Thursday, 12 June 2014

What are the complexities involved in Security testing project for an online retail firm? Do you think the majority of the issues are related to payment and checkout process or do you find other vulnerable areas as well?

It is good thing to create a flexible and fast environment for customers who like quick transactions on retail websites. Thinking of this as a time saving feature customers are taking a major risk of saving bank cards' details over the internet. Looking at the current phase of change in retail area and rapid growth of e-commerce website, we can say that we are very near to the future of "Neighborhood without shops". However to get this thing to reality and to build an ecosystem of online retail. We definitely have to create trust among others to switch to online shopping.

The main problem is customer's card details getting saved on servers, e-commerce websites involve in saving card details for future transactions that is a major risk. In today's world we cannot trust any brand but still we are bound to do that and we stick to a particular website on buying stuff through it. We are no stranger to threats related to internet transaction and we know that hackers sit down to break the code to get the valuable information. To make the confidentiality with data integrity is a main thing to be considered in e-commerce products. There are chances that level of encryption is not that up to par with the standard security models. What if the user while creating a new account on e-commerce websites the login page is hacked and the accounts are duplicated by the hacker, Also to the check the session time-outs on maximum and minimum load because there can be chances that when sessions are not expired one can easily login with the same user details available on the website and then can modify personal information like delivery address, email address etc. An e-commerce website should not be just secure to payment threats but also for personal information as well. It is us, the QA who have to make sure that there are no flaws in the system's valid encryption and even if there are some available threats then to reveal them.


What if that particular brand's server gets hit by a major security threat on vulnerable areas? What if while deploying new feature the old application's security gets hampered by incorrect logic and it becomes vulnerable and prone to attacks? User's data is always in jeopardy. More over it is not a just the server it is also the browser which saves the data at the time of transaction e.g. Firefox is always prone to these kind of threats and saves the important content without user's consent or their knowledge. So we have to think of applications which can stop the browsers to do that. Moreover at the time of checkout there can be hackers sitting in taking pass-codes from the users which is the major problem and users get affected by the theft of information. As the application gets complex more stringent rules and testing should be applied on the application so that we as a customer can be at a safe point. The major threat what we see right now is indulgence of mobile app world to it. Although we download the apps from trusted Application market. However there can be threat of losing personal data. Most of the applications, there are chances that there are spyware, adware or any other malicious code can fetch data out of the mobile phones like saved passwords, phone numbers etc. Trust plays a vital role in any business so we can only do that by performing security testing on the applications.

Sunday, 23 December 2012

Security Testing Techniques


Discuss the various security testing techniques required to test desktop and web Applications security.


We are at present living in the age of technology and the internet has matured to new heights during the decade.
All the work, whether it be purchasing merchandise like software, books etc or booking a railway or flight ticket is now generally done via the internet. This shows the amount of security which is there and is required for keeping the applications safe from unwanted loss or modification.Security means restricting the unauthorized access and granting private data access to authorized requests.

There are certain areas to test to make an application secure and there are several techniques to test it:

1. Data security:
The data of any application is one of the most important thing to be secured, so users with proper access should be granted proper permissions and proper encryption techniques should be there so that the data is secured properly.

2. Mechanisms to contain Brute-Force Attack:
Brute-Force Attack is a type of attack where the software tries to match the password by applying matching passwords so web servers restrict that by restricting the entry of wrong passwords to a specific number of times.

3. Accessing the data which a user is entitled to:
For example a specific type of user is concerned to a specific type of data and (s)he should be entitled to access that data, for that mechanisms like multilevel password protection is there.

4. Data Protection:
All the important data in Database must be encrypted. Tester should query database for passwords, credit card numbers & bank information and make sure that they are encrypted. S/he should also confirm that private data which is transmitted over internet is in encrypted format and successfully gets decrypted when it reach its destination.

5.Brute-Force Attack:
In this, attacker tries to find the password of a UserID by attempting to login again and again with different combinations of password using some software. Tester should confirm security by making sure that application blocks the access to account for some time in case multiple invalid login attempts has been made.

6. XSS (cross site scripting) and SQL Injection:
In this, attacker manipulate the websites by using malicious scripts. Tester should confirm security against these kind of attacks by making sure that input fields length are small enough so that attacker cannot input any script in it. Tester should also verify that proper validation are applied to fields which require long inputs i.e. user should not be allowed to use special characters like ‘<’ in these fields.

7. Access to Application:
Access to either desktop or web applications should be grated to only authorize requests. To test this, tester can create several user accounts with single and multiple roles and then can use these accounts to test the application. S/he should make sure that every account is only allowed to access its own module and access to other modules is prohibited.

Monday, 17 December 2012

Security Testing Techniques

Discuss the various security testing techniques required to test desktop and web Applications security.


