Book Image

Kali Linux Web Penetration Testing Cookbook

By : Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez
Book Image

Kali Linux Web Penetration Testing Cookbook

By: Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez

Overview of this book

Web applications are a huge point of attack for malicious hackers and a critical area for security professionals and penetration testers to lock down and secure. Kali Linux is a Linux-based penetration testing platform and operating system that provides a huge array of testing tools, many of which can be used specifically to execute web penetration testing. This book will teach you, in the form step-by-step recipes, how to detect a wide array of vulnerabilities, exploit them to analyze their consequences, and ultimately buffer attackable surfaces so applications are more secure, for you and your users. Starting from the setup of a testing laboratory, this book will give you the skills you need to cover every stage of a penetration test: from gathering information about the system and the application to identifying vulnerabilities through manual testing and the use of vulnerability scanners to both basic and advanced exploitation techniques that may lead to a full system compromise. Finally, we will put this into the context of OWASP and the top 10 web application vulnerabilities you are most likely to encounter, equipping you with the ability to combat them effectively. By the end of the book, you will have the required skills to identify, exploit, and prevent web application vulnerabilities.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Kali Linux Web Penetration Testing Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Identifying cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities


Cross-site scripting (XSS) is one of the most common vulnerabilities in web applications, in fact, it is considered third in the OWASP Top 10 from 2013 (https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10).

In this recipe, we will see some key points to identify a cross-site scripting vulnerability in a web application.

How to do it...

  1. Log into DVWA and go to XSS reflected.

  2. The first step in testing for vulnerability is to observe the normal response of the application. Introduce a name in the text box and click on Submit. We will use Bob.

  3. The application used the name we provided to form a phrase. What happens if instead of a valid name we introduce some special characters or numbers? Let's try with <'this is the 1st test'>.

  4. Now we can see that anything we put in the text box will be reflected in the response, that is, it becomes a part of the HTML page in response. Let's check the page's source code to analyze how it presents the information...