There are a number of reasons to use source code to assist in web application penetration testing such as making better use of penetration testers’ time, providing penetration testers with deeper insight into system behavior, and highlighting specific sections of so development teams can remediate vulnerabilities faster. Examples of these are provided using the open source ThreadFix plugin for the OWASP ZAP proxy and dynamic application security testing tool. These show opportunities attendees have to enhance their own penetration tests given access to source code.
This presentation covers the “ABCs” of source code assisted web application penetration testing: covering issues of attack surface enumeration, backdoor identification, and configuration issue discovery. Having access to the source lets an attacker enumerate all of the URLs and parameters an application exposes – essentially its attack surface. Knowing these allows pen testers greater application coverage during testing. In addition, access to source code can help to identify potential backdoors that have been intentionally added to the system. Comparing the results of blind spidering to a full attack surface model can identify items of interest such as hidden admin consoles or secret backdoor parameters. Finally, the presentation examines how access to source code can help identify configuration settings that may have an adverse impact on the security of the deployed application.
