Book Image

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook

By : Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto
Book Image

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook

By: Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto

Overview of this book

Web applications are the front door to most organizations, exposing them to attacks that may disclose personal information, execute fraudulent transactions, or compromise ordinary users. This practical book has been completely updated and revised to discuss the latest step-by-step techniques for attacking and defending the range of ever-evolving web applications. Youíll explore the various new technologies employed in web applications that have appeared since the first edition and review the new attack techniques that have been developed, particularly in relation to the client side. The book starts with the current state of web application security and the trends that indicate how it is likely to evolve soon. Youíll examine the core security problem affecting web applications and the defence mechanisms that applications implement to address this problem, and youíll also explore the key technologies used in todayís web application. Next, youíll carry out tasks for breaking into web applications and for executing a comprehensive attack. As you progress, youíll learn to find vulnerabilities in an application's source code and review the tools that can help when you hack web applications. Youíll also study a detailed methodology for performing a comprehensive and deep attack against a specific target. By the end of this book, youíll be able to discover security flaws in web applications and how to deal with them.
Table of Contents (32 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Cover
2
Title
3
Copyright
4
About the Authors
5
About the Technical Editor
6
MDSec: The Authors’ Company
7
Credits
8
Acknowledgments
31
Index
32
End User License Agreement

Standalone Vulnerability Scanners

A number of different tools exist for performing completely automated vulnerability scans of web applications. These scanners have the benefit of being able to test a large amount of functionality in a relatively short time. In a typical application they often can identify a variety of important vulnerabilities.

Standalone web application vulnerability scanners automate several of the techniques we have described in this book, including application spidering, discovery of default and common content, and probing for common vulnerabilities. Having mapped the application's content, the scanner works through its functionality, submitting a range of test strings within each parameter of each request, and analyzes the application's responses for signatures of common vulnerabilities. The scanner produces a report describing each of the vulnerabilities it has discovered. This report usually includes the specific request and response that the application...