Pen-testers offer several types of pen-tests such as white, grey, and black box penetration testing. However, cutting through the jargon and finding the right one from among the different types of penetration testing can be challenging. Read on to understand these pen-testing types.
Black Box Penetration Testing, also known as External Penetration Testing or Trial & Error Testing, helps companies find vulnerabilities that make their systems/ applications/ network exploitable from outside. The pen-tester plays the role of an unprivileged hacker. They are equipped with little to no information about or granted access to the security policies, architecture diagrams, or source code.
In Black Box Penetration Testing, the responsibility of reconnaissance lies with the pen-tester who must gather all sensitive information required to penetrate the furthest into the client’s network and unearth as many vulnerabilities as possible. They draw up a map of the target system based on their observations, analysis, and research like an unprivileged attacker would.
Based on their findings, the pen-testers attack the target system using methods such as brute force attacks, buffer overflow, password cracking, and so on. Further, they engage in privilege escalation and access maintenance after the breach.
White Box Penetration Testing, also known as Internal Testing or Clear Box/ Glass Box/ Structural Testing, helps businesses to test the strength of the systems/ networks/ applications against privileged insiders as well as outsiders.
In White Box Penetration Testing, the pen-tester is equipped with complete information about and full access to the network, system, and applications including source code, IP address schema, OS details, configuration files, network maps, credentials, and so on. Pen-testers perform both static and dynamic analyses for a comprehensive assessment of vulnerabilities.
Grey Box Penetration Testing, also known as Translucent Box Testing, emulates a scenario wherein the attacker has partial information or access to systems/ network/ application such as login credentials, system code, architecture diagrams, etc. Grey box tests aim to understand what potential damage partial information access or privileged users could cause a business.
Conclusion
It is not a choice between the different types of penetration testing, but to ensure you have the right mix of all these types at the right frequency to get full coverage. A black box penetration testing is the absolute must-have as it gives the most important risk assessment mimicking hackers or attackers’ view of your application.
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This post was last modified on January 2, 2024 11:33
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