Application network security tools

InfoSec professionals honestly need a lot of tools to do their work. You need to be collecting decrypted packets and logs and then enriching it with threat intelligence. At least for our group, our backbone is Splunk-the features that set it apart from most SIEMs is that it handles unstructured data quite well and can scale easy.

Most shops only utilize logs, and maybe NetFlow. With Splunk, we can utilize every use case our engineers can create use cases and content for. Splunk while not a SIEM by itself, can be made to do it and add the predictive analytics out of the box. It also Supports both push and pull models. The dark web turned out not to be as scary as urban legends made it out to be. Tor is just a tool to ensure privacy on the Internet. The system routes requests to proxy web servers for privacy, making users harder to track.

Used in identity management, KeePass is a necessity for many office settings. A simple password management system. KeePass allows users to access all of their accounts with one password. Combining convenience with security, KeePass lets users set unique passwords for different accounts with an auto-fill function when typing in the master password.

Those who have dealt in InfoSec for more than a day know how important this can be. Sometimes a security issue just comes down to bad password management.

KeePass helps network security officers manage the human element of the job. TrueCrypt remains popular despite having gone years without updates. Abandoned by its developer in , TrueCrypt is technically outdated, yet still a strong tool. A disk encryption system, TrueCrypt allows for layered content encryption with two tiers of access control.

Free, powerful, open software. One of the best open source security programs available. Kali Linux is a security system designed for digital forensics and penetration testing which now can run on both Linux distributions and Windows operating systems. It is compatible with a wide range of wireless devices.

It is valued for more than tools geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing , Security Research, Computer Forensics, and Reverse Engineering. A powerful tool for network protection. Burp Suite is a real-time network security scanner designed to identify critical weaknesses. Burp Suite will determine how cybersecurity threats might invade a network via a simulated attack.

The suite is available in three versions: Community, Professional, and Enterprise. Professional and Enterprise are paid application testing tools, including the web vulnerability scanner. The Community version is free but severely limited. Community includes only the essential manual tools. Burp Suite is a potent tool for businesses, but perhaps pricey for smaller organizations. Still, a critical application security testing tool. One of the best open-source vulnerability scanner management tools.

Nikto will scan web servers and networks for matches with a database of over threats. Although the network protection software itself has not been updated in some time, it is still up to date. This is because the threat database is regularly updated. There are also countless plugins being released and continuously updated. For many security professionals, Nikto is a cornerstone of the vulnerability assessment routine.

Java-based web proxy Paros Proxy includes several useful tools for running security tests. These include a web spider, traffic recorder, and vulnerability scanner. It includes DNS tools, a ping and port scanner, traceroute, and other utilities. It comes in bundles with more or fewer tools based on the price. The file system tools allow you to examine file systems of a suspect computer in a non-intrusive fashion.

Because the tools do not rely on the operating system to process the file systems, deleted and hidden content is shown. Web security is a web application security testing environment designed from the ground up to provide the best combination of automatic and manual vulnerability testing technologies.

Knoppix is used for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or as many Nmap survey takers attest, a portable security tool. THC Amap helps in determining what application is listening on a given port. Their database is not very large, but it is definitely worth trying for a 2nd opinion or if Nmap fails to detect a service.

Amap even knows how to parse Nmap output files. Rainbow Crack is a tool that is a hash cracker that makes use of a large-scale time-memory trade-off. Grendel-Scan is an open-source web application security testing tool.

It is an automated testing module for detecting common web application vulnerabilities and features geared at aiding manual penetration tests. Dradis is an open-source framework that helps to enable the effective sharing of information among participants in a penetration test. It is also known to be a self-contained web application that helps to provide a centralized repository of information to keep track of what has been done so far and what is still ahead.

Socat works over a number of protocols and through files, pipes, devices terminal or modem, etc. Socat provides forking, logging, and dumping, different modes for interprocess communication, and many more options. It can be used, for example, as a TCP relay one-shot or daemon , as a daemon-based socksifier, as a shell interface to Unix sockets, as an IP6 relay, for redirecting TCP-oriented programs to a serial line or to establish a relatively secure environment su and chroot for running client or server shell scripts with network connections.

