Pen Testing

Pen Testing

Unlocking Your Security Potential
Pen Testing

A penetration test, also known as a pen test, is a simulated cyber-attack against your computer system to check for exploitable vulnerabilities. At Procognitive we use tools, techniques, and processes as attackers to find and demonstrate the business impacts of weaknesses in a system.

Penetration testing stages

1. Planning and reconnaissance
The first stage involves:

  • Defining the scope and goals of a test, including the systems to be addressed and the testing methods to be used.
  • Gathering intelligence (e.g., network and domain names, mail server) to better understand how a target works and its potential vulnerabilities.

2. Scanning
The next step is to understand how the target application will respond to various intrusion attempts. This is typically done using:

  • Static analysis – Inspecting an application’s code to estimate the way it behaves while running. These tools can scan the entirety of the code in a single pass.
  • Dynamic analysis – Inspecting an application’s code in a running state. This is a more practical way of scanning, as it provides a real-time view into an application’s performance.

3. Gaining Access
This stage uses web application attacks, such as cross-site scripting, SQL injection and backdoors, to uncover a target’s vulnerabilities. Testers then try and exploit these vulnerabilities, typically by escalating privileges, stealing data, intercepting traffic, etc., to understand the damage they can cause.

4. Maintaining access
The goal of this stage is to see if the vulnerability can be used to achieve a persistent presence in the exploited system— long enough for a bad actor to gain in-depth access. The idea is to imitate advanced persistent threats, which often remain in a system for months in order to steal an organization’s most sensitive data.

5. Analysis
The results of the penetration test are then compiled into a report detailing:

  • Specific vulnerabilities that were exploited
  • Sensitive data that was accessed
  • The amount of time the pen tester was able to remain in the system undetected

This information is analyzed by security personnel to help configure an enterprise’s WAF settings and other application security solutions to patch vulnerabilities and protect against future attacks.

What are the benefits of penetration testing?

Ideally, software and systems were designed from the start with the aim of eliminating dangerous security flaws. A pen test provides insight into how well that aim was achieved. Pen testing can help an organization

  • Find weaknesses in systems 
  • Determine the robustness of controls 
  • Support compliance with data privacy and security regulations (e.g., PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR) 
  • Provide qualitative and quantitative examples of current security posture and budget priorities for management

Phases of Pen Testing

A comprehensive approach to pen testing is essential for optimal risk management. This entails testing all the areas in your environment.

  • Web apps. Testers examine the effectiveness of security controls and look for hidden vulnerabilities, attack patterns, and any other potential security gaps that can lead to a compromise of a web app.
  • Mobile apps. Using both automated and extended manual testing, testers look for vulnerabilities in application binaries running on the mobile device and the corresponding server-side functionality. Server-side vulnerabilities include session management, cryptographic issues, authentication and authorization issues, and other common web service vulnerabilities.
  • Networks. This testing identifies common to critical security vulnerabilities in an external network and systems. Experts employ a checklist that includes test cases for encrypted transport protocols, SSL certificate scoping issues, use of administrative services, and more.
  • Cloud. A cloud environment is significantly different than traditional on-premises environments. Typically, security responsibilities are shared between the organization using the environment and the cloud services provider. Because of this, cloud pen testing requires a set of specialized skills and experience to scrutinize the various aspects of the cloud, such as configurations, APIs, various databases, encryption, storage, and security controls.
  • Containers. Containers obtained from Docker often have vulnerabilities that can be exploited at scale. Misconfiguration is also a common risk associated with containers and their environment. Both of these risks can be uncovered with expert pen testing.
  • Embedded devices (IoT). Embedded / Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as medical devices, automobiles, in-home appliances, oil rig equipment, and watches have unique software testing requirements due to their longer life cycles, remote locations, power constraints, regulatory requirements, and more. Experts perform a thorough communication analysis along with a client/server analysis to identify defects that matter most to the relevant use case.
  • Mobile devices. Pen testers use both automated and manual analysis to find vulnerabilities in application binaries running on the mobile device and the corresponding server-side functionality. Vulnerabilities in application binaries can include authentication and authorization issues, client-side trust issues, misconfigured security controls, and cross-platform development framework issues. Server-side vulnerabilities can include session management, cryptographic issues, authentication and authorization issues, and other common web service vulnerabilities.
  • APIs. Both automated and manual testing techniques are used to cover the OWASP API Security Top 10 list. Some of the security risks and vulnerabilities testers look for include broken object level authorization, user authentication, excessive data exposure, lack of resources / rate limiting, and more.
  • CI/CD pipeline. Modern DevSecOps practices integrate automated and intelligent code scanning tools into the CI/CD pipeline. In addition to static tools that find known vulnerabilities, automated pen testing tools can be integrated into the CI/CD pipeline to mimic what a hacker can do to compromise the security of an application. Automated CI/CD pen testing can discover hidden vulnerabilities and attack patterns that go undetected with static code scanning.

Types of Pen Testing

Although pen testing is mostly a manual effort, pen testers do use automated scanning and testing tools. But they also go beyond the tools and use their knowledge of the latest attack techniques to provide more in-depth testing than a vulnerability assessment (i.e., automated testing).

  • Manual pen testing
    Manual pen testing uncovers vulnerabilities and weaknesses not included in popular lists (e.g., OWASP Top 10) and tests business logic that automated testing can overlook (e.g., data validation, integrity checks). A manual pen test can also help identify false positives reported by automated testing. Because pen testers are experts who think like adversaries, they can analyse data to target their attacks and test systems and websites in ways automated testing solutions following a scripted routine cannot.
  • Automated testing
    Automated testing generates results faster and needs fewer specialized professionals than a fully manual pen testing process. Automated testing tools track results automatically and can sometimes export them to a centralized reporting platform. Also, the results of manual pen tests can vary from test to test, whereas running automated testing repeatedly on the same system will produce the same results.