Top 10 Online Penetration Testing Tools: Essential Features and Use Cases
In the current digital world driven by technology and specifically the internet, a company’s security is an important aspect for any company regardless of its size. As hackers can seek innovative means to invade system weaknesses, organizations must stay one step ahead and assume an equally proactive approach to the safety of their information. This is where the online penetration testing tools come into play. Penetration testing or pen testing involves exposure of a system’s security to potential threats to determine any existing flaws in the system. Making use of these online tools enables business organizations to conduct experiments thereby strengthening their protection in advance before the hackers get to discover the weaknesses. In this blog, we will explore the top 10 online penetration testing tools, detailing their key features and how they work to keep your systems secure. What is Penetration Testing? Penetration testing is a way of determining the system’s efficiency by making it undergo a simulated attack by outsiders and insiders. Penetration testers, or Ethical hackers try to break through an organization’s security measures to identify flaws so that they may be rectified. Pen testing tools help to execute some parts of the testing where potential risks, weaknesses, and issues such as open ports, misconfiguration, weak or default passwords, uninstalled updates on the systems, etc., can be discovered. These tools are very important in ensuring that the security of an organization ranging from a large company to a small business is well-checked. Talk to our Cybersecurity Expert to discuss your specific needs and how we can help your business. Schedule a Call Top 10 Online Penetration Testing Tools 1. Burp Suite Key Features: Burp Suite is a comprehensive web vulnerability scanner that supports manual and automated testing. It offers tools for mapping, analyzing, and attacking web applications. Its software was initially created in 2003-2006 by Dafydd Stuttard, who found that the range of automatable tools in security testing of web applications such as Selenium, was rather limited. Stuttard formed an organization referred to as PortSwigger for the purpose of leading the way for the advancement of Burp Suite. There are both the community, professional, and the enterprise versions of this product. How it works: Burp Suite begins with the identification of the application architecture. It then searches for weaknesses in the system like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other web-based vulnerabilities. Another core component of Burp Suite is the repeater that enables manual adjustments to the request and review of the application’s response to the changes made. Among the many features of Burp Suite, the most fundamental and widely used component is the Proxy. The Proxy makes Burp function as a middleman between the client, which is the web browser, and the server hosting the web application. 2. Nessus Key Features: The Nessus project was formed by Renaud Deraison in 1998, as a free remote security scanner project. It is very famous for supporting a wide range of vulnerability scans. It provides insight into the vulnerabilities it detects in operating systems, network devices, and applications and their remedies. Nessus is a proprietary vulnerability scanner that belongs to Tenable, Inc. Tenable also has what was once called Nessus Cloud, which was Tenable’s Software as a Service offering. The Nessus server is presently available for: How it works: Nessus can scan these vulnerabilities and exposures: Nessus scans your networks for open ports and weak passwords as well as checks to see if all the applications are up to date. It performs a set of tests for your system’s security and generates a report that grades potential risks depending on the level of risk. 3. Metasploit Key Features: Metasploitable is a Linux distribution-focused virtual machine that is specifically designed for penetration testing, training on network security, and practicing on Metasploit Framework. Metasploitable is owned by Rapid7 company which developed the security project known as Metasploit. Metasploit is one of the most utilized penetration testing platforms which allows users to plan, exploit, and confirm weaknesses in systems. It has a large list of exploits and payloads that come with it. How it works: Metasploit works by launching specific exploits against vulnerable systems, allowing testers to mimic real-world attack scenarios It helps to reveal the system’s vulnerability and allows organizations to correct such flaws with time before they are abused. Unlike other penetration test tools, Metasploit starts with Information gathering where Metasploit works hand in hand with reconnaissance tools such as Nmap, SNMP scanning, or Windows patch enumeration and through Nessus to identify the chink in the armor of your system. 4. OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) Key Features: OWASP ZAP is an open-source web application security scanner. It is easy to use for beginners and provides a powerful toolset for web application testing. OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) is a free software tool for web application security testing. It features passive scan, automated scanning, scripting, alerts, forced browsing, manual testing, and dictionary lists. It monitors HTTP request and response flow, detects security flaws like SQL injection, XSS, and broken authentication, and allows users to perform simple tasks. ZAP also provides manual testing for developers and users and helps find files and folders in web servers. How it works: ZAP is an interface that works like ‘man-in-the-middle’ between the browser and a web application, which observes the actions, builds the preliminary map of the web application resources, records the requests and responses in the application, generates the alert in the case of failure in the request or response or if there is an error with a request-response, and conducts active and passive scan to find the vulnerability as quickly as possible. 5. Nikto Key Features: Nikto web server scanner is a vulnerability scanning tool that is also available for free and is an open-source tool that scans the target system against a large number of security checks and vulnerabilities. The tool is compatible with various operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and macOS, and is regularly