It allows the dumping of the permissions DACLs and audit settings SACLs for the file system, registry, printers and shares in a concise, readable format so that holes in system security are readily apparent. DumpSec also dumps user, group, and replication information. SAINT is a commercial vulnerability assessment tool. SAINT is used to be free and open-source but is now a commercial product. It helps to send a NetBIOS status query to each address in a supplied range and lists received information in a human-readable form.

DirBuster helps in searching for hidden pages and directories on a web server. Sometimes developers leave a page accessible but unlinked; thus, the DirBuster finds these potential vulnerabilities. WinDbg is known to be a graphical debugger from Microsoft. It can even debug in kernel mode. Wfuzz is used for Brute-forcing Web Applications. It can be used for finding resources not linked directories, servlets, scripts, etc. It is a log analyzer and has a correlation engine designed to shift out important network events.

STunnel works as an SSL encryption wrapper between remote client and local inetd-startable or remote servers. Users and processes are granted their least required privileges in a much more granular way than with traditional Unix Access Control.

The security model of SELinux has been ported to other operating systems. Brutus is a Windows-only cracker which bangs against network services of remote systems and tries to guess passwords by using a dictionary and permutations thereof. No source code is available for the same. EnCase is a suite of computer forensics software that is mainly used by law enforcement. It is a de-facto standard in forensics. It collects data from a computer in a forensically sound manner, thus employing checksums to help detect tampering.

The Wapiti tools help in auditing the web security of your web applications. Once it gets this list, Wapiti acts like a fuzzer, injecting payloads to see if a script is vulnerable. WebGoat is an insecure J2EE web application that teaches web application security lessons.

Here the users can demonstrate their understanding of a security issue by exploiting a real vulnerability in the WebGoat application. It helps in removing unwanted settings and files. It focuses on web browser hijacking.

Honeyd helps in creating virtual hosts on a network. These hosts can be configured to run arbitrary services, and their TCP personality can be adapted so that they appear to be running certain versions of operating systems.

Honeyd helps to enable a single host to claim multiple addresses on a LAN for network simulation. It is possible to ping the virtual machines or to traceroute them. Any type of service on the virtual machine can be simulated according to a simple configuration file. AIDE helps in making the cryptographic hashes of important system files and then stores them in a database. It can then make reports about which files have changed.

We hope that the above network security tools gave you a glimpse about the Network Security world. If you have any more information on the above or any other network security tools , do let us know in the comments section below. Your email address will not be published. Email: [email protected]. Wireshark Wireshark is known to be an open multi-platform network protocol analyzer. Metasploit Metasploit is an advanced open-source platform that can develop, test, and use exploit code.

Nessus Nessus is a popular and very capable vulnerability scanner developed for UNIX systems, embedded scripting language to help you write your scripts and understand the existing ones.

AirCrack AirCrack is a combination of tools for Snort This suite of tools helps in network intrusion detection and prevention during traffic analysis and packet logging on IP Networks. Cain and Abel Cain and Abel is a Windows only password recovery tool that helps to handle a variety of tasks. Netcat The original Netcat was released by Hobbit in Tcpdump Tcpdump is a network sniffer that was initially used before Wireshark, and many of us continue to use it.

Kismet Kismet is a console that is based on Burp Suite Burp Suite is an integrated platform that helps to attack web applications.

Ettercap Ettercap is a suite used for attacks in LAN. Sysinternals Sysinternals helps to provide many utilities that are useful for low-level windows hacking. W3af W3af is a popular, powerful, and flexible framework used to find and exploit web application vulnerabilities. Scapy Scapy is an interactive and powerful manipulation tool, network discovery tool, network scanner, packet generator, and a packet sniffer. Hydra Hydra is often used when you require to brute force crack a remote authentication service.

Netstumbler Netstumbler is a Windows tool that helps to find open wireless access points. WebScarab WebScarab helps to record the conversations requests and responses that it observers and allows the operator to review them in various different ways. TrueCrypt TrueCrypt was abandoned in May Dsniff Dsniff is a well-engineered suite of tools by Dug Song.