“Security testing techniques include a lot many ways to check whether the system is protected from any external threats. One of the techniques is Brute Force attack, the idea behind this technique to prevent the access for a user who attempts to break the password by guessing it. The system tries to match a valid id with a password by repetitive logins. To protect the system against such a threat, account blocking is the one way in which the account is locked for a duration (30 minutes to 24 hours) after a specific number of incorrect attempts. It is very easy to test this type of the security of the application; the tester needs to attempt to login again and again with invalid user Ids or passwords.

On the other hand sometimes the hackers use the malicious scripts to manipulate the websites, which is called the SQL injection. To check whether the site is secure or not, a tester need to check the all the input fields to be limited in length and should not accept any script or tag inputs. The input fields should accept some limited special characters.”


Software industry is well recognized in this century. Cyber world has become more advanced and dominating in every form of business.

Various security techniques are evolved for testing desktop and web applications.Some of them are following:-

1) Access to Application: For both web and desktop applications, security to access is achieved through 'Roles and Management'. For checking this scrutinized testing of entire roles and responsibility is required.

2) Data Protection: Data protection is very important perspective in security. Entire data should be protected through encryption. Tester should use query to inspect the passwords of users, business critical data.

3) SQL Injection and XSS: In this despiteful script is used by hackers to change application. Tester should ensure that utmost lengths of inputs are prescribed.

4) Service Access Points: In today’s world, every business is collaborative process. This type of phenomena is also applicable for application sites. For mutual collaboration, access points are defined for each other. For security cases, access can be locked for redundant elements. In testing point of view, the inter and intra -network access should only be granted to trusted applications.

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Monday, 24 September 2012

Can open source and commercial testing tools effectively be used together for security Testing Services?

There is no doubt that using open source and commercial tools together in our project will affect the cost of the project. Nowadays, open source tools become so user friendly and customizable that they can be used very effectively like commercial tools, up to some extent. We also agree that commercial tools are much more powerful and user friendly than the open source tools but when the budget of the project is low then we can opt for open source tools. In open source tools we have to customize the code as per our requirements and there is no support provided. Dealing with new technologies would become a challenging task using open source tools. On the other hand, commercial tools are expensive but provide support for new technologies as well. Organization should opt for the best possible tool depending upon the project cost and the complexity.

Though open source tools are cost effective, they come along with little to no support. If a tester knows coding, then he will evolve to shortcuts and work-a-rounds in order to get things done. If that tester leaves and the new tester does not know coding then it becomes very difficult to support the tool. The code for the tool will either have to be rewritten or an awful lot of time spent to interpret what the predecessor did.
On the other hand most commercial tools are expensive and constantly being updated as technologies and needs change. The commercial tools usually have an extended family of users who are willing to share their experiences. Though both open source and Commercial testing tools can be used together, however it is important to make your selection considering all the aspects.


Both open source and commercial testing tools has their own benefits. However, usually QA Team prefers commercials tools over open source tools as they are easily usable with little or less training. Also most popular commercials tools would have larger number of people within the knowledge base. But today the interest of the QA Team is shifting towards Open source tools as they reduced the dependencies on specific product/toolset and above all they are cost effective. Moreover as per my experience I believe both commercial and open source tools can be used together because mixture of both would ensure cost optimization and testing reliability.

For more on this, please log on to:- http://www.qainfotech.com/methodology.html

Monday, 3 September 2012

Security Testing Services


In today’s world software is everywhere, in Computers, mobile phones, TV, aero plane etc. All these appliances are connected to the internet. Software applications are being used by people all over the world. Application security testing is a must for software products to succeed in today’s world. Security testing takes a different mindset than functional QA testing.

For more on this, log on to: - http://www.qainfotech.com/security_testing_services.html

Thursday, 9 August 2012

Security Testing Services


Security Testing Services playing a very crucial role in protecting the important data’s and their functionality of the IT Industries. Security Testing Services are the essential need of all the IT firms. Its few components enhance its usability to higher extent. They are Non-repudiation, Availability and Authorization etc.
For more on this, please log on to: http://securitytestingservices.blogspot.in/

Monday, 6 August 2012

Security Testing Services


How Security testing does take a different mindset than functional QA testing?
"Security testing takes a different mindset than functional QA testing.

In the case of Input Validation a functional QA engineer can use worst scenarios to verify the functionality of component or features but on the other end a security engineer goes deeper and the thinking of this engineer would be like a malicious user as he must think how to break and abuse the application. Security testing is the type of testing which is used to identify risks in the system beyond the functional testing. A software security tester is free to focus directly on areas of code in which on attack is likely to succeed but functional QA testers are not able to do so.
For further details, please visit at: http://www.qainfotech.com/index.html