Everything You Need to Know About Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

A high-level overview of DAST along with strengths, weaknesses and key considerations for investing in DAST capability

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

What is DAST?

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is a testing methodology to identify security weaknesses within an application in its runtime environment.

DAST tools look at the application from the outside in — just as a real attacker would while targeting an application for attacks.

For this reason, DAST testing is also called black-box testing since the tool does not have access to the application’s source code and has no knowledge of an application’s internal workings. The vulnerabilities are identified by observing application’s responses.

DAST Strengths

1. DAST scanners are good at identifying vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, error handling, information leakage, file inclusion, misconfigurations, missing patches, fuzzing and data enumeration.
2. DAST scanners may provide more accurate results than SAST scanners since these can simulate malicious users by sending attack strings and receiving application’s responses…