evaluation of security scanners for web application
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Evaluation of Security Scanners for Web Application
Presented By:Sunint Kaur Khalsa (100875000)Sarabjeet Kaur Saini(6235987)
Outline
Context Goal and Scope of Study Methodology Evaluation Criteria Evaluation of Candidate Tools Conclusion and Recommendation
News…
Harvard Website attacked by Syrian Protesters
77 US Law Enforcement Websites hit in mass attack by “LulzSec” hacking group.
The website of World’s most popular Martial Arts Organisation “Ultimate Fighting Championship” hacked
…
Solution…
Firewall ?
Blue Crystal Inc.
Web Application Development firm with a Work Force of 15 people
Develop web applications based on .Net Platform
Incepted the idea of giving security services to their clients after selecting a suitable tool
Wanted a tool with high functionality, low cost, low resource consumption and high vulnerability detection
Goal and Scope of Study
Goal Select the most suitable tool for Blue Crystal as per their
given requirements.
Scope To conduct the evaluation of selected tools on the basis of
High Impact and Low impact criteria.
Methodology Used Test Cases for the Evaluation
Test websites provided by the vendors are used Score given to each tool on the scale of 0-10 for the
corresponding evaluation criteria Weights have been assigned to the evaluation criteria
Final score =Where i= Evaluation Criteria wi = Weight of ith evaluation criteriasi= Score of the tool corresponding to the ith evaluation criteria
High Impact and Low Impact Criteria
Evaluation Criteria High Impact Criteria
Crawling and Parsing 5
Vulnerability Identification 5Performance 4Cost and License 5
Evaluation Criteria Low Impact Criteria
Ease of Installation 3
Usability 3
Scan Control Capability 3
Reporting and Documentation 3
Weighing Scheme
Tools Selected Rational Appscan
A Product of IBM Originally developed by Sanctum Ltd. First released in 1998
HP WebInspect A Product of HP Originally developed by SPI Dynamics
Test Websites
Tool Host Web Pages
Operating System
Web Server
Application Language
AppScan http://demo.testfire.net 34 Win32 – Windows XP
IIS ASP.NET
WebInspect http://zero.webappsecurity.com
100 Win32 – Windows XP
IIS ASP.NET
Ease of Installation This criterion considered the ease of acquisition and
installation of the tool Rational Appscan had a file of size 497 MB and took 5 hours
for its installation HP WebInspect took 2 hours for the installation of 641 MB file
but we had to wait for 6 hours to get the key as that required domain verification.
WebInspect also required SQL server and there is no such requirement for Appscan
Appscan = 8 WebInspect = 6
Usability
Usability Criterion is a combination of Ease of use Efficiency
AppScan takes screenshots of the browser responses corresponding to the generated attacks
AppScan provides in depth description of the detected vulnerabilities including possible causes, technical description and fixing recommendation whereas WebInspect provides only recommendations
WebInspect creates macros to record testing steps during scan and automate repeated testingAppscan = 9 WebInspect = 8
Usability…
Usability…
Usability…
Scan Control Capability
Evaluated the scan control capabilities of both the tools to find which tool is better for handling the scan.
Both tools provide operator with the ability to Pause a scan Restart the scan at a later time
Both tools provides the viewing the real-time status of running scans. This status could include information such as which tests are currently being run and the scan completion percentage.
Appscan = 9 WebInspect = 9
Reporting and Documentation
This criterion evaluates the tool on the basis of Generation of reports in different formats Comprehensiveness of the generated reports
Appscan can generate different types of reports Security Report Industry Standard Report Regulatory Compliance Report Delta Analysis Report Template Based Report
Reporting and Documentation
Features of Appscan’s Report Report was divided into different sections based on the URLs, where
vulnerabilities have been encountered. Reports consisted of tables, text and graphs and hence more readable
and understandable The reports by WebInspect comprised of a lot of text with
definitions and explanation and less of graphs, tables.
