Guide to Crushing Zero-Day Vulnerabilities with Automated Pentesting

Quick Summary: Zero-day vulnerabilities are unknown and unpatched, which makes them quite dangerous. Identifying and fixing them should be a priority of every AppSec team to secure applications. Slam the door on hackers by leveraging automated penetration testing and eliminating zero-day exploits. This blog explores the crucial role of automated pen testing in detecting and preventing zero days.

Zero-day vulnerabilities are far more dangerous than any common vulnerability because they are unknown to developers or vendors. They are hidden and ticking time bombs that expose your sensitive data when exploited.

These hidden flaws pose critical security risks to organizations, resulting in costly data breaches and irreversible reputational damage. Automated penetration testing is instrumental in tackling zero-day vulnerabilities as it simulates real-world attacks.

As an offensive cybersecurity strategy, automated penetration testing focuses on identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities proactively. Zero-day is elusive and unlike other common vulnerabilities, it is extremely hard to detect, especially with traditional security tools.

This blog delves into the realm of automated pen testing and how it helps discover and prevent zero-day vulnerabilities.

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What is Automated Penetration Testing?

Automated penetration testing is the use of software tools to identify and report vulnerabilities by performing simulated attacks on a web app, network, or system. It involves imitating hackers’ techniques with simulated attacks without human intervention.

In automated pentesting, the software performs attacks in a controlled and systematic way. In essence, automated pen testing involves creating a scenario in which a hacker tries to hack an application, system, or network.

How Does Automated Penetration Testing Help Detect Zero-Day Vulnerability?

Zero-day vulnerabilities are complex and require advanced testing to detect them. The following are the different techniques used to scan and detect zero-day vulnerabilities and protect your applications from cyberattacks.

Behavioral Anomaly Detection

Usually, pen testing tools can easily detect common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, broken authentication, and insecure direct object references. However, identifying complex vulnerabilities like zero-day exploits isn’t that easy.

Only advanced pen testing tools that use behavioral anomaly detection can identify such vulnerabilities. Behavioral anomaly detection is a vulnerability assessment technique in which an automated pen test tool tracks an application’s behavior while it is dynamically tested for vulnerabilities.

This technique checks for unusual or suspicious behavior in a web app that marks a deviation from what is expected or considered normal. Behavioral anomaly detection helps discover vulnerabilities that ordinary tools cannot detect.

An automated pentesting tool sets a baseline for normal behavior and then checks app behavior against it to detect unusual behavior.

It involves:

• Checking the response of the app to different inputs and actions.
• Tracking logic flaws like if a user is able to perform admin-only tasks.
• Testing for unusual data flows or state transitions.

Fuzz Testing

Another method that automated pentest tools use for identifying and reporting zero-day vulnerabilities is fuzzing or fuzz testing. This method is quite helpful in detecting hard-to-find security vulnerabilities, including zero-day, apart from the known vulnerabilities.

Fuzzing is a testing method in which a web application is fed with unexpected, random, or malformed data to check its behavior. For example, in fuzzing, a web application is provided with 10,000 inputs while it expects only 10 or 100, special symbols like “@!%&$” are inserted, and a random code is also provided to test the app.

It enables AppSec teams to discover abnormal behavior, crashes, or reveal vulnerabilities. The kinds of issues it can detect include buffer overflows, input validation weaknesses, unhandled exceptions, business logic flow, and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Attack Surface Mapping

Automated penetration testing tools perform attack surface mapping by identifying and visualizing potential attack points. It helps discover which parts are exposed or susceptible to cyberattacks. This type of testing enables AppSec teams to identify weak spots or blind spots that can trigger vulnerabilities like zero-day.

With the use of automated pentesting tools, AppSec teams can perform attack surface mapping that involves automated scanning, asset discovery, fingerprinting, risk prioritization, and continuous assessments to identify and resolve security issues early.

Key areas of attack surface that an automated pentest tool can scan for vulnerabilities include:

• Public-facing assets like web apps, websites, and APIs.
• Internal applications, networks, and databases.
• Servers, mobile devices, desktops, and other endpoint devices.
• User accounts, access roles, credentials, and other access points.
• Dependencies like open-source packages and libraries.

