What Is Penetration Testing? How It Works & Why It Matters

There are different types of penetration testing that testers use depending on the level of knowledge and access granted to them. Black box testing, gray box testing, and white box testing are the main types of penetration testing. So, let’s now explore them in detail:

Types of Penetration Testing

• External Network Penetration Testing

• Internal Network Penetration Testing

• Web and Mobile Application Penetration Testing

• Wireless Penetration Testing

• Social Engineering & Physical Penetration Testing

• Device Penetration Testing

Black Box Testing

Black box testing determines the vulnerabilities in an IT infrastructure that can be attacked from outside the network. In this penetration testing type, the testers are provided with no prior knowledge along with no access to the targeted system. The simplest example of black box testing can be an assessment of website security with no user access or any other information. So, the testers have to use their analytical skills to analyze vulnerabilities by acting as the user accessing the website. Testers will create an attack plan depending on the website functionalities, such as a forgotten password, login function, input-based web pages, etc.

Similarly, a black box test on the network will start with a network connection. Afterward, testers will try to gather as much information as they could and then prepare an attack plan accordingly. To better understand it, consider the wireless network as an example. Testers will look for any access point weakness or other insecure network environments.

Black box testing is also handy when it comes to evaluating the chance of penetrations from the human factor. Social engineering penetration testing is the best example here. Testing out by email-based phishing attacks, SMS-based attacks, voice-based vishing, and similar other tests are the perfect way to check the success of the awareness campaigns and physical controls.

Advantages of Black Box Testing

• It reflects the closest attacker’s perspective, as the whole assessment is based on an unauthorized environment.
• It is a perfect assessment technique to pinpoint external vulnerabilities present in small and large systems.
• Testers use different open-source tools and other techniques to penetrate into the system, just like what attackers mostly do.
• It can detect server misconfigurations, SQL injections, validation issues, and similar other vulnerabilities.

Disadvantages of Black Box Testing

• There is no prior knowledge or access provided to testers, so the assessment is not deep.
• If the tester fails to find any external vulnerabilities, it might give a false assumption to the organization that its infrastructure is safe.

To sum up, black box penetration testing is an effective assessment practice for detecting external vulnerabilities in the closest to real-world attacks.

Gray Box Testing

Gray box testing determines the vulnerabilities in an IT infrastructure using low-level user access. In this penetration testing type, the testers are provided with some level of knowledge along with some access to the targeted system, such as login credentials, architecture diagrams, system code, etc. An example of gray box testing can be an assessment of website security from low-level access.

Gray box testing is perfect to determine what harm small information or privileged users can cause to an organization. It helps in testing whether low privilege users can somehow access functionality or data that is accessible to only high privileged users. Similarly, it also helps in testing the data handling by authenticated apps, such as SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Moreover, it can also be used for advanced application or platform testing, such as integration with cloud components, using a framework like Rails, .NET, Django, etc.

Advantages of Gray Box Testing

• It reduces the time spent in learning about the infrastructure, as required in black box testing.
• The prior knowledge of architecture, design, or basic login credentials help to test APIs and web applications that involve user information to access applications.
• It is perfect for simulating different privilege-based threats to pinpoint relevant vulnerabilities and other loopholes, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, authentication error, and similar others.

Disadvantages of Gray Box Testing

• It does not provide access to the source code, so the test might won’t detect critical vulnerabilities.
• It can offer efficient results when network areas to be tested are defined properly.

Overall, gray box testing is meant to identify what level of harm a privileged user or partial information access can cause to an organization.

White Box Testing

White box testing determines the vulnerabilities in an IT infrastructure from both inside and outside. In this penetration testing type, the testers are provided with complete knowledge of the organization’s infrastructure and also have complete access to the system, applications, and network, including IP address, source code, network maps, credentials, configuration files, OS details, and similar other details.

White box testing is perfect for testing the strength of the applications, networks, and systems over privileged insiders and outsiders. Consider website application penetration testing as an example. In this test, the testers are provided with source code access, security architecture, access to multiple user levels, and similar other details. Afterward, the testers set up different threat scenarios to pinpoint all the insider and outsider threats.

Advantages of White Box Testing

• It is much faster than black box testing, as the tester has all the details and access needed.
• It is more accurate than black box testing.
• It highlights the different approaches attackers can take to compromise the system.
• It is a cost-friendly penetration type.

Disadvantages of White Box Testing

• It is much more difficult to implement.
• It might require some extra time to decide which areas to test out.
• It might be challenging to develop different test cases.
• It requires complete knowledge and access, so it hinders organizations to trust third-party authorities to implement this test.

Overall, white box testing offers the most comprehensive and detailed analysis of the security posture of an organization.