Comprehensive Penetration Testing
A simulated hacker attack is called VAPT, Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking, or Security Audit. Pen Test mimics the actions of an actual attacker exploiting the security weaknesses of a network or application without the usual dangers of a cyber attack. VAPT examines internal and external IT infrastructure and applications for security vulnerabilities that could be used to disrupt the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the network, thereby allowing the organization to address each weakness. VAPT is mandatory for risk assessment in information security compliance like ISO 27001, PCI DSS, etc, and pen testing services prices depend on the type of test and assets or applications that need to be covered under VAPT.
For Internal Penetration Testing, risk analysis of the IT components behind the classic firewall infrastructure takes place. All components, including servers, workstations, network devices, VPN, and MPLS are subjected to a detailed analysis during this network pen test. During External Penetration Testing, security vulnerabilities with Public IPs, Firewalls, and DMZ are identified that could be exploited by hackers. External risk analysis usually begins with a detailed reconnaissance phase to understand the security measures in place for the external penetration testing.
A firewall configuration review can also be conducted as part of firewall pen-testing. Cloud Pen Testing helps organizations improve their overall cloud security to avoid breaches and achieve compliance. It also provides the organizations with better insights into the vulnerabilities existing with their cloud assets.
During Network Penetration Testing, we simulate hacker attacks on the client’s system or network and applications. Using a combination of popular pen testing tools, proprietary scripts, and manual testing, we do our best to penetrate the network in a non-harmful way during the pentest exercise. After the pen-testing exercise, our pen testers point out all the flaws in the client’s network and applications along with mitigation advice to fix the same. This helps the client to improve infrastructure, configuration, and processes as needed to strengthen security. Penetration Test cost depends on the type of test and the number of devices or applications covered. The number of Public IPs or applications defines the external penetration testing cost.
The following components are analyzed during a VAPT exercise :
> Network structure (wired, wireless, VPN, MPLS)
> Network Access Control
> Man-in-the-middle attacks
> Password Strength
> Authentication
> Default or weak passwords
> Brute-force attacks
> Configuration errors
> Vulnerability analysis of Operating Systems, Servers and Applications
> Analysis of virtual structures, access and authorization system for virtual environments
> Wardialing & Wardriving
> Verification of the Gateway components (firewall, packet filtering, IPS, etc)
> Penetration tests on the identified weaknesses
Types of Penetration Testing (VAPT)
Our Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing tests the ability of the target’s security control in blocking or preventing attacks. VAPT can be conducted in the following methods to simulate different attack scenarios under internal & external penetration testing services.
Black Box– No information regarding the target other than host URL/IP is collected during this Pen Testing. This pentest is mostly done for periodic regulatory or standard audit requirements for systems that have not changed since the last audit or for industry-standard systems like Firewalls, Operating Systems, and well-known applications.
White Box– Full information regarding the target application including user credentials for various roles is collected during this ethical hacking exercise. This method is recommended for thorough security testing of the security robustness of the deployed system. It is recommended for newly developed systems, systems after an update or upgrade, web applications, e-commerce applications, systems handling critical information, etc.
Grey Box– It is something in between the black box and white box, with limited information regarding the target like IP, Hostname, service details, and channels.
Our team of qualified ethical hackers uses multiple tools for scanning that includes commercial as well as open-source tools. VA scans are done using automated scanning software, assessments can scan OWAPS Top vulnerabilities, as well as other known vulnerabilities. For Web application Penetration Testing, we follow OWASP V4 testing framework. Cost-effective Web Application & Mobile Application Testing
Web Application Penetration Testing helps in identifying the vulnerabilities present in Web Applications, APIs, and Web Services. It can be performed as a Black box, Grey Box, or White Box testing. Mobile Application Penetration Testing checks for vulnerabilities in iOS and Android mobile applications.
We conduct a simulated manual attack on the client’s mobile apps, web applications, and portals. We use the same techniques a skilled attacker would use – but without harming the application. Instead, we point out the security flaws in the client’s application. Based on the result, we assist our client to improve the security of the application in a sustainable way. Web applications, mobile applications, and portals provide a wide range of attack vectors for hackers.