Appscan = 10 WebInspect = 8
Report Generation in AppScan
Report Generation in WebInspect
Crawling and Parsing Crawling is an activity by which the scanner browses
various web elements like cookies, forms, parameters, links etc looking for vulnerabilities
Parsing is defined as crawling for the various types of contents like HTML, ActiveX objects, Java Applets, Java Scripts, XML etc
Both the tools have automated crawling In manual configuration, user is given the option
Specifying a request delay, Maximum crawl depth Have concurrent sessions
Crawling and Parsing
WebInspect has a feature which shows the steps the scanner took to reach a specific vulnerability, pointing to the specific element.
It is good if we want to retest certain flaws and to see how the scanner is working on it
WebInspect gives the feature to specify the request delay which is of interest to Blue Crystal Inc. as it might help them to use the bandwidth wisely
Appscan = 9 WebInspect = 10
Vulnerability Assessment
This criterion evaluates the total vulnerabilities which have been found by the web scanners on their respective test cases.
In order to find the vulnerabilities on the test websites the number of attacks sent by AppScan 18,634 on 34 pages as compared to 19,968 on 100 pages of WebInspect.
With three times the size of the test website WebInspect generates less attacks and this results in exposing less vulnerabilities.
Vulnerability Identification
Appscan exposed 120 vulnerabilities as compared to 272 vulnerabilities exposed by WebInspect. Here it is worth mentioning that the size of WebInspect’s test case is thrice as that of Appscan’s test case.
The various types of attacks detected by both the tools are SQL Injection Cross Site Scripting Buffer Overflow File guessing
Etc…
Appscan = 9 WebInspect = 7
Performance
This criterion covers the time in which the tool completes the scan and the resources utilized during the scan
Appscan completed the scan of website with 34 pages in 31 minutes where as WebInspect completed the scan of 100 pages in 15 minutes showing the better performance of WebInspect
The minimum system requirements of Appscan are 2.4GHz processor 2GB RAM 30GB of free disk space
The minimum system requirements for WebInspect are 1.5GHz processor 2GB of available RAM 10GB of free disk space Appscan = 7 WebInspect = 8
Cost and License Cost = Training cost + License Cost
The Training cost is considered the same for both the tools as both of them have online tutorials and quick start up kits.Appscan = 8 WebInspect = 7
WebInspect Annual Audit License: This licence type allows
access to client’s partner portal (They have the ability to scan
unlimited customers on any IP in their environment) + Annual
maintenance + customer support + access to daily updated
vulnerability checks + Additional Overhead for each additional
user
$ 20,000
IBM Rational App Scan Standard Edition + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months
$19,700
Score Earned by each Tool
Ease
of Insta
llation
Usabilit
y
Scan Con
trol C
apab
ility
Report
ing and Docu
mentat
ion
Crawlin
g and Pa
rsing
Vulnerabilit
y Iden
tificat
ion
Perfo
rman
ce
Cost an
d Licen
se 02468
1012
Rational Appscan
Total Score of each ToolEvaluation Criteria(i) Weight (wi) AppScan(si) WebInspect(si)
Ease of Installation 3 8 6
Usability 3 9 8Scan Control Capability 3 9 9
Reporting and Documentation
3 10 8
Crawling and Parsing 5 9 10
Vulnerability Identification 5 9 7
Performance 4 7 8Cost and License 5 8 7
Total Score 266 245
Conclusion and Recommendation
Rational AppScan is a clear winner and hence a better tool to fulfill the requirements prescribed by Blue Crystal Inc.
Number of attacks sent by AppScan were more as compared to WebInspect for exposing the vulnerabilities in the test website.
AppScan provides in depth description of the detected vulnerabilities including possible causes, technical description and fixing recommendation whereas WebInspect provides only recommendations, required from development point of view.
References
http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/appscan/, http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/
software.html http://en.wikipedia.org
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