Tag Archives: security testing

Lessons Learned From Gergely Revay’s “Web Hacking: Become a Pentester” Online Course

The realm of security testing is something I have not explored yet in deep detail not because it’s not an interesting field but because I have always found it to be intimidating, stuffed with jargons and specialized tools to learn. But the curiosity is there, and I’ve decided late last year that I want to get better at it. For that reason I’m glad that Gergely Revay has opened an online course on becoming a web pentester this year. Great timing! And very practical too because I was able to directly apply what I learned on the course at work. 🙂

As with any skill, we master it through practice. But here are some notes about the key ideas I learned from the course:

  • Security testing requires exploratory testing. A tester can only find out where the security vulnerabilities are when such person has good understanding of what risks are present in the application, and one can only know about what the risks are when one has vastly explored application behavior in various scenarios as well as the technology stack where it runs.
  • Using JavaScript to create stored cross-site scripts and running them on a vulnerable app is an easy way to annoy users who frequent a page.
  • We can download or view application data (and more) through a system’s insecure file upload feature. Secret configuration files may not be as safe as we think they are.
  • Kali Linux provides us common word lists that we can use to brute-force attack logins. An account is only as safe as the complexity of its matching password.
  • Getting legitimate users to run a malicious script for an attacker relies on how good the attacker is in manipulating the target person to visit some desired page.
  • It is possible to run operating system or database commands on the server where an application is running.
  • Even if an SQL injection does not provide us details of the query results, as long as the injection works we may still get interesting data from the app through succeeding creative attacks.
  • Applications, as innocent as they may seem, can help an attacker find vulnerabilities through the user experience. Be careful about the hints you provide to users when they fail to authenticate their account, among other possible
  • Because security testing relies so much on a tester’s knowledge of the app under test, security testing is difficult. The deeper the tester know about which features are available and how they work, both in the user interface level and in the background, the better the chances of the tester finding security vulnerabilities.

Three Recommended Paid Software Testing Online Courses

Free online courses are nice, but some paid ones are just better at delivering value especially when instructors take a lot of care about building the best possible content they can provide to their audience. Free is always an option, but the problem with free is that we don’t necessarily have to give anything back in return for a service. We can do nothing and that’s okay. With paid courses however I find myself to be more motivated to take in everything I can. I focus more and I believe that helps me learn better.

Here are three recommended paid software testing courses I’ve taken recently, from which I’ve learned a great deal:

Five People and Their Thoughts (Part 4)

Many of the things I’ve learned about software testing in recent years I discovered through reading books and blogs of actual software testers who are masters of their own craft. Some of them record videos too, of tutorials and webinars and anything they find valuable for their readers/viewers, and I try to share those which I’ve found engaging, five at a time.

Here are some interesting recordings to view today, if you’d like:

Five People and Their Thoughts (Part 3)

There’s always something new to learn, and these days watching webinars and recorded conference videos are good ways of finding and sharing interesting content about what practices do other people think is important in software testing. Lately I am finding myself getting more curious about performance and security testing, as well as the idea of software (including test code) as specification.

Some engaging thoughts about those topics, if you’re interested: