What is Automated Penetration Testing?
$23 trillion. It is the expected annual average cost of cybercrime in 2027 which was $8.4 trillion in 2022, according to the citation of Anne Neuberger, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for cyber and emerging technologies from their digital briefing.
The need for proactive cybersecurity measures in your organization is a necessity and no more a question.
Penetration testing, also known as pentesting is the technique of attempting to break into your systems. This will be done with your prior knowledge and approval with an intention to simulate how a real world bad actor would try to attack your applications.
Not just the applications, but your entire IT infrastructure can be pentested. For example, the people element also known as the employees can be tested to find potential threats using simulated phishing attacks.
Automated penetration testing is a speedier solution to securing your business by detecting, analysing, and remediating vulnerabilities in your digital assets including web applications and APIs.
This blog is the outcome of our team’s research on the sub-topics in and around automated penetration testing, its comparison with manual penetration testing, benefits and its limitations, process behind it, which is better and why it is.
Let’s dive deeper into it.
What is Automated Penetration Testing?
Loopholes such as open ports, improper setup, and insecure protocols in networks as well application often act as an easier entry point for the bad actors to your application and assets.
In exercising penetration testing upon your organization, there will be a certain large number of payloads and test cases on each endpoint of the application are repeated.
As per the industry best practice, automation is applied in situations of testing such as fuzzing. It is the process of inputting multiple random, invalid, or unexpected inputs to a field to see if it crashes or behaves in an unexpected manner.
The expected outcome would often be merely a 0.1 percent of the entire automated penetration testing process and would take a lot of time in case performed manually.
Automated penetration testing involves the usage of specially developed software to detect security flaws and misconfigurations in the infrastructure of your application and APIs. This strategy involves an adversarial approach.
It is the technique of identifying and escalating vulnerabilities to its maximum potential level of criticality as done by any cyber threat actor. Check on the critical assets of your business to least important endpoints are tested to understand the possible attack in a real world scenario.
Vulnerability scanning in your network, web and mobile applications, password cracking attempts, and security misconfiguration assessment are the key areas where automated penetration testing is usually employed.
The automated web application penetration testing usually evaluates for vulnerabilities such as injection attacks (such as SQL, CRLF, LDAP, prompt, and mail command), broken authentication, and scripting attacks such as classifications of XSS.
Automated Penetration Testing vs. Manual Penetration Testing
Manual penetration testing primarily depends on human testers' knowledge and innovative thinking to find and exploit vulnerabilities.
With its competitive advantages including flexibility, agility, and critical thinking skills, ethical hackers are able to methodically search through systems looking for flaws that automated tools may overlook.
Also, since the testers and the attackers are human, they are more likely to grasp the purpose and variabilities towards making decisions based on the context which they are investigating matching with what your business demands.
Also, the involvement of people in manual approach as penetration tester and developers helps to ensure proper communication with the key decision makers in each stage of the testing process. This helps to understand areas which need special attention and ensure the same.
Also, the ability to validate the results in a different perspective eliminates the potential errors along with the added benefit of less false positives.
Automated penetration testing process majorly utilizes machines and programs to perform its entire tasks.
The only human intervention in the entire pentesting process would often be in 3 situations, which are as follows:
- During initial configuration
- When the automated software fails and needs troubleshooting
- To view and verify the final report
Also, they are capable of analyzing a vast amount of data and identify patterns and conflicts which a human tester might miss. With the same, it may bypass vulnerabilities which a human tester would be able to see right away in a manual pentesting approach.
Speed, efficiency, cost, and ability to conduct continuous testing are the automated penetration testing benefits for your business needs.
Inability to simulate a real world attack scenario from scratch, over reliance on the preset algorithms and attack patterns, along with the lack of ability to detect business logic issues and zero day vulnerabilities are the key limitations of this approach.
