Penetration testing, also known as pen testing or security testing, involves assessing applications for vulnerabilities and answering a fundamental question: “What methods could a hacker use to compromise my application or organization in the real world?”
I recently discovered the Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP), a tool designed to facilitate easy penetration testing and vulnerability discovery in web applications. It is suitable for developers, functional testers, and security experts alike. This tutorial on OWASP ZAP will cover various aspects of ZAP penetration testing.
Installing and configuring the OWASP ZAP Tool can be done by following these steps:
- Download the Tool: Visit this link to download the OWASP ZAP Tool.
- Adding a Site to the Testing Scope:
- Open the web application you want to test.
- In ZAP, find your website/application under sites.
- ZAP will spider the URL, perform an active scan, and display the results.
3. Setting Up the Proxy in ZAP:
- Close all active Firefox browser sessions.
- In ZAP, go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Local Proxy -> Change Address to 127.0.0.1 and Port to 8080.
- In Mozilla browser, go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Advanced tab -> Network -> Settings -> Select Manual Proxy configuration: Set HTTP Proxy to 127.0.0.1 and Port to 8080.
- Connect to your application using your browser. If you can’t connect, double-check your proxy settings.
4. Saving the ZAP Session:
- After manually exploring the application, save the ZAP session for future reference.
- If your application has multiple roles, explore it with each role and save the sessions in separate files.
5. Generating a Report:
- In ZAP, go to Report -> Generate HTML report (or any other options listed) -> Save and share the report.
6. Authentication, Session, and User Management Using ZAP:
- Define the context, including authentication, session management, and user management.
- Set the proxy in your local browser and access the target URL.
- Include the web app in the context, specifying the authentication method, session management method, and user management.
- For session management, identify how web sessions are identified and handle requests.
- For user management, add users (e.g., “Existing user” and “Test User”) and apply spider URL attacks to them to test their access permissions.
If you’re interested in application security, downloading and trying out ZAP is highly recommended. You can find more information about OWASP and ZAP at the following links:
- OWASP: https://www.owasp.org
- Zed Attack Proxy: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Zed_Attack_Proxy_Project
