This project’s goal is to create a “best practices” web application penetration testing framework which users can implement in their own organizations and a “low level” web application penetration testing guide that describes how to find certain issues.
Version 3 of the Testing Guide was released in last month in December 2008, the project was part of the OWASP Summer of Code, started on April 2008 reviewing the version 2 and improving it.
OWASP Testing Guide v3 is a 349 page book; they have split the set of active tests in 9 sub-categories for a total of 66 controls to test during the Web Application Testing activity.
Each control has an OWASP name, so for example a SQL Injection is called: OWASP-DV-005, meaning that it is the 5th control of the Data Validation category. They got a dream team of 21 authors and 4 reviewers: after 6 months of hard work and great team work we realized the v3.
The Guide is a “live” document: the project always needs your feedback! Please join the testing mailing list and share your ideas here.
You can download OWASP Testing Guide v3 here:
Download the presentation here
Browse the Testing Guide v3 on the wiki here
Or read more here.
The security assessments I have performed indicates that website developers and application developers have never heard of OWASP. When pointed to OWASP the remarks are often “But that’s about security, not web design” – and I think the problem stems from there. Web designers are all-to-often graphic artists, and have cut their teeth in environments where the application software they need to run, runs with elevated privileges, they have access to large portions of systems to aid in publication of content and therefore believe they are above security or that it doesn’t apply to them.