Below is a comprehensive comparison of both the approaches of manual and automated penetration testing based on various factors.
| Comparison aspect | Manual Penetration Testing | Automated Penetration Testing |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | More expensive with the need for skilled professionals with lengthier testing time | Less expensive since it needs lower recurring labor costs. Speedier at initial investment only. |
| Speed | Slower process and the in-depth assessments may take days or weeks | Faster process and can be completed in minutes to a few hours. Best for continuous and routine assessments. |
| Depth/Business Process Discovery | Provides comprehensive analysis that includes business process tests, social tests to address logic flaws, and potential chains of attacks through human relation and creativity | Better at quickly identifying known technical vulnerabilities and flaws. However, it often misses nuanced issues, complex logic flaws, or exploit chains. |
| Scope & Coverage | Highly targeted and customizable, with focus on critical areas of a system | Offers broad coverage across large environments with standardized rules. Usually based on known vulnerabilities. |
| Resource Requirements | Requires highly skilled experts and the testing is highly depends on their expertise | Requires less specialized human intervention after initial setup and can be operated to generate well semi-automated results. However, expert review is needed for result interpretation. |
| Flexibility & Adaptability | Highly adaptable to evolving threats, with testers able to modify approaches and testing methods based on findings | Limited by pre-programmed rules and signatures; requires regular updates to address new or evolving threats. |
| Impact on Systems (Stress on Network) | Better risk level modulate their testing intensity to avoid damaging critical systems | May inadvertently stress or destabilize systems if not properly configured with limiting scope. |
| Reporting & Analysis | Generated detailed, contextual reports with insights, patterns, and specific guidance tailored to the organization and specific environment. | Produces standardized, automated reports that may require some additional manual validation and interpretation. |
| Consistency & Repeatability | Results may vary between tests based on expertise and approach, leading to potential inconsistency | Offers highly consistent results since the same tests are performed under the same controls each time. |
| False Positives/Negatives | Generally achieves lower false positive rates due to human verification and contextual evaluation or validation | Prone to both false positives and negatives due to reliance on predefined signatures and algorithms. |
| Compliance & Regulatory Requirements | Often required by compliance standards for high-stakes assessments like SOC 2, HIPAA, banking industry targets | Useful for fulfilling various compliance scan requirements; however, may not adequate for targeted regulatory requirements. |
| Handling of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities | Skilled testers can sometimes identify & exploit zero-day vulnerabilities through customized tools and techniques | Typically ineffective against zero-day threats, as these tools depend on known vulnerabilities and databases. |
| Evaluation of Private & Social Factors | Can better leverage digital tools to perform social engineering exercises, and evaluate trusted security culture | Limited strictly to digital assessments, usually cannot factor contextual challenges or social engineering attacks. |
Automated Penetration Testing Process
Even though the process of conducting penetration testing varies depending on different platforms by various providers. However, all of them are supposed to contain common features that conduct analysis of systems for vulnerabilities and ability to mimic real world attack situations.
The standard automated penetration testing process involves the following stages:
- Defining scope: The first stage, similar to the manual testing, establishes the testing environment's limits. This involves determining the systems, networks, and applications you want to evaluate, as well as the level of testing required.
This enables the security expert to tailor the automated assessment to necessary areas of the target application, ensuring that the checks are efficient while ensuring least disruption.
- Automated scanning: A range of approaches and tools including vulnerability scanners, network scanners, and web application scanners, are used with an intention.
These scans identify possible loopholes for which attackers could potentially exploit to collect data on the systems and programs functioning on your network.
- Vulnerability analysis: Once the pentesting is done, the data gathered are analysed to find threats by comparing with vulnerability databases.
ISS X-Force database, Symantec/SecurityFocus BID database, the Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB), and National Vulnerability Database (NVD), run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are few of the major references in for the same.
- Vulnerability exploitation: The detected vulnerabilities are exploited to determine its impact on your application as well as business operation and reputation. With this, you will be able to understand the existing threats while gaining fruitful insights on your current security posture.
This plays an important role in taking better informed decisions and allocation of resources wherever necessary.
- Reporting: Following the comprehensive vulnerability assessment and penetration testing, the tools provide extensive reports summarizing the findings, including ratings of severity and recommendations for the necessary correction.
These reports serve as a road map for addressing vulnerabilities and reinforcing your defenses.
Tools Used In Automated Penetration Testing Process
Each process in automated penetration testing is often done comprehensively by a single product suite or separately.
Following are the tools used in each individual steps:
Defining scope:
- Nmap - Infamous network scanning tool which is used to find live hosts, open ports, and running services towards setting the scope of the application.
- Metasploit Pro - Used to define the scope of testing the target hosts, network ranges, and excluded IP addresses.
- OWASP Amass - Helps to map external attack surfaces through gathering subdomains, DNS data, and IP addresses.