Web Application Pen Testing: Our penetration tester will use a combination of automated and manual techniques to identify security vulnerabilities in the application that could allow the disclosure of sensitive information or the disruption of services by outside attackers. The tester will use a comprehensive testing methodology that will identify security vulnerabilities from the OWASP Top 10 as well as security vulnerabilities that are specific to the application itself.
Web Services / API VAPT: An API pen test imitates an attacker specifically targeting a custom set of API endpoints and attempting to undermine the security. Our team will follow an assessment according to our API penetration testing methodology.
We check for the following among others during the Web Application VA/PT exercise:
• Injections – SQL Injection, LDAP Injection, Xpath Injection, OS Commands, program arguments.
• Session Management – Session timeouts, predictable session generation, authentication strength, session stealing session ID, password hashing, improper session transmission, session fixation, and session prediction.
• Cross-Site Scripting – Stored, reflected, DOM Based XSS.
• Direct Object References
• Security Misconfiguration – Unnecessary ports, services pages, and accounts, default account passwords, administrative pages, patching levels for operating systems, web servers, supporting databases, modules, and applications.
• Sensitive Data Exposure – Hashed passwords, encrypted ciphers, cryptographic keys management.
• Function Level Access Control
• Cross-Site Request Forgery – Examining the construct and format of URLs, examining how a session state is maintained.
• Components with Known Vulnerabilities
• Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards – Remote and local file inclusion, directory traversal, the insecure configuration of backend databases, Inappropriate information in source code
• Service Discovery – Management protocols such as SSH or Telnet, email services, domain services, file management protocols such as FTP or Samba, other services present on the system.
• Server Vulnerability Assessment
• Common Misconfigurations
• Backdoors and Rogue Services
Mobile Application Pen Testing: Our approach to VA PT will make use of dynamic and static analysis to test all accessible features within the mobile application are covered. Our testing approach will use a virtual machine (Android) and physical phones that are jailbroken or rooted for (iOS and Android). This helps us cover all features using automated analysis as well as manual testing within the scope. The testing will be based on the OWASP – Mobile Security Testing Guide (MSTG). The vulnerability report will be based on the OWASP Mobile Top 10.
• Testing coverage for data security at rest – Investigate using a malicious application, if the data can be accessed or recovered across application and the cross-application boundary is secure, identify if the application exposes any Personally Identifiable Information (PII), API keys, passwords, or any other application contextual sensitive data, verify that any sensitive content stored locally is encrypted, Applications are resilient to reverse engineering and tampering attacks.
• Testing coverage for data security in transit – Multi-Factor authentication cannot be bypassed, or brute-forced, usage of strong encryption, inter-application redirects are secure and cannot be tampered with, session hijacking, client-side security, hidden URL schemes exposing access to development environments, application hooking and run time manipulation, bypass any application restrictions, such as features that are shipped but disabled, review code for hardcoded secrets.
• Client-Side – Static and Dynamic Analysis – Reverse engineering the application code, hard-coded credentials on source code, insecure version of Android OS installation, cryptographic based storage strength, poor key management process, use of custom encryption protocols, unrestricted backup file, unencrypted database files, insecure shared storage, insecure application data storage, information disclosure through Logcat/Apple System Log (ASL), application Backgrounding (Screenshot), URL Caching (HTTP Request and Response) on cache.db, keyboard press caching, copy/paste buffer caching, remember credentials functionality (persistent authentication), client-side based authentication flaws, client-side authorization breaches, insufficient WebView hardening (XSS), content providers: SQL Injection and local file inclusion, injection (SQLite Injection, XML Injection), local file inclusion through NSFileManager or Webviews, abusing android components through IPC intents, abusing URL schemes, unauthorized code modification, debug the application behavior through runtime analysis
• Server-Side – Web Services/API Calls – Bypass SSL pining, Excessive port opened at firewall, default credentials on the application server, service catalog, exposure of web services through WSDL document, security misconfiguration on Webserver, input validation on API, information exposure through API response message, bypassing business logic flaws, session invalidation on the backend, session timeout protection, cookie rotation, token creation.
Firewall Penetration Testing: Firewall VA PT evaluates the security of the Firewall using the security audit to identify vulnerabilities in the Firewall. The results of the firewall pen testing will help the organization to enhance the security of their Network Firewall.
