Web Application Security Report: Vulnerability Analysis and Testing

This report delves into the critical aspects of web application security, focusing on vulnerability assessment and penetration testing techniques. It examines the use of tools such as Nmap for port scanning, Wireshark for packet analysis and information sniffing, and SQLmap for identifying and exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities. The analysis centers around the OWASP Mutillidae web application, a deliberately vulnerable environment used to demonstrate security flaws. The report details how these tools can be employed to identify exploitable ports, intercept sensitive data, and execute SQL injection attacks. The student highlights the challenges and complexities involved in penetration testing, emphasizing the importance of a methodical approach. The report also discusses the limitations of certain tools and the overall security posture of the Mutillidae application. References to relevant research papers are included to support the analysis and findings.

Running head: WEB APPLICATION SECURITY
Web Application Security
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Reflective Critical Analysis
We find scanning, sniffing and SQL injection as important activities for both attackers
and network administrators. To perform scanning of vulnerable web applications and sniff
important information contained by them we need to be methodical in our approach to
conduct penetration tests (Medeiros, Neves and Correia 2016). When we are targeting
vulnerable web applications like OWASP Mutillidae we can use the Nmap tool for getting to
learn about the insecure hosts that have open and exploitable ports through which the target
systems try to access the web and mailing domains (Almasalmeh, Saidi and Trabelsi 2019).
As these domains are being hosted locally, the IP address of these host systems need to be
scanned. We host the vulnerable web application using the XAMPP Server and then
refreshed the databases to ensure the tables and database schema are appropriately set up.
Nmap is offers us a broad set of functions which help us in conducting various tasks through
execution of various executable commands (Hwang and Kim 2019). Here we find some very
useful functions like Nmap target selection, Nmap port selection, Nmap port scan types,
service and OS detections, Nmap output formats and the ability to run NSE scripts. When it
comes to targeting the vulnerable web application Mutillidae we can use the Nmap tool to
learn about the open hosts and exploitable ports of a webpage or target system (Almasalmeh,
Saidi and Trabelsi 2019). Here, since the webpage is being locally hosted, the ip address of
the host system is being scanned. By performing such Nmap scans we are getting to know the
exploitable ports and protocols of the different host systems. Next Wireshark packet capture
provides us with the web application server IP from destination port and provides important
clues in raw data of packets which can be used to make the right queries with sqlmap.
Wireshark is one of the most popular protocol analysers that we can use for network
administration as well as for for sniffing information from vulnerable websites (CUI and
SHEN 2018). Once messages are sent over the network the recipient host responds by

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matching the IP addresses with MAC addresses. Here, Wireshark can be used to sniff
confidential information contained within the website. The key protocol through which
Wireshark is being used to capture information is HTTP (Schwanke, HÖFKEN and Schuba
2017). The above screenshot shows how the attacker can submit false information to generate
errors. These errors help provide pathways to original installation directory of the web page.
When performing attacks the Wirehark protocol analyser work in the background and help
sniff critical information regarding the error. Expectedly, Wireshark picks up details of the
error and provides us with information about location of the webserver inside the host
network and even inside the system. By knowing which server is storing the location of the
files of the web page Mutillidae, we can proceed to obtain further information from specific
folders, conduct data manipulation on files of the web page thereby compromising the
service. Scanning, sniffing or penetration testing can be very challenging (Iqbal and Naaz
2019). Therefore, we use Nmap to scan the ports, use wireshark to get packet details and
sqlmap to execute SQL injections, we can be successful most of the times. SQL MAP is a
penetration testing tool that assists us to conduct SQL injection attacks by notifying about the
weaknesses of the web application and the parameters using which we can make SQL
injection attempts. We use the SQL MAP command for scanning the website web domain
Mutillidae. As can be observed from the above screenshot, the web application is still not
injectable due to lack of adequate knowledge regarding the back end databases. This means
the web application Mutillidae is not safe for SQL injection attempts (Ross 2018). However,
since we know that a database schema PIPE exists, we can obtain further information like
tables from this database schema and subsequently fetch the different columns of the
different tables contained by the database.
OWASP Mutillidae is a barebone vulnerable we application that can even be used by
individuals having a basic knowledge on the network security risks. Similarly, both Nmap

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and SQLmap end up performing the scan all by themselves. This presents us with little very
little control over the commands and queries being executed to compromise the security of
the application. Though Wireshark presents us with in depth information regarding the
vulnerabilities the wide range of features offered might appear confusing.
However, it must be noted that the services we have obtained from the tools
mentioned above are enough to exploit the vulnerabilities of OWASP Mutillidae. Also the
insecure set up of Mutillidae helps us address enough vulnerabilities to in specific order to
meet the network security evaluation that we were asked to perform in the assignment
(Abunadi and Alenezi 2016). As a result, we find our choice of commands and
vulnerabilities from the web application are appropriate for the chosen project.

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References
Abunadi, I. and Alenezi, M., 2016. An Empirical Investigation of Security Vulnerabilities
within Web Applications. J. UCS, 22(4), pp.537-551.
Almasalmeh, N., Saidi, F. and Trabelsi, Z., 2019, June. A Dendritic Cell Algorithm Based
Approach for Malicious TCP Port Scanning Detection. In 2019 15th International Wireless
Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC) (pp. 877-882). IEEE.
CUI, X.Y. and SHEN, Q.G., 2018. Development of Network Protocol Resolver Based on
Wireshark. DEStech Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering, (cnai).
Hwang, J. and Kim, M., 2019. Effective Detecting Method of Nmap Idle Scan. JOURNAL
OF ADVANCED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CONVERGENCE, 9(1), pp.1-10.
Iqbal, H. and Naaz, S., 2019. Wireshark as a Tool for Detection of Various LAN Attacks.
Medeiros, I., Neves, N. and Correia, M., 2016, July. DEKANT: a static analysis tool that
learns to detect web application vulnerabilities. In Proceedings of the 25th International
Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (pp. 1-11).
Ross, K., 2018. SQL Injection Detection Using Machine Learning Techniques and Multiple
Data Sources.
Schwanke, P., HÖFKEN, H. and Schuba, M., 2017. Security Analysis of the ADS Protocol of
a Beckhoff CX2020 PLC. DEStech Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering,
(cnsce).