Manual Request Tools

The manual request component of the integrated test suites provides the basic facility to issue a single request and view its response. Though simple, this function is often extremely beneficial when you are probing a tentative vulnerability and need to reissue the same request manually several times, tweaking elements of the request to determine the … Read more

Securing Access Controls

Access controls are one of the easiest areas of web application security to understand, although a well-informed, thorough methodology must be carefully applied when implementing them. First, there are several obvious pitfalls to avoid. These usually arise from ignorance about the essential requirements of effective access control or flawed assumptions about the kinds of requests that … Read more

Attacking Session Management

The session management mechanism is a fundamental security component in the majority of web applications. It is what enables the application to uniquely identify a given user across a number of different requests, and to handle the data that it accumulates about the state of that user’s interaction with the application. Where an application implements … Read more

HTTPS

The HTTP protocol uses plain TCP as its transport mechanism, which is unencrypted and so can be intercepted by an attacker who is suitably positioned on the network. HTTPS is essentially the same application-layer protocol as HTTP, but this is tunneled over the secure transport mechanism, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This protects the privacy and integrity … Read more