5 Best Web Application Penetration Testing Tools

Web application penetration testing is the process of testing the website to find security vulnerabilities. It needs expertise, patience and time. Business should not ignore the penetration testing because there are thousands of hackers looking for vulnerable targets. Before they find and exploit it, you should find and fix it.

Also read: What is Ransomware?

There are lots of good Web Application Penetration Testing tools that scans the whole website and generate the reports of possible security issues. Web application penetration testing tools can easily find the SQL injection, Blind SQL injection RFI, LFI, CSRF, Code injection LDAP injection, XPath injection, XSS, URI XSS and Blind OS command injection kind of vulnerability that requires much time and effort. When you have the list of known vulnerabilities, you can manually test the website to conform whether the vulnerability actually exists or the tool got something wrong.

In this way, these tools save lots of time. It is advisable not to depend on these tools totally as it could miss a vulnerability. But you can use it in first phase of testing to find the known common issues and fix.

If you are not sure about good web application penetration testing tools, this article is for you. In this article, I am listing 5 best web application penetration testing tools.

Web Application Penetration Testing Tools

1. Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a popular platform for performing attacks on web application and perform deep testing to find security vulnerabilities. It contains a set of tools for performing different kind of attacks. It covers over 100 generic vulnerabilities including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and all vulnerabilities in the OWASP top 10.

It offers both automated and manual testing options. In this way, you will have full control over testing. It intercepts browser traffic using man-in-the-middle proxy and allows you to edit and change header data. You can also check requests to find sensitive data if transferred in plain text. It also shows target site map with branches or nodes. It also shows vulnerabilities identified. Then you can manually check that vulnerability to confirm.

This tool comes with a limited free version but buy that Burp Suite Professional for best experience. It costs $349 per user per year.

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2. Nikto

Nikto is an open source web server scanner that performs testing against web servers for several vulnerabilities. It claims to test potentially dangerous files, checks for outdated versions and checks for server configuration items. It first attempt to identify web servers and software. The perform scanning for known vulnerabilities of that web server or software. It supports HTTPS and saves reports in text, XML, HTML, NBE or CSV.

So, this is also a notable web application penetration testing tool you should not miss. It works fine and can easily detect most of the vulnerabilities of an application.

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3. W3af

W3AF is a also a powerful web application vulnerabilities testing tool. It comes with lots of assessment and exploitation plugins to make it even more powerful. The tool was developed in python and comes with full documentation. The tool is easy to use and learn

The tool helps you in finding and exploiting all web application vulnerabilities. It claims to identify over 200 vulnerabilities including sql injection, XSS, PHP misconfigurations and more. So, you can easily find and fix security issues to make your website safe. It is open source. So, you can download it for free.

If you are looking for a powerful web application penetration testing tool that is free to use, this one is for you. You can start learning web application penetration testing with it.

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4. Sqlmap

Sqlmap is another open source testing tool that automates the SQL injection detecting and exploitation. It tries to find SQL injection flaws and take over the back-end database servers. With comes with lots of tools for database fingerprinting, server command runner and fetching database from the server. It supports MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, IBM DB2, SQLite and few more database management systems.

It supports to enumerate users, password hashes, privileges, roles, databases, tables and columns. It also automatically recognise the password hash format and tries to crack it using a dictionary-based attack.

If you are interested in learning SQL injection, this opensource tool should be your choice. You can start with it and try to see how much you can learn. This can open door of opportunities.

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5. Acunetix

Acunetix is also a good automatic web vulnerability scanner that just asks for URL and then start scanning the whole website for finding security issues. It uses DeepScan Technology for crawling of AJAX-heavy client-side Single Page Applications. It can find most of the known vulnerabilities such as SQL Injections, cross site scripting, arbitrary file creation/deletion, and weak password strength on authentication pages. It has easy to use GUI interface that makes it worth to list as best web application penetration testing tool. It also crates professional security audit and compliance reports.

The tool is not free but you have option for free trial. It comes with Yearly License options and there are several editions. So, you need to select one that suits your requirements.

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Final Words

These are the best web application penetration testing tools. If you are into security field or trying to learn penetration testing, you should start learning these tools. There are few other good tools as well. I recommend learning Paros proxy, WebScarab, skipfish, AppScan, Netsparker, HP WebInspect tools as well.

One thing you must note that using any of these tools on any random website is not safe. It is because these tools perform crawling of the website and then perform several tests. If you use it on a website with low-end server, it can put the server down. Some good websites also keeps track of these things. If they catch you using scanners on their server, you may be at legal risk. So, do not use these penetration testing tools on any website without permission. I always advise you to test these tools on known website or create dummy website of your own to test.

I personally use these tools to test the security of my codes. In this way, I can ensure that my application is safe for users and I avoid data breaches.

What Web Application Penetration Testing Tools do you use and recommend. Let us know in the comments.