Ratproxy — Google’s Passive Web Application Security Assessment Tool

For almost a decade, hacking and unauthorized data breach have been one of the most crucial issues of the world.

People and business are more afraid of cyber crimes than anything else in the world. They are worried because the hackers now have the resource to steal their private information, blackmail them over it, and even expose their secrets. They can not only harm their social image but can easily become the reason for shut businesses or lost jobs.

Therefore, it has become vital that keep an eye on your system and audit it for the possibility of infection or malwares. It will help you to lock out the hackers from the system and eliminate the risk.

Now, one of the best ways to audit your system is to use Ratproxy, and in this post, we will learn more about this powerful tool along with its benefits. So, read on:

What Is Ratproxy?

Ratproxy is a Semi-automatic passive web application audit tool developed by the largest web engine, Google. The company claims that they have been using it internally for a long time. According to WebEagle CEO, Akram Artoul, Google developed this tool to complement the site crawlers and manual proxies to attain better security results.

The application is much similar to the general proxy softwares; you install it into the system active it, and then it takes over your default internet connection. Once in place, the web proxy runs your web browsers traffic and inspect traffic, gather information, and log its findings. It then processes the collected data and finds the risk or security problems with the accessed website.

However, Ratproxy is not entirely automatic so, you cannot set it loose on the website. You have to manually operate the tool and also interact with the site as a regular user. It a little time-consuming, but it’s worth it.

What Specific Tests Are Implemented?

Akram Artoul says that Ratproxy has capabilities to test and analyze the website for every possible threat. It scans everything from the site certification to the transmitted data to serve its purpose.

The following are some of the standard tests that this proxy software performs while you surf your preferred websites.

1. Bad Cache Headers

Cache-controls are HTTP headers used for regulating browser caching policies between the client requests and server responses. The data policy contains the terms about the type of cache that the site will generate and the life of this cache.

Ratproxy accurately tracks the proxy data for sensitive data like locations, documents, and other user-specific data or resources. It checks the data for adequate HTTP caching and verifies that they have predictable URLs or not. It helps the proxy to find the vulnerabilities of data leakages.

2. XSRF defenses

CSRF or XSRF attacks are a form of hacking in which a cybercriminal uses a system connected to your website to transmit unauthorized commands and actions. The scale of the attack will depend on the level of access the user has, but considering the amount of trust business place in their customer, the damage will be pretty severe. Therefore, website installs the XSRF defenses protocol. Ratproxy, replay the request for the modified token values of the security protocol and compare the values. It helps the proxy to analyze the validation of the security of the network that you are using.

3. XSS Defenses

XSS is a web vulnerability that is common for web applications. It allows the attacker to inject malicious code into the network and bypass its security. The injections can even provide the hacker with authorization to make administrative changes to the websites.

Ratproxy, in its default passive mode, will not confirm the XSS filtering qualities of the tested application, but it will point out the subjects which are vulnerable and need manual checking. You can also use the generated data to feed other programs for checking the network.

Akram Artoul and his team reveal that the proxy will further improve the protocols in its active mode. In this condition, it will attempt a single-shot verification for the XSS filtering. It will analyze the filtering mechanism and tweak the request parameters that need testing at that time.

4. META Redirection

Redirection tags are the HTML or other language tags that help the site owners to redirect their consumer to the desired location. Unless properly locked, these tags can huge problems and become a source of a data breach. The attackers can alter them to divert the search engine or the users to their desired location instead of the real site.

Further, the poor implementation, in this case, can also make your website prone to cross-scripting and other similar issues. Ratproxy can help you to avoid all these harmful effects. The proxy note-downs the redirections and report the ones that misbehave.

Apart from these test, Ratproxy performs cross-scripting tests, detect JSON attacks, analyze the network for suspicious cross domains, and does a lot of other analysis.

Things to Know

Anyone can download a copy Ratproxy along with its complete source code files. It is available on multiple sites and is completely free.

However, the package available online is non-compiled. You have to download the packages, extract the data, and compile it manually. Since the code is in C language, you can easily compile it using GNU C Compiler environment on Linux system. iOS and Windows user may need to install some packages or change some setting to run Ratproxy.

WebEagle CEO, Akram Artoul shared that the software can also generate HTML-based reports of the log records. You can view these reports by running the ‘ratproxy-report.sh’ Script. You will find it within the downloaded package.

The Final words

Google Ratproxy is highly-interactive free source software for auditing your network. It has a robust interface and is highly capable of detecting all rates and prevents them from harming your system. You must integrate it into your network.

In case you have any problem with installing or compiling it, you can contact WebEagle. Akram Artoul and his team have all the resource and information you will need. They are experts in webs security and can help you with each aspect of it. Whether you need frameworks, secure websites, password tools, or any other things, WebEagle always has it all.