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XCCDF
Application Security and Development Security Technical Implementation Guide
SRG-APP-000516
The ISSO must ensure active vulnerability testing is performed.
The ISSO must ensure active vulnerability testing is performed.
An XCCDF Rule
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The ISSO must ensure active vulnerability testing is performed.
Medium Severity
<VulnDiscussion>Use of automated scanning tools accompanied with manual testing/validation which confirms or expands on the automated test results is an accepted best practice when performing application security testing. Automated scanning tools expedite and help to standardize security testing, they can incorporate known attack methods and procedures, test for libraries and other software modules known to be vulnerable to attack and utilize a test method known as "fuzz testing". Fuzz testing is a testing process where the application is provided invalid, unexpected, or random data. Poorly designed and coded applications will become unstable or crash. Properly designed and coded applications will reject improper and unexpected data input from application clients and remain stable. Many vulnerability scanning tools provide automated fuzz testing capabilities for the testing of web applications. All of these tools help to identify a wide range of application vulnerabilities including, but not limited to; buffer overflows, cross-site scripting flaws, denial of service format bugs and SQL injection, all of which can lead to a successful compromise of the system or result in a denial of service. Due to changes in the production environment, it is a good practice to schedule periodic active testing of production web applications. Ideally, this will occur prior to deployment and after updates or changes to the application production environment. It is imperative that automated scanning tools are configured properly to ensure that all of the application components that can be tested are tested. In the case of web applications, some of the application code base may be accessible on the website and could potentially be corrected by a knowledgeable system administrator. Active testing is different from code review testing in that active testing does not require access to the application source code base. A code review requires complete code base access and is normally performed by the development team. If vulnerability testing is not conducted, there is the distinct potential that security vulnerabilities could be unknowingly introduced into the application environment. The following website provides an overview of fuzz testing and examples: http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Fuzzing</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>