Types of Penetration Testing and Different Approaches

Quick Summary: Penetration testing can vary, covering different aspects like external/internal network testing, mobile or web app testing, API testing, cloud testing, and more. This article is for you if you want to know the different types of penetration testing as well as the various approaches that pen testers follow. Stay tuned for the key details.

Today, cyber incidents are widespread, and they have serious financial and reputational repercussions for organizations. In fact, more than 50% of businesses suffered at least one cyberattack in the previous year. A single data breach can ruin your organization’s image and erode customer trust. With the rising risks of cyber threats, the security of your systems and applications becomes paramount.

Penetration testing or pen testing is an effective measure to detect and report system or application weaknesses that could be exploited by cybercriminals. This test attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in an organization’s system with simulated attacks imitating a hacker’s actions.

However, when it comes to penetration testing, there are different approaches and types that a tester can choose to achieve the defined objectives. Depending on the type and approach of pen testing, a tester can perform external or internal tests with or without knowing the information of the system.

In this article, we are going to explore the different types of penetration testing and approaches. Keep reading to understand the pen testing types in detail.

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A Brief Introduction to Penetration Testing

It is also known as pen testing which is a way to evaluate the security of an organization’s system with authorized simulated attacks. While working with similar processes, techniques, and tools as hackers, pen testers attempt to showcase the business impact of cyber-attacks.

Penetration testing is performed from outside and attempts to detect the possible weaknesses in the system by utilizing different threat vectors. Pen testing is quite effective in determining whether a system can withstand attacks from unauthorized and unauthenticated actors.

Types of Penetration Testing

The following are the different penetration testing types for optimal risk management.

Network Pen Testing

This type of pen test involves auditing a network environment to find common and critical security vulnerabilities. It can be further divided into two pentesting types: internal and external network pen testing. External penetration testing involves assessing public IP addresses or external systems that are accessible via the Internet. These systems are exposed directly to the public and are the frontier of an attack.

Internal pen testing assesses the security of your internal network emulating an attacker who already has a foothold into your network bypassing the defenses. The aim of network testing is to find ways to compromise your system and discover its weaknesses. Pen testers evaluate the following for network testing:

• DNS attacks
• Stateful inspection analysis
• Firewall configuration
• Intrusion prevention system deception
• Firewall bypassing testing

Social Engineering Pen Testing

This type of penetration testing involves evaluating the security from a human aspect. In social engineering testing, a tester attempts to get access to the system or receive sensitive information from employees deceptively like a hacker. It helps the tester to assess an organization’s weaknesses in social engineering cybercrimes and scams.

Phishing attacks are the preferred ways to test social engineering vulnerabilities that deceive employees into giving their information. Testers utilize spear phishing, business email compromise attacks, and customized phishing to discover potential vulnerabilities.

Wireless Pen Testing

Wireless network penetration testing attempts to find vulnerabilities in wireless devices like laptops, mobiles, tablets, etc. Such penetration testing helps a tester to identify possible vulnerabilities in wireless networks to cyber-attacks in an organization connecting various devices. These tests include the evaluation of access point configuration, security controls, weak access controls, and more.

Wireless pen testing ensures the security of a company’s WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) and other wireless protocols like Bluetooth, Z-Wave, ZigBee, etc. Pen testing for wireless testing helps to find weaknesses in the network and ways an attacker could use it to penetrate it.

Mobile App Pen Testing

These types of pen testing involve evaluating app binaries running on a mobile device and their server-side functionality to detect potential vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a malicious actor. This includes both automated and manual testing to assess application behavior.

Mobile app penetration testing helps to discover potential server-side issues related to authorization, authentication, data leakage, cryptography, session management, and more.

Web App Pen Testing

Web application penetration testing involves finding vulnerabilities related to the design, coding, and development of web apps. Pen testers evaluate the efficacy of security controls and discover hidden gaps, weaknesses, and attack patterns that can result in compromised access to web apps. This type of penetration testing is utilized for web applications, browsers, websites as well as their plugins and applets.

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Cloud Pen Testing

Cloud is different from a traditional on-premises system because there is a role vendor that provides the cloud service in managing the security of the platform. Hence, the security responsibility is shared between the cloud service provider and the organization using it.

Therefore, cloud penetration testing requires specialized skills to examine every aspect of the environment to detect potential vulnerabilities.

Cloud pen testers need to assess the environment on various aspects like APIs, storage, encryption, configurations, and more to identify potential weaknesses. Evaluating security controls and databases is critical to ensure the security of your cloud-based applications.

Client-side Pen Testing

Types of pentesting where applications and tools used within an organization are scrutinized for possible weaknesses. Organizations use a wide range of tools and applications internally like web browsers, email clients, and programs like Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Putty, etc. Client-side penetration testing helps to assess the security of these tools and applications to avoid cyber-attacks.

For example, hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in applications like email clients to deceive users into loading malware onto a system and steal sensitive data. Client-side pen tests can help to identify the following risks:

• Clickjacking attacks
• HTML injection
• Malware infection
• Open redirection
• CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
• XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attacks
• Form hijacking

API Pen Testing

APIs have become cornerstones for various systems in today’s organizations. With API penetration testing, a tester will try to examine responses and verify that the API is functioning with the expected behavior.

It includes both automated and manual testing to evaluate the API to detect OWASP API Security Top 10 risks. The testing helps to find vulnerabilities like broken function-level authorization, broken object-level authorization, security misconfiguration, and more.

Different Approaches to Penetration Testing

There are different approaches to pen testing that testers can utilize to perform tests. However, the outcomes of these approaches can vary due to the style and scope of testing. Let’s check these different penetration testing approaches.

Black Box Penetration Testing

In this testing approach, the penetration tester doesn’t have any information about the target system and must figure out how to break into it on their own. The tester in this case adopts the method of an unprivileged attacker through the initial attack to exploitation.

It is seen as the most authentic way of penetration testing because usually, attackers won’t have insider knowledge. It demonstrates how an attacker without internal knowledge can exploit the system. However, it is also typically a costlier method.

White Box Penetration Testing

It is also often referred to by oblique box and crystal penetration testing. Unlike the black box approach, the pen testers get the full details of the target network and system including required credentials and maps in this approach. As a result, the tester has the information to identify possible weaknesses and perform attacks to check those vulnerabilities.

This type of penetration testing approach is time and cost-efficient. White box penetration testing is more suitable for performing tests on specific target systems and trying as many attack vectors as possible.

Gray Box Penetration Testing

It is also referred to as translucent box penetration testing. In this approach, the pen tester has limited information about the target system. Usually, the shared information includes login credentials. Gray box testing aims to assess the potential risks associated with privileged users. It helps to understand what level of access privileged users can gain and the possible damage they can cause.

This testing approach helps to simulate a scenario where an insider gets an unauthorized level of access or an attack that breaches network perimeters. Attackers perform reconnaissance to get the same level of knowledge as an insider to plan their penetration strategy. Gray box testing provides a view from this aspect of your system’s security.

How Frequently Should You Perform Penetration Testing?

Conducting penetration testing regularly will help you keep cyber threats at bay. It allows you to get an in-depth view of your IT infrastructure to detect potential weaknesses and help you strengthen its security. But it raises an important question – how often should you conduct pen testing?

It is advisable to perform penetration testing once a year. However, pen testing should also be done earlier in case of merger or acquisition of IT systems, new product launches, and upgradation of systems. Moreover, organizations that deal with a large volume of sensitive information and have strict compliance should conduct pen tests at a higher frequency.

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Choose the Right Pen Testing Tool

When it comes to penetration testing, choosing the right tool is vital to get the best results. Since penetration testing is a crucial and intricate process, a pen testing tool should be able to handle this most effectively.

A good penetration testing tool will offer features to help testers examine a wide range of vulnerabilities and provide detailed reports. The tool will enable the pen tester to adopt the desired penetration testing approach and help to detect weaknesses. You can evaluate various pen testing tools and choose the one that matches your needs and offers the best benefits.