Re: OS XSS and SQL scanner

[Rogan Dawes <discard () dawes za net>]

Eoin wrote:
> Hi,
> RE:
> "This situation is no doubt due to the utter lack of skill
> and understanding of the subject on the part of the authors."
>
> I thought these tools were to assist one, so not as much skill is required?
> Otherwise one would do it in a manual fashion?
>
> What does one think?
>
> -ek

I'd say that the tools are absolutely there to assist one. However, that 
does not in any way mean that you can simply point and click, and get 
meaningful results.

I'd use such a tool to perform the automatable drudge work. As mentioned 
before by various persons, that includes checking for trivial XSS, HTTP 
header injection, and SQL injection vulnerabilities.

I certainly wouldn't trust it to run without supervision (certainly not 
the FIRST time), and place reliance on its results. All results need to 
be checked for tool failures that could easily be confused for "pass" 
results. e.g. undetected session invalidation, account lockout, etc

That's one of the reasons that I don't try to do any automated analysis 
of the results generated by the WebScarab fuzzer. I *WANT* the operator 
to take a look at all of the responses, and make up their own minds. The 
value of the Fuzzer is really to automate the repetitive "try this 
string in this parameter", in all possible permutations, so that the 
user does not have to do all the clicks and typing themselves. But 
analysing the results should be a job for a human.

Someone who *knows* what they are looking at.

IMO.

Rogan

> On 01/08/06, Arian J. Evans <arian.evans () anachronic com> wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Mandeep Khera [mailto:mandeep () cenzic com]
> > >
> > > I am sorry to hear that you perceive some problems with our
> > > product. We take pride in being the most accurate product
> > > with least amount of false positives in the industry. This
> > > has been proven in many bake-offs by customers and
> > > independent journalists.
> >
> > Hate to take this a little off topic, but do you have any facts
> > that can support or back up these claims? Any data produced by
> > anyone competent that speaks to your "false positives" and also
> > your "false negatives"?
> >
> > I have failed to read a review yet to date that contains useful
> > information. So far what I've read varies from useless data
> > organized around features like "reflective buttons" (e.g.-the
> > Acunetix review posted to this list written by some woman
> > who writes windows software articles) to the other extreme
> > of uninformed opinion and inability to keep features between
> > the products straight (secure enterprise computing review).
> > This includes infosec magazine and online reviews, bake-offs,
> > and Gartner-style evals. Every one I have read so far is garbage.
> >
> > Not one covers actual tests run & and the how & why around them.
> >
> > This situation is no doubt due to the utter lack of skill
> > and understanding of the subject on the part of the authors.
> >
> > However, I think all on this list would welcome information
> > of a high-quality nature regarding scanner quality, if you
> > have anything like that to point us at.
> >
> > -ae
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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