Cloud Penetration Testing: Cloud PenTesting assess the weaknesses and strengths of your public and private instance on the cloud with cloud computing platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP & more. It assesses Azure Active Directory, Amazon Web Services workloads, serverless functions, or Kubernetes to ensure that your cloud networks are safe and secure. Cloud penetration testing examines the security of cloud applications, configurations, passwords, encryption, APIs, databases, and storage access.
How much does penetration testing cost?
Penetration test pricing depends on the type of VAPT testing. Network penetration testing services prices depend on the number of assets covered during the pen test. Web Application penetration testing services cost is calculated based on the type of test conducted (Black box or Grey box or White box) and the number of web applications. Mobile Application pen test pricing depends on the number of applications and mobile platform. The same mobile applications in Android and iOS are considered as two separate applications for calculating pen test costs. External penetration testing cost is calculated based on the number of Public IPs and external applications.
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Penetration Testing Report Sample
Penetration Testing Scope
Our Penetration Testing services in Canada covers below scope
Vulnerability Assessment (VA):- Our Security Consultants will use industry best standard tools, methodologies, and as well as custom scripts and tools to conduct a thorough vulnerability analysis on the target systems and report them based on severity.
Exploitation (Penetration Testing-PT):- The results of the vulnerability identification are paired with their expert knowledge and experience, to finally conduct a manual security analysis of the target systems. Our assessors attempt to exploit and gain remote unauthorized access to data and systems. Tests will also be conducted if these exploits could be escalated in any possible ways using social engineering techniques to escalate to higher privilege or other directly connected systems with higher trust levels using privilege escalation techniques.
Methodology
While other forms of security audits provide a theoretical articulation of vulnerability using automated scanning tools, our security testing demonstrates real-world attack techniques against vulnerabilities providing unique visibility into security risks automated tools often miss. To ensure high quality, repeatable engagements, our penetration testing methodology follows these steps:
Information Gathering: All security testing assessment starts with information gathering. We use Open-source intelligence (OSINT) framework to collect data from publicly available sources to be used in an intelligence context. Through information gathering, a great deal of actionable and predictive intelligence can be obtained from public, open-source, unclassified sources.
Enumeration: This process begins with detailed scanning and research into the architecture and environment, to discover potential attack vectors in the system, and the same can be used for further exploitation of the system.
Automated Testing: Once the target has been fully enumerated, we use both vulnerability scanning tools and manual analysis to identify security flaws. With vast experience, in-depth technical knowledge, and custom-built tools, our security engineers find weaknesses most automated scanners generally miss.
Exploration and Verification: At this stage of the assessment, our consultants review all previous data to identify and safely exploit identified application vulnerabilities. Once sensitive access has been obtained, the focus turns to escalation and movement to identify technical risk and total business impact. During each phase of the compromise, we keep client stakeholders informed of testing progress, ensuring asset safety and stability.
Privilege Escalation: Once a vulnerability is exploited, the privilege accrued through the exploitation is further exploited to gain higher privilege or escalate the access level. Privileges escalation demonstrates real-world threats and attacks to systems in scope and other systems on the connected network.
Assessment Reporting: Once the engagement is complete, a detailed analysis and threat report, including remediation steps, is developed. We provide clear and concise reports, prioritizing the highest risk vulnerabilities first.
Retesting: At the conclusion of the remediation, we will provide a retest of the target to validate the effectiveness of remediation. We will provide an updated report with a new risk level.
Pen Testing Tools
We use multiple pentesting tools which include commercial, open-source tools as well as custom scripts to gain access to applications and networks. PT relies extensively on manual testing and verification of each potential vulnerability identified by various tools. Frequently used tools include:
• Nessus Professional
• Core Impact
• Burp Suite Professional
• Metasploit
• Zap
• Sqlmap
• Nmap
• Nikto
• Wireshark /tcpdump
• Fidler
• Hydra
We use many more tools, and scripts that are apt for the target and scope. Our professional team of Cybersecurity experts comprises a pool of highly qualified and skilled professionals with experience in handling complex and very demanding requirements from a diverse set of clients. We are a penetration test company in Canada and our Pen Testers have vast experience in various industry verticals such as Banking, Insurance, Retail, Hospitality, Construction etc. with certifications in specialized areas such as CISSP, OSCP, CISA, CEH, etc.
Source Code Review can also be done to verify the security of the source code of your application.