NIG-AP: a new method for automated penetration testing

Zhou, Tianyang; Zang, Yichao; Zhu, Junhu; Wang, Qingxian

doi:10.1631/fitee.1800532

Cited by 26 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Qiu et al [14] developed an automated penetration testing algorithm that exploited vulnerabilities based on a scanning report. Zhou et al [36] proposed the Network Information Gain Based Automated Attack Planning (NIG-AP) algorithm to automate penetration testing phases that use the reward system. Minh et al [37], meanwhile, automated vulnerability assessments at the commit level, triggering them with each new commit made to the codebase.…”

Section: Benchmarks Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Web Application Security through Automated Penetration Testing with Multiple Vulnerability Scanners

Abdulghaffar,

Elmrabit,

Yousefi

2023

Computers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Penetration testers have increasingly adopted multiple penetration testing scanners to ensure the robustness of web applications. However, a notable limitation of many scanning techniques is their susceptibility to producing false positives. This paper presents a novel framework designed to automate the operation of multiple Web Application Vulnerability Scanners (WAVS) within a single platform. The framework generates a combined vulnerabilities report using two algorithms: an automation algorithm and a novel combination algorithm that produces comprehensive lists of detected vulnerabilities. The framework leverages the capabilities of two web vulnerability scanners, Arachni and OWASP ZAP. The study begins with an extensive review of the existing scientific literature, focusing on open-source WAVS and exploring the OWASP 2021 guidelines. Following this, the framework development phase addresses the challenge of varying results obtained from different WAVS. This framework’s core objective is to combine the results of multiple WAVS into a consolidated vulnerability report, ultimately improving detection rates and overall security. The study demonstrates that the combined outcomes produced by the proposed framework exhibit greater accuracy compared to individual scanning results obtained from Arachni and OWASP ZAP. In summary, the study reveals that the Union List outperforms individual scanners, particularly regarding recall and F-measure. Consequently, adopting multiple vulnerability scanners is recommended as an effective strategy to bolster vulnerability detection in web applications.

show abstract

Section: Benchmarks Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Web Application Security through Automated Penetration Testing with Multiple Vulnerability Scanners

Abdulghaffar,

Elmrabit,

Yousefi

2023

Computers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To automate penetration testing, one can extend the RL game defined in the paragraph above to incorporate actions of penetration testing or red teaming tools (A.6.2). In fact, [129] did so to automate penetration testing with the Metasploit framework [5], whereas [76] utilised the PowerShell Empire framework [6] to automate post exploitation activities. Furthermore, researchers have analysed specific tasks of red teaming and attempted to automate them.…”

Section: Automated Red Team Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Cyber Defence: A Review

Vyas¹,

Hannay²,

Bolton³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Within recent times, cybercriminals have curated a variety of organised and resolute cyber attacks within a range of cyber systems, leading to consequential ramifications to private and governmental institutions. Current security-based automation and orchestrations focus on automating fixed purpose and hard-coded solutions, which are easily surpassed by modern-day cyber attacks. Research within Automated Cyber Defence will allow the development and enabling intelligence response by autonomously defending networked systems through sequential decision-making agents. This article comprehensively elaborates the developments within Automated Cyber Defence through a requirement analysis divided into two sub-areas, namely, automated defence and attack agents and Autonomous Cyber Operation (ACO) Gyms. The requirement analysis allows the comparison of automated agents and highlights the importance of ACO Gyms for their continual development. The requirement analysis is also used to critique ACO Gyms with an overall aim to develop them for deploying automated agents within real-world networked systems. Relevant future challenges were addressed from the overall analysis to accelerate development within the area of Automated Cyber Defence.

show abstract

“…Провівши аналіз останніх досліджень і публікацій, слід відзначити, що наявні методи проведення активного аналізу захищеності корпоративних мереж в автоматичному режимі використовують різну математичну базу. При цьому, більшість ґрунтується на використанні класичних алгоритмів планування [3], частково спостережуваних та звичайних марківських процесів прийняття рішень [4][5][6][7][8].…”

Section: вступunclassified

Rules for the Implementation of Exploits During an Active Analysis of the Corporate Networks` Security Based on a Fuzzy Assessment of the Quality of the Vulnerability Validation Mechanism

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The dynamics of the increase in the number of vulnerabilities of software and hardware platforms of corporate networks, the accessibility of exploit modules for these vulnerabilities in the Internet and the Darknet, along with the lack of a sufficient number of highly qualified cybersecurity specialists make the problem of effective automation of preventive information protection mechanisms quite urgent. In particular, the basic algorithms for the sequential implementation of exploits embedded in the vulnerability exploitation tools are quite primitive, and the proposed approaches to their improvement require constant adaptation of mathematical models of the implementation of attacking actions. This justifies the direction of this research. This paper considers the issue of forming decision-making rules for the implementation of vulnerabilities’ exploits during an active analysis of the corporate networks’ security. Based on the results of the analysis of quantitative indicators of the quality of the validation mechanism of the identified vulnerabilities and the use of fuzzy logic methods, a fuzzy system was formed, membership functions for each of the linguistic variables were determined and a knowledge base was built, which makes it possible to determine the quality level of the validation mechanism of the identified vulnerabilities based on all available information. At the same time, in order to eliminate the “human factor” of making mistakes when validating vulnerabilities, based on the built fuzzy knowledge base and the established levels of exploit modules’ efficiency, the rules for the implementation of individual exploit modules during an active analysis of the corporate network’s security were formed. Results of research make it possible to create expert systems for diagnosing the effectiveness of the validation mechanism of the identified vulnerabilities of target systems, and also help to solve the problem of the lack of qualified specialists in the analysis and maintenance of an appropriate level of information security of corporate networks.

show abstract

NIG-AP: a new method for automated penetration testing

Cited by 26 publications

References 14 publications

Enhancing Web Application Security through Automated Penetration Testing with Multiple Vulnerability Scanners

Enhancing Web Application Security through Automated Penetration Testing with Multiple Vulnerability Scanners

Automated Cyber Defence: A Review

Rules for the Implementation of Exploits During an Active Analysis of the Corporate Networks` Security Based on a Fuzzy Assessment of the Quality of the Vulnerability Validation Mechanism

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About