IDA Pro Disassembly is a huge part of security research. Maltego Maltego is a data mining application also used for forensics. Ophcrack Ophcrack is a rainbow table-based cracker for Windows Passwords. Nexpose Nexpose is famous for scanning vulnerabilities in networks. Netfilter Netfilter is a packet filter that implements in the standard Linux kernel.

Skipfish Skipfish is a web application and security reconnaissance tool that helps in preparing an interactive sitemap for the targeted site. GFI LanGuard GFI LanGuard is a vulnerability and network security scanner, specially designed to help clients with patch management, vulnerability assessment, software, and network audits.

VMware VMware is a virtualization tool that will let you run one operating system within another. Ntop Ntop helps in showing network usage similar to what a top does for processes. AppScan AppScan is a tool that provides security testing in the application development lifecycle, thus easing the unit testing and security assurance. Medusa Medusa is a modular, speedy, massively parallel login brute forcer. Canvas Canvas is known to be a commercial vulnerability exploitation tool. Tor Tor is a network of virtual tunnels known to improve privacy and security on the Internet by routing requests through a series of intermediate machines.

Retina The retina can scan all the hosts on a network and report on vulnerabilities found in a network—the retina written by eEye, which is known for its security research. Firefox Firefox is a web browser which is a descendant of Mozilla. L0phtCrack L0phtCrack helps in cracking Windows passwords from hashes, which it can obtain given proper access from stand-alone Windows workstations, networked servers, primary domain controllers, or Active Directory.

Social Engineer Toolkit The Social-Engineer Toolkit is known to incorporate many social-engineering attacks all in one interface. Yersinia Yersinia is a low-level protocol attack tool useful for penetration testing. SolarWinds SolarWinds is known to create and sell dozens of special-purpose tools targeted at systems administrators.

Ngrep Ngrep provides features like applying them to the Network Layer. EtherApe EtherApe is known to display network activity graphically with a color-coded protocols display. Splunk Splunk searches, reports, monitors, and analyzes real-time streaming and historical IT data.

Nagios Nagios helps in the system and network monitoring. A DevSecOps approach with frequent scanning and testing of software will drive down the time to fix flaws. Median time to repair for applications scanned 12 times or fewer per year was 68 days, while an average scan rate of daily or more lowered that rate to 19 days. David Strom writes and speaks about security, networking and communications topics for CSO Online, Network World, Computerworld and other publications.

He can be reached through his web site , or on Twitter dstrom. Here are the latest Insider stories. More Insider Sign Out. Sign In Register. Sign Out Sign In Register. Latest Insider. Check out the latest Insider stories here.

More from the IDG Network. Back to basics 7 elements of a successful security What is the Heartbleed bug, how does it What is CVE, its definition and purpose? What is a fileless attack? How hackers Critical Infrastructure Protection What is an intrusion detection system?

What is cross-site scripting XSS? DDoS explained: How distributed denial Show More. Related: Application Security Security. Microsoft's very bad year for security: A timeline. Back to basics. Each one of these application security testing technologies has its own set of features and functions, and its strong and weak points.

No single tool can be used as a magic potion against malicious players. Organizations need to analyze their specific needs and choose the tools that best support their application security policy and strategy. While getting the right tools for application security is important, it is just one step. Though most tools today focus on detection, a mature application security policy goes a few steps further to bridge the gap from detection to remediation.

Considering the continuous increase in known software vulnerabilities, focusing on detection will leave organizations with an incomplete application security model. Application security tools often provide security and development teams with exhausting laundry lists of security alerts.

However, teams also need to have the means to quickly fix the issues that present the biggest security risks. In order to address the most urgent application security threats, organizations need to adopt a mature application security model that includes prioritization and remediation on top of detection. While detecting as many security issues in the application layer is extremely important, considering the current threat landscape and competitive release timelines, it has become unrealistic to attempt to fix them all.

We must bring continuous risk and trust-based assessment and prioritization of application vulnerabilities to DevSecOps. A mature application security model includes strategies and technologies that help teams prioritize — providing them the tools to zero-in on the security vulnerabilities that present the biggest risk to their systems so that they can address them as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, teams end up spending a lot of valuable time sorting through alerts, debating what to fix first, and running the risk of leaving the most urgent issues unattended.