Web Application Penetration Testing Services

Complete Web Application Penetration Testing services against your front-end, back-end (API), and mobile applications.

We thought our web application was secure until Blue Goat tested it. They discovered a major issue that our last pen test company missed. We're glad we found Blue Goat when we did.
Blue Goat Cyber Web Application Penetration Test Review
Stacy Whitehouse
Compliance Lead

Steps to Schedule Your Web Application Penetration Test:

blue goat cyber penetration testing

Are your web applications secure? We validate this for you with a Web Application Penetration Test (includes both Black and Gray Box Testing). Web applications are the most frequently attacked systems on the Internet and are often the most insecure.

We emulate an attacker by utilizing similar techniques to perform reconnaissance, identify vulnerabilities, and break into your systems. Unlike an attacker, however, we stop our test before exposing sensitive data or doing harm to your environment. We start our web application penetration testing with a Black Box (Unauthenticated) Penetration Test –  this means we have unauthenticated access and little prior knowledge, except the URLs, about the systems in scope. 

We then move to a Gray Box (Authenticated) Penetration Test of each system in scope. With a Gray Box Penetration Test, we have “user” level knowledge and access to a system. A Gray Box Penetration Test is used to test an application that supports multiple users by testing authenticated user access to ensure one user cannot access another user’s data or escalate privileges. We test your application using a sample of authenticated users with various roles. We log on to the application as that user and perform testing to see if we can perform any of the following:

Horizontal Privilege Escalation – where an authenticated user can access another user’s data. An example of horizontal privilege escalation is a bank application, where an authenticated user’s account number appears in a URL. If I can change the account number in the URL to another account number and access another user’s banking information, I’ve just performed a horizontal privilege escalation.

Vertical Privilege Escalation – where an authenticated user can escalate privileges to an administrator-level account. An example of this is a web application with a value representing the username in a hidden field that is returned after successful authentication. What would happen if we changed the value from ‘username’ to ‘root’ or ‘administrator’ and passed this back to the web application server?

WEB APPLICATION PENETRATION TESTING COVERAGE

Our Web Application Penetration Test covers the OWASP Top 10 and all web vulnerabilities and exploits, including the following, at a minimum:
  • SQL injection (Blind, Inference, Classic, Compounded)
  • OS command injection (Informed, Blind)
  • Server-side code injection
  • Server-side template injection
  • Reflected XSS
  • Stored XSS
  • Reflected DOM issues
  • Stored DOM issues
  • File path traversal / manipulation
  • External / out-of-band interaction
  • HTTP header injection
  • XML / SOAP injection
  • LDAP injection
  • CSRF
  • Open redirection
  • Header manipulation
  • Server-level issues
Our Web Application Penetration Test also covers the CWE / SANS Top 25 programming errors, including the following, as applicable:
  • Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
  • Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (‘Cross-site Scripting’)
  • Improper Input Validation
  • Information Exposure
  • Out-of-bounds Read
  • Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’)
  • Use After Free
  • Integer Overflow or Wraparound
  • Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF)
  • Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (‘Path Traversal’)
  • Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’)
  • Out-of-bounds Write
  • Improper Authentication
  • NULL Pointer Dereference
  • Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
  • Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
  • Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference
  • Improper Control of Generation of Code (‘Code Injection’)
  • Use of Hard-coded Credentials
  • Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime
  • Untrusted Search Path
  • Deserialization of Untrusted Data
  • Improper Privilege Management
  • Improper Certificate Validation

WEB APPLICATION PENETRATION TESTING METHODOLOGY

We follow a seven-phase methodology designed to maximize our efficiency, minimize risk, and provide complete and accurate results. The overarching seven phases of the methodology are:

  1. Planning and Preparation
  2. Reconnaissance / Discovery
  3. Vulnerability Enumeration / Analysis
  4. Initial Exploitation
  5. Expanding Foothold / Deeper Penetration
  6. Cleanup
  7. Report Generation

BENEFITS / RETURN ON INVESTMENT

It is better to have an ethical hacker find the holes in your enterprise than an adversary. Our Web Application Penetration Testing Services provide details on exploitable web vulnerabilities in a prioritized, tangible manner. Our report allows you to understand better what your web application looks like from an attacker’s perspective; what the “attack surface” looks like. This helps you prioritize efforts to mitigate risk to reduce data breach likelihood.

Not only do our Web Application Penetration Testing Services show you what your attack surface looks like to an adversary, but they can also be used as a safe way to test your organization’s incident response capabilities. Our Penetration Testing services can also be used to tune and test your security controls, such as your IDS, Firewall, Web Application Firewall (WAF), Router Access Control Lists (ACLs), etc.

Our Web Application Penetration Testing services also help you meet compliance audit requirements such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2 Type 2, and NIST.

DELIVERABLE

The Web Application Penetration Test Report includes URLs tested, vulnerabilities discovered, steps taken during the assessment, exploitable areas discovered, and prioritized recommendations.  For any systems we exploit, an “Attack Narrative” section is used to discuss step-by-step the process we used to gain access, escalate privileges, etc. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, we perform the Black Box Penetration Test first, then perform the Gray Box. Our report shows which test the finding is linked to and which role, if we test multiple user roles for the Gray Box test.
We typically issue the Letter of Attestation after we perform the ReTest. This allows you to fix any issues we identify in the initial penetration test.

Top 10 Penetration Testing Decision Factors

If we do not find at least one vulnerability with a risk rating of Low or greater, we will refund 100% of your money, minus any incurred expenses.

Our purpose is simple — to make your organization secure

The number of cybersecurity incidents continues to climb. The variety of attacks continues to grow. It is no longer a question of if you will have a cyber event.