Penetration Testing with the Bash shell

Automated web application security assessment

Web applications are incredibly complex pieces of technology, and they become more complex every day. It's not hard to imagine that penetration testing these big, heavy, and often very sneaky applications can be quite a cumbersome task. Luckily, a considerable portion of the work that goes into web application security assessment can be automated. I say "portion" because there are attack surfaces for web applications that have not seen much successful automation, that is, XSS requiring user interaction, customized encryption flaws, and business logic flaws. It is never safe to assume you have a good grip of web application security if all you've done is run a scanner! That being said, tasks such as ...