Cyber Risks · PortSwigger Research

3 Simple Steps to Evaluate a Web Vulnerability Scanner

Summary: PortSwigger Research outlines a three-step method for evaluating web vulnerability scanners, starting with testing on a "scan-me" site - a deliberately vulnerable application with a documented list of known issues and attack surface. The article recommends comparing scanners on true positives (issues known to exist that the scanner found) and false positives, and notes that modern applications make attack surface discovery harder, causing many scanners to miss content.

Bottom line: The article states that excessive false positives cost scanner users time and money to investigate issues that don't exist, and that many scanners fail to discover content when scanning modern web applications - so a scanner's headline detection count says little without a known target to measure it against.

Read the original at PortSwigger Research ↗

Topics
Vulnerabilities & Patching
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