Software quality, reliability and security are tightly coupled. Flaws in software can be exploited by intruders to open security holes. With the development of the Internet, software security problems are becoming even more severe.
Many critical software applications and services have integrated security measures against malicious attacks. The purpose of security testing of these systems include identifying and removing software flaws that may potentially lead to security violations, and validating the effectiveness of security measures. Simulated security attacks can be performed to find vulnerabilities.
Security testing has recently moved beyond the realm of network port scanning to include probing-software’s behavior as a critical aspect of system behavior. Unfortunately, testing software security is a commonly misunderstood task. Security testing done properly goes deeper than simple black-box probing on the presentation layer (the sort performed by so-called application security tools)-even beyond the functional testing of security apparatuses. Testers must use a risk-based approach, grounded in both the system’s architectural reality and the attacker’s mindset, to adequately gauge software security. By identifying risks in the system and creating tests driven by those risks, a software security tester can properly focus on those areas of code in which an attack will succeed. This approach provides a higher level of software security assurance than possible with classical black-box testing.
