Web Application Security Testing Tools

From legacy web applications to modern, dynamic single page applications (SPAs), the digital assets that power a business are often tasked with handling sensitive data, including business transactions and customer information. That’s why web application security testing tools should be used during the software development life cycle.

Manual security audits and tests can only cover so much ground. Acunetix comes equipped with a suite of web application security tools designed to automate web security testing to help you identify security vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle. The following are some of the features that make Acunetix fast, flexible and accurate.

Acunetix features a fully automated crawler that can crawl complex custom HTML5 websites and web applications, including client-side Single Page Applications (SPAs). Like a real browser, it can interact with JavaScript-rich web application just like a real user would. Furthermore, Acunetix can fully understand complex JSON and XML input schemes, legacy SOAP web services and CRUD operations necessary for interacting with modern RESTful web services. With Acunetix, you can scan websites backed with modern web technologies including:

JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, Ember and Vue
Back-end technologies like Java, ASP.NET, PHP Ruby on Rails to name a few.

Record series of actions and/or restrictions and replay them to authenticate a page. LSR makes authenticated web application testing a breeze.

Multi-step/Custom Authentication Schemes
Single Sign-On Authentication
CAPTCHAs and Multi-factor authentication.

Typical vulnerability scanning tools involve sending a payload to a target and waiting for a response. But what about more indirect methods like Blind Cross-site Scripting (BXSS), where an attacker exploits a stored XSS vulnerability through a separate web application? Out-of-band vulnerability testing accounts for security vulnerabilities that do not provide a response during a conventional security scan—like the aforementioned BXSS, XML External Entity (XXE) attacks, and Server-side Request Forgeries (SSRF). Acunetix sends an XSS payload to the web application where it is stored in a data store. The payload remains dormant until it executes in a victim’s browser notifying AcuMonitor, which relays this vulnerability to Acunetix.

Black-box testing or DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) is the security testing methodology in which a web application is tested from the outside in real-time. Acunetix AcuSensor provides Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) a.k.a. gray-box vulnerability testing for PHP, ASP.NET and Java powered web applications. It enhances a regular dynamic scan through the deployment of sensors inside the source code. AcuSensor then relays the feedback to the scanner during the source code’s execution. Additional features include:

Back-end crawling of the entire directory listing
Works alongside running applications with signed code
Trace vulnerabilities down to specific lines of code (for PHP applications)
Detailed stack traces for ASP.NET and Java applications.

Put all these web security testing features together, and you begin to understand how the Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner can become a critical component of a business’s web application security testing routine. From SQL injection to Cross-site Scripting, try Acunetix Online or download it now to gain the insight you need to build secure web applications.

Frequently asked questions

What are the tools used for web security testing?

Tools used for web security testing can be divided into automatic tools and manual tools. Automatic tools are vulnerability scanners, code analyzers, and software composition analyzers. Manual tools are attack frameworks, attack proxies, password breakers, and many more.

What are DAST, SAST, IAST, and SCA tools?

DAST tools analyze the runtime web application just like a penetration tester would. SAST tools analyze the source code of the application just like a developer. IAST tools combine DAST and SAST capabilities. SCA tools check only for potentially out-of-date libraries and dependencies (not the in-house code). Acunetix is a DAST/IAST tool.

Read about the advantages of IAST.

What are the best practices for web security testing?

Web security testing is not just about tools. To achieve web security, you need to be able to spot potential issues as early as possible, take immediate actions, manage remediation, and, most importantly of all, include everyone, not just the security team.

Learn about 7 best practices for web application security.

How do I use web security testing tools in development pipelines?

DAST tools are the best type of tools to use in development pipelines for testing web security. They report fewer false positives than SAST tools and can check for more vulnerabilities. Acunetix has CI/CI integration capabilities so you can easily include Acunetix scans in your DevSecOps.