Information Security: Principles and Practices 2nd Edition by Jim Breithaupt, Mark S. Merkow

Exercise 3

Security Testing for Obvious Vulnerabilities

1. Research the Internet for several common software vulnerabilities (examples: buffer-overflow conditions, cross-site scripting).

2. Describe several ways that security testing can uncover the conditions.

3. Describe the limitations of security testing.

4. To what degree should testing be performed if the software is intended for commercial uses?

5. To what degree should testing be performed if the software is intended for commercial, governmental, and military uses?

Step 1 of 5

Security testing

1. Vulnerability is the weakness that allows an attacker to decrease the system information assurance. The common software vulnerabilities are given below:

• Cross site Scripting: This type of vulnerability is found in web applications. It allows the attacker for injecting the client side script. It is also known as XSS.

• Buffer overflow: It is the anomaly in which a program, while writing the data to the buffer, overflows the buffer boundary and overwrites the adjacent memory.