API Testing
Recognizing the API's emerging significance, penetration testing is imperative to strengthen API security.
Infrastructure Assessments
Essentials and significance of APIs security
Contemporary web applications have widened their vulnerability scope, with APIs becoming a more substantial point of exposure compared to their user interfaces. Consequently, safeguarding APIs has evolved into a paramount concern, necessitating comprehensive offensive penetration testing.
In the domain of safeguarding a website, API security testing acts as its vigilant protector, ensuring that essential security measures are firmly in place. Our approach involves carefully replicating the strategies and methods that potential hackers might employ, all with the aim of uncovering any hidden vulnerabilities or unusual behavior within the intricate connections of your enterprise website.
Investigative Process
Before commencing this investigative journey, Velar Networks's team carefully maps out the specific areas of your website that require scrutiny, precisely indicating where your website ingests information and where it delivers results. Our testing team develops custom tests, involving the submission of unexpected inputs to your website, similar to what a hacker might attempt.
When this investigative process concludes, a detailed report is generated. This report reveals any uncovered weaknesses or issues that our testers found while scrutinizing the core workings of your website. These discoveries could range from identifying sneaky attempts to infiltrate using rogue commands like SQL and OS techniques, other manipulative methods to bypass standard security checks, identification of pathways that may lead to unexpected areas, and even the exposure of vulnerabilities such as fragile points in your website's defenses, improperly configured settings, or unintentional exposure of sensitive data. In essence, our API security testing ensures that your website's defenses are robust and resilient, protecting it against the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats.
Application Risk Assessment
Threat Modelling
The application's threat profile comprehensively outlines potential vulnerabilities, risks, and associated threats. This empowers testers to execute tailored test plans that simulate hacker tactics, allowing us to pinpoint actual risks beyond the generic vulnerabilities detected by automated scans, thus minimizing false positives.
Application Mapping
We delve into the specific characteristics of the application and align them with various facets within the threat profile. This includes aspects such as key chains, brute-force attacks, parameter tampering, malicious input, fuzzing, session IDs, time lockouts, error and exception handling, as well as logs and log access control.
Client Side Risks
Our focus on client-side attack simulation revolves around interactions with local storage, encryption practices, the use of modules with known vulnerabilities, and the security of API calls. With the implementation of appropriate access controls, we aim to mitigate these risks effectively.
Network Side Risks
To assess network layer vulnerabilities, we simulate attacks that scrutinize communication channels by capturing and evaluating network traffic. This evaluation occurs as data traverses between the application and servers, to identify potential weaknesses in transport-layer protection.
Server Side Risks
Backend components like web services and APIs are pivotal to the application's intended functionality. Our testing team rigorously simulates attacks against these components to ensure the robustness of the web application's overall security posture.
Database Risks
We scrutinize backend elements such as microservices, data storage, cache and memory usage, and data encryption—especially concerning authentication data, personally identifiable information, and other sensitive data. Our goal is to fortify the security of these critical data assets.Review & Coverage
Performing a penetration test on API endpoints to assess their vulnerability to a range of common and critical API security risks, encompassing a subset of the widely recognized OWASP API Top 10 vulnerabilities.
Vulnerability Simulation
API security testing involves crafting scenarios that mimic potential attacks. It aims to provoke vulnerabilities and unintended behaviors in the API, much like a hacker would attempt.
Input Fuzzing
Testers create custom inputs to see how the API responds. This can reveal how the API handles unexpected or malicious data, helping identify vulnerabilities like injection attacks.
Authentication and Authorization Analysis
The testing process evaluates how the API verifies user identities (authentication) and grants access to resources (authorization). This helps uncover weak points in user access control.
Data Privacy Assessment
API security testing checks if sensitive data remains protected during transit and storage, ensuring encryption and data masking are effective.
Protocol and Parameter Inspection
Testers scrutinize the API protocols and parameters to detect flaws. This involves assessing how data is transmitted, including header and payload examination.
Error Handling Examination
The handling of errors, such as revealing too much information in error messages, is reviewed to prevent potential information leakage.
Security Configuration Review
The test delves into the API's security settings, ensuring proper configurations are in place to fend off common vulnerabilities.
Third-Party Component Analysis
APIs often depend on external components. Testers inspect these dependencies for vulnerabilities that might impact the API's security.
Scalability and Load Testing
Ensures the API remains secure and stable under heavy loads, preventing attacks like DDoS.
Compliance and Standards Check
The API's adherence to industry security standards and compliance regulations is assessed.
Access Control Verification
Tests ensure that only authorized users can access specific endpoints and actions.
Data Integrity Assurance
The testing guarantees that data sent and received through the API remains accurate and unaltered.
Code Review and Static Analysis
The API's source code is examined for security flaws and vulnerabilities that could be exploited.
Dynamic Analysis
Involves real-time monitoring of API interactions during testing, allowing the identification of anomalies and potential threats.
In our pursuit of identifying elusive vulnerabilities, we employ advanced techniques, as we take a holistic approach to testing by ensuring comprehensive coverage of all components involved.
- Injection : Test for code injection vulnerabilities in API inputs.
- Broken Authentication : Evaluate authentication and session management flaws.
- Sensitive Data Exposure : Identify exposed confidential information.
- XML External Entities (XXE) : Detect XML parsing vulnerabilities.
- Broken Access Control : Assess inadequate access restrictions.
- Security Misconfigurations : Check for poorly configured security settings.
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) : Uncover script injection vulnerabilities.
- Insecure Deserialization : Examine flawed data deserialization processes.
- Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities : Identify risky software components.
- Insufficient Logging and Monitoring : Evaluate inadequate event tracking.
