about the application that arise during testing such as how certain features works, and help to unlock accounts if they get locked. This can lead to more effective and efficient testing. Some of the best admins and developers we work with have provided snippets of source code where needed and even script tasks such as unlocking the test accounts every hour in order to prevent testers from being locked out, which often happens for one reason or another.

  • How do you write effective test cases for Web applications?

    Web applications vary widely in their intended usage and service offering, we often develop key test cases working alongside our clients, often our clients draw attention to key test cases they would like to be tested such as altering the check-out price on goods on an e-commerce site, viewing bank statements and records that belong to other users, or making sure low privilege roles cannot perform admin functions such as modifying or resetting user accounts. In addition to key test cases clients bring up, Packetlabs relies on years of experience and expertise to develop thorough test cases that cannot be tested with automated tools, and that is often overlooked by clients or other penetration testers.

  • What types of results can I expect?

    Packetlabs creates a professional, custom-tailored report for each client with the unique results of the web application assessment. The report contains an executive summary with a high-level overview of the critical issues identified, the methodologies we used to conduct the test, the scope of the assessment, a technical finding section that describes each of the findings, with steps to reproduce, evidence where required, and steps on how to remediate the vulnerability. Finally, the report is concluded with a unique list of strategic and tactical security recommendations, and appendices are included when necessary.

  • How can I verify the vulnerabilities are fixed?

    Most penetration tests have retest agreements in which time is dedicated specifically for testing if vulnerabilities identified during testing have been remediated. Before finalizing an agreement to conduct a web application penetration test, retesting will be discussed to figure out how much time can be allotted to retesting, and when retesting may occur.

Explore more questions

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There's simply no room for a compromise. We’re here to help. Our team works with yours to ensure you reach your full security potential.