Testing for Security Weakness of Web Applications using Ethical Hacking

Abstract

In the digital world, everything gets connected through the network, and when various services are provided by web applications people are susceptible to hacking. According to the 2019 internet security threat report by Symantec's, an average of 4, 800 websites are vulnerable to digital information theft (form jacking) attack. The main intent of this paper is to recognize openness and flaws in networks and web applications using penetration testing to protect the institutions from cyber threats. There are many scanning methods suggested by many authors to identify the weakness. But in our research, vulnerability analysis and assessment are done by the Nikto tool, [open web application security project] OWASP's Zed attack proxy tool, Netcraft, Sparta and network mapper (Nmap) have been tested through kali Linux platform and search engine. ZAP and Nikto tools are demonstrated in ten different domains to identify the security weakness. From the analysis medium, low-level attacks have been discovered by the ZAP tool. From the result comparison of the Nikto and zap tool, the Nikto tool identified more venerability than ZAP.