Building a Test Suite for Web Application Scanners

Published

January 7, 2008

Author(s)

Elizabeth N. Fong, Romain Gaucher, Vadim Okun, Paul E. Black, Eric Dalci

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a test suite for thorough evaluation of web application scanners. Web application scanners are automated, black-box testing tools that examine web applications for security vulnerabilities. For several common vulnerability types, we classify defense mechanisms that can be implemented to prevent corresponding attacks. We combine the defense mechanisms into ''levels of defense'' of increasing strength. This approach allows us to develop an extensive test suite that can be easily configured to switch on and off vulnerability types and select a level of defense. We evaluate the test suite experimentally using several web application scanners, both open-source and proprietary. The experiments suggest that the test suite is effective at distinguishing the tools based on their vulnerability detection rate; in addition, its use can suggest areas for tool improvement.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)

Conference Location

, USA

Conference Title

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)

Pub Type

Conferences

Citation

Fong, E. , Gaucher, R. , Okun, V. , Black, P. and Dalci, E. (2008), Building a Test Suite for Web Application Scanners, Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), , USA (Accessed October 9, 2025)