What is Selenium & How to scale web app security testing with Selenium?
Selenium provides a framework where APIs and several tools can automate user interaction on JavaScript and HTML applications such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer etc. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as JavaFX, Flash or Silverlight are not supported by selenium. It has proved to be one of the best test automation tools used for testing web applications and has been widely accepted by organizations globally. In this article, you will get to know what is selenium and how web app security testing can be scaled using selenium.
What is Selenium?
It is an open-source, test automation tool used exclusively for testing web applications. Selenium test scripts can be written in popular programming languages such as PHP, Perl, Java, C#, Ruby, Python etc. It can easily work on various web browsers and operating systems.
Scaling up web app security testing with Selenium:
Understanding of basic principles:
Testing is quite often considered a complex activity, simply because there are a lot of things that need to be tested. For every feature, there are multiple versions, multiple settings, multiple use cases, multiple user stories etc. Just a few variations will amplify the test problems.
For example, through just 10 switches, 210 possible combinations can be created for the purpose of testing. This means to have perfect coverage, 1,024 tests would be needed. Most of the testers know for sure that having so many tests isn’t an ideal scenario.
There are a few tips and tricks that testers use to get good enough coverage. One of the tricks is that code coverage tools can be used to make sure that each function goes through the unit testing process.
To have robust security test coverage, some hacking payloads can be added to your existing security tests. This will in turn provide in-depth and broad coverage.
The tactical use of integrated security testing so that XSS instances can be found using Selenium:
XSS is a common web application-related security issue. It is a context where a script is executed by one user on another user’s page. An intruder can use this action to perform specific activities on the victims’ browsers or steal cookies from victims.
From a black-box testing perspective, a bunch of script tags can be used to witness the outcome. Manual testers use the <hr> tags as they have practical knowledge of the application that they were testing. For this reason, they can find bugs related to security easily when compared to scanning tools and penetration testers.
Two strategic ways can be used: QA teams can use two ways. The first way is where a list of payloads from OWASP can be provided to them. The second way is to build a robust and scalable security system as part of the test automation suite.
When it comes to XSS, a string generator can be added to the Selenium automation code that delivers a lot of common payloads. The issue with this approach is that tests are broken down by the common “alert” box. To solve this issue, console.error () can be used to send a unique number to the browser logs. Then, the browser logs can be picked from selenium to know whether the unique number is popping up, which in turn helps in knowing whether there is an XSS vulnerability or not.
More context can be added through the detection and assertion so that the QA team can connect with the right team or individual to understand and know about the error.
Conclusion:
If you are looking forward to implementing selenium testing for your specific project, then do get connected with a globally renowned software testing services company that will provide you with a tactical solutions framework that is in line with your project specific requirements.