Automated scanning:
- Nessus - Vulnerability scanner which detects misconfigurations, outdated patches, and network security flaws.
- OpenVAS - Public and open source vulnerability scanner tool which is used to conduct network security evaluation.
- Acunetix - Used to conduct web application vulnerability assessment, and to detect threats such as SQL injection, XSS and security misconfigurations.
- Nikto - Web server scanner used to assess outdated software, malicious files, and misconfigurations.
- Qualys Web Application Scanning (WAS) - Cloud-based automated web application security assessment tool.
Vulnerability analysis: Burp Suite Enterprise - Software suite with feature of automated scanning along with configuration of scope. Qualys Vulnerability Management (VMDR) - Used to analyze vulnerabilities, prioritize risks, and remediation integration with the team. IBM Security QRadar - SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) tool CVE Details & ExploitDB - Online vulnerability databases used as reference for checking known vulnerabilities.
Vulnerability exploitation: Metasploit Framework - Penetration testing framework that contains automated exploit modules towards testing vulnerabilities. Core Impact - Automated penetration testing tool which has pre-built modules for networks, web applications, and endpoint exploitation. SQLmap - Automated SQL injection attack tool Commix - Automated web application penetration testing tool useful to evaluate injection vulnerabilities.
Reporting: Dradis - Collaboration and reporting tool used by penetration testers to compile the test output in a structured format. Faraday - Automated penetration testing report generation and integration tool. Plextrac - Penetration testing reporting and workflow management platform. Burp Suite Enterprise Reports - Used for web application penetration testing vulnerability report generation.
Why Manual Penetration Testing Still Matters?
Even though we are in a rapid-technological evolution period, manual penetration testing still remains a critical element in any comprehensive security program across the globe.
It can be primarily stated due to the immaturity of artificial intelligence to beat the human brain in various aspects including creative thinking and following the instincts, which are a critical element in any vulnerability discovery process and risk management.
Automated penetration testing tools do excel in detecting known vulnerabilities through matching algorithms and signatures.
However, they have a greater chance of missing subtle threats which demand nuances of business logic interpretations, understanding application workflows, and understanding context-specific behaviours.
A skilled penetration tester will be able to think much like how a real world attacker would do. Their ability to detect logic flaws, zero-day vulnerabilities, and complex access control loopholes is something that even the modern automated testing tools find harder to find.
The possibilities of producing false positives as well as negatives are also yet another key consideration when it comes to automated testing tools. Manual testing has the added feature of allowing the security experts to verify the vulnerabilities in real time, which helps greatly to ensure that the resource investments were indeed fruitful.
Manual pentests often provide a more precise assessment of your organization's security posture. Automated penetration testing is majorly limited by the boundaries of the test and may not account for real-world circumstances that an attacker may exploit to penetrate the system.
A manual tester may replicate real-world assaults while accounting for elements like social engineering, phishing attempts, and insider threats. This enables them to deliver a more accurate assessment of the organization's security posture while highlighting areas for improvement.
How to Choose the Right Penetration Testing Approach?
Choosing penetration testing approach should never be a “one-solution-solves-all” decision. Primarily, it has greater dependencies on your business’s unique risk profile, infrastructure complexity, regulatory requirements, budget, and the testing frequency.
It is always best to integrate both the manual and automated penetration testing approaches wherever necessary, rather than seeing them as mutually exclusive ones.
While manual penetration testing fills the gaps in assessment by targeting most of the intricate vulnerabilities, automated penetration testing delivers speed and broader test coverage, which are beneficial for routine testing.
Since both complement each other, you will be able to maximize the overall security efficacy and ensure both the root-level as well as surface vulnerabilities are addressed precisely.
Making things much easier for you, ask yourself the following set of questions to guide your choice of choosing between both approaches better:
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What is the nature of my assets? Manual or hybrid testing approach would be the best if your business has the focus to ensure the security of highly sensitive or complex systems.
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How often should I conduct the testing? Automated testing approach is the most suitable approach in case of ongoing and routine check needs. Manual testing works for the deeper and periodic assessments.
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What is my current budget availability? Automated pentesting is less costlier hence effective for frequent scanning. Manual pentesting is the best for in-depth evaluations.
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What are my compliance needs? Manual penetration testing often works since many regulatory authorities demand the same in their compliance mandates.
Deep
Senior Content Marketer