Worst-input mutation approach to web services vulnerability testing based on SOAP messages

The growing popularity and application of Web services have led to an increase in attention to the vulnerability of software based on these services. Vulnerability testing examines the trustworthiness, and reduces the security risks of software systems, however such testing of Web services has become increasing challenging due to the cross-platform and heterogeneous characteristics of their deployment. This paper proposes a worst-input mutation approach for testing Web service vulnerability based on SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages. Based on characteristics of the SOAP messages, the proposed approach uses the farthest neighbor concept to guide generation of the test suite. The test case generation algorithm is presented, and a prototype Web service vulnerability testing tool described. The tool was applied to the testing of Web services on the Internet, with experimental results indicating that the proposed approach, which found more vulnerability faults than other related approaches, is both practical and effective

Automatic Generation of Tests to Exploit XML Injection Vulnerabilities in Web Applications

Modern enterprise systems can be composed of many web services (e.g., SOAP and RESTful). Users of such systems might not have direct access to those services, and rather interact with them through a single-entry point which provides a GUI (e.g., a web page or a mobile app). Although the interactions with such entry point might be secure, a hacker could trick such systems to send malicious inputs to those internal web services. A typical example is XML injection targeting SOAP communications. Previous work has shown that it is possible to automatically generate such kind of attacks using search-based techniques. In this paper, we improve upon previous results by providing more efficient techniques to generate such attacks. In particular, we investigate four different algorithms and two different fitness functions. A large empirical study, involving also two industrial systems, shows that our technique is effective at automatically generating XML injection attacks

Automated and Effective Security Testing for XML-based Vulnerabilities

Nowadays, the External Markup Language (XML) is the most commonly used technology in web services for enabling service providers and consumers to exchange data. XML is also widely used to store data and configuration files that control the operation of software systems. Nevertheless, XML suffers from several well-known vulnerabilities such as XML Injections (XMLi). Any exploitation of these vulnerabilities might cause serious and undesirable consequences, e.g., denial of service and accessing or modifying highly-confidential data. Fuzz testing techniques have been investigated in the literature to detect XMLi vulnerabilities. However, their success rate tends to be very low since they cannot generate complex test inputs required for the detection of these vulnerabilities. Furthermore, these approaches are not effective for real-world complex XML-based enterprise systems, which are composed of several components including front-end web applications, XML gateway/firewall, and back-end web services. In this dissertation, we propose several automated security testing strategies for detecting XML-based vulnerabilities. In particular, we tackle the challenges of security testing in an industrial context. Our proposed strategies, target various and complementary aspects of security testing for XML-based systems, e.g., test case generation for XML gateway/firewall. The development and evaluation of these strategies have been done in close collaboration with a leading financial service provider in Luxembourg/Switzerland, namely SIX Payment Services (formerly known as CETREL S.A.). SIX Payment Services processes several thousand financial transactions daily, providing a range of financial services, e.g., online payments, issuing of credit and debit cards. The main research contributions of this dissertation are: -A large-scale and systematic experimental assessment for detecting vulnerabilities in numerous widely-used XML parsers and the underlying systems using them. In particular, we targeted two common XML parser’s vulnerabilities: (i) XML Billion Laughs (BIL), and (ii) XML External Entities (XXE). - A novel automated testing approach, that is based on constraint-solving and input mutation techniques, to detect XMLi vulnerabilities in XML gateway/firewall and back-end web services. - A black-box search-based testing approach to detect XMLi vulnerabilities in front-end web applications. Genetic algorithms are used to search for inputs that can manipulate the application to generate malicious XML messages. - An in-depth analysis of various search algorithms and fitness functions, to improve the search-based testing approach for front-end web applications. - Extensive evaluations of our proposed testing strategies on numerous real-world industrial web services, XML gateway/firewall, and web applications as well as several open-source systems

Automated Realistic Test Input Generation and Cost Reduction in Service-centric System Testing

Service-centric System Testing (ScST) is more challenging than testing traditional software due to the complexity of service technologies and the limitations that are imposed by the SOA environment. One of the most important problems in ScST is the problem of realistic test data generation. Realistic test data is often generated manually or using an existing source, thus it is hard to automate and laborious to generate. One of the limitations that makes ScST challenging is the cost associated with invoking services during testing process. This thesis aims to provide solutions to the aforementioned problems, automated realistic input generation and cost reduction in ScST. To address automation in realistic test data generation, the concept of Service-centric Test Data Generation (ScTDG) is presented, in which existing services used as realistic data sources. ScTDG minimises the need for tester input and dependence on existing data sources by automatically generating service compositions that can generate the required test data. In experimental analysis, our approach achieved between 93% and 100% success rates in generating realistic data while state-of-the-art automated test data generation achieved only between 2% and 34%. The thesis addresses cost concerns at test data generation level by enabling data source selection in ScTDG. Source selection in ScTDG has many dimensions such as cost, reliability and availability. This thesis formulates this problem as an optimisation problem and presents a multi-objective characterisation of service selection in ScTDG, aiming to reduce the cost of test data generation. A cost-aware pareto optimal test suite minimisation approach addressing testing cost concerns during test execution is also presented. The approach adapts traditional multi-objective minimisation approaches to ScST domain by formulating ScST concerns, such as invocation cost and test case reliability. In experimental analysis, the approach achieved reductions between 69% and 98.6% in monetary cost of service invocations during testin

SPARC 2017 retrospect & prospects : Salford postgraduate annual research conference book of abstracts

Welcome to the Book of Abstracts for the 2017 SPARC conference. This year we not only celebrate the work of our PGRs but also the 50th anniversary of Salford as a University, which makes this year’s conference extra special. Once again we have received a tremendous contribution from our postgraduate research community; with over 130 presenters, the conference truly showcases a vibrant PGR community at Salford. These abstracts provide a taster of the research strengths of their works, and provide delegates with a reference point for networking and initiating critical debate. With such wide-ranging topics being showcased, we encourage you to exploit this great opportunity to engage with researchers working in different subject areas to your own. To meet global challenges, high impact research inevitably requires interdisciplinary collaboration. This is recognised by all major research funders. Therefore engaging with the work of others and forging collaborations across subject areas is an essential skill for the next generation of researchers

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

computer software maintenance; computer software selection and evaluation; formal logic; formal methods; formal specification; programming languages; semantics; software engineering; specifications; verificatio

Resilience-Building Technologies: State of Knowledge -- ReSIST NoE Deliverable D12

This document is the first product of work package WP2, "Resilience-building and -scaling technologies", in the programme of jointly executed research (JER) of the ReSIST Network of Excellenc