Applied Sciences (Dec 2020)

On Combining Static, Dynamic and Interactive Analysis Security Testing Tools to Improve OWASP Top Ten Security Vulnerability Detection in Web Applications

  • Francesc Mateo Tudela,
  • Juan-Ramón Bermejo Higuera,
  • Javier Bermejo Higuera,
  • Juan-Antonio Sicilia Montalvo,
  • Michael I. Argyros

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/app10249119
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 24
p. 9119

Abstract

Read online

The design of the techniques and algorithms used by the static, dynamic and interactive security testing tools differ. Therefore, each tool detects to a greater or lesser extent each type of vulnerability for which they are designed for. In addition, their different designs mean that they have different percentages of false positives. In order to take advantage of the possible synergies that different analysis tools types may have, this paper combines several static, dynamic and interactive analysis security testing tools—static white box security analysis (SAST), dynamic black box security analysis (DAST) and interactive white box security analysis (IAST), respectively. The aim is to investigate how to improve the effectiveness of security vulnerability detection while reducing the number of false positives. Specifically, two static, two dynamic and two interactive security analysis tools will be combined to study their behavior using a specific benchmark for OWASP Top Ten security vulnerabilities and taking into account various scenarios of different criticality in terms of the applications analyzed. Finally, this study analyzes and discuss the values of the selected metrics applied to the results for each n-tools combination.

Keywords