Penetration tests differ both in their approaches and in the weaknesses they attempt to exploit. The level of information provided to the pen tester will determine their approaches as well as the scope of the project. The different approaches to penetration testing in generic include:
- White Box
- Black Box
- Gray Box
Black Box Penetration Testing
During a black box penetration test also known as an external penetration testing, the pen tester is given little to no information regarding the IT infrastructure of a business. The fundamental advantage of this sort of test is to simulate a real-world cyber attack, whereby the pen tester assumes the role of an uninformed attacker.
A black box penetration test can take as long as about a month and a half to finish making it probably the longest kind of penetration tests. Organizations can expect to pay due to the level of effort involved in arranging, performing, testing, and finishing the report. This, obviously, all relies upon the scope of the project.
Probably the most effortless ways for pen testers to break into a system during a black block test is by conveying a progression of exploits known to work. This kind of test is additionally alluded to as the “experimentation” approach, be that as it may, there is a serious extent of specialized expertise engaged with this procedure.
In the modern day, more and more enterprise is adopt and formation of red team operations for the purpose to make proactive and hostile approach to attempt hack own infrastructure and document down the attack surface path and what vulnerability they exploit and what system they compromised and extent of the data can be steal and proactive reporting them into blue team to undertaking various cyber defense initiative.
White Box Penetration Testing
White box penetration testing also called clear box testing, glass box testing, or internal penetration testing is the point at which the pen tester has full information and access to the source code and condition.
The objective of a white box penetration test is to direct an inside and out security review of a business’ systems and to give the pen tester as much detail as possible. Thus, the tests are more careful on the grounds that the pen tester approaches zones where a discovery test can’t, for example, quality of code and application design.
White box tests do have their weaknesses. For example, given the level of access the pen tester has it can take more time to choose what zones to concentrate on. What’s more, these sorts of tests frequently require complex and costly devices, for example, code analyzers and debuggers.
White box tests can take a multi week to finish. In the end, it doesn’t make a difference whether you play out a black box or a white box penetration test insofar as the essential objective of the test is being met.
Static application security testing (SAST), source code review, reversing program code and malware analysis is a typical area for most of the whitebox pentesting activity or scope of work to be carried out.
Gray Box Penetration Testing
During a gray box penetration test, the pen tester has halfway information or access to an internal network or web application. A pen tester may start with client benefits on a host and be advised to raise their record to an area administrator. Or on the other hand, they could be approached to gain admittance to programming code and framework design charts.
One principle preferred position of a dark box infiltration test is that the announcing gives a more engaged and proficient appraisal of your network’s security. For example, rather than investing energy with the “experimentation” approach, pen testers playing out a gray box penetration test can audit the network charts to distinguish regions of most serious hazard. From that point, the correct countermeasures can be prescribed to fill the holes.
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