Continuous Vulnerability Scanning

Automated penetration testing tools offer continuous vulnerability scanning to proactively scan your applications, networks, and systems. With this cybersecurity strategy, AppSec teams can continuously scan and identify vulnerabilities.

Proactive vulnerability scanning enables AppSec teams to discover potential entry points before they become a threat. This enables them to even spot zero-day exploits and mitigate the risk of cyberattacks. Regular vulnerability scanning with automated pentest tools helps evaluate applications with hacker-style techniques that discover critical issues more accurately.

It provides many advantages:

• Build a stronger security posture.
• Make the organization compliance ready.
• Ensure proactive risk management.

Misconfigurations and Logic Flaws

Many zero-day vulnerabilities stem from misconfigurations and logic flaws. So, evaluating applications for common misconfigurations and logic flaws can help discover and resolve potential zero-day exploits. Misconfigurations such as overly permissive firewall rules, exposed admin panels, open S3 buckets, and other kinds of settings issues can harbor hidden security risks.

Similarly, logic flaws that arise due to the flaws in the design and implementation of an application are also conducive to zero-day vulnerabilities. Usually, logic flaws go unnoticed during security testing, which makes them unknown and exploitable. Misconfigurations may expose sensitive information before developers realize it, causing a serious security risk.

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Top 5 Automated Penetration Testing Tools to Uncover Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

Every pen testing tool has some pros and cons that you need to understand to pick the right one for your requirements. So, let’s see the top automated pentesting tools below.

1. ZeroThreat

ZeroThreat is a next-gen automated pentesting tool with advanced AI-powered scanning capabilities. It is a developer-friendly pentest platform that uncovers critical vulnerabilities, including zero-day and beyond OWASP top 10, by evaluating web apps deeply, even pages protected behind logins.

With seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines, ZeroThreat empowers DevSecOps teams to automate vulnerability detection and remediation within the SDLC, reducing the time in application build and release cycles.

Pros:

• 5X faster scanning
• 98.9% accurate vulnerability scanning results
• Zero false positives
• Credentialed/non-credentialed scanning, including MFA-based scanning
• 40,000+ TTP-based attack simulations
• Out-of-band application security testing
• Scheduled scanning
• AI-powered remediation reports
• Efficiently scans JavaScript-heavy apps like SPAs
• Compliance testing included

Cons:

• Only for web apps and APIs

2. Metasploit

Metasploit is a popular open-source pentesting framework with a huge library of payloads and functions. It offers complete hacker-style automated pentesting as well as manual vulnerability assessment. While pen testers can create custom payloads or modify exploit parameters to simulate a real-world attack, with msfconsole scripts, they can automate tasks.

Additionally, Metasploit’s premium version offers a GUI-based automated pentest platform. This platform offers automated exploit recommendations, vulnerability scanning, brute forcing, credential reuse testing, and detailed reports with remediation suggestions.

Pros:

• Offers a wide range of payloads, exploits, and post-exploitation tools
• Pre-built modules for fuzzing, scanning, and exploitation
• Custom modules and scripts for automation
• 1600+ exploits and 500+ payloads
• Detection and prioritization of vulnerabilities for faster remediation

Cons:

• Data primarily consists of only known CVEs
• Not suitable for detecting zero-day or business logic vulnerabilities

3. Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a feature-packed vulnerability scanner and attacks proxy for both automated and manual pentesting. It allows pentesters to intercept, modify, and analyze, working as a proxy between a web browser and a server. The tester can analyze and reply to HTTP requests to identify vulnerabilities.

The premium version of Burp Suite offers extended functionalities, including automated vulnerability scanners, intruder attacks, and many more. Its free and premium extensions enable pentesters to add more functionalities for deeper security testing.

Pros:

• Vulnerability scanning and proxy
• Multiple tools – Proxy, Repeater, Intruder, Decoder, etc
• Interception, modification, and analysis of traffic
• Integration with existing dev and security tools
• Customizable attacks, session manipulation, and fuzzing

Cons:

• Pro version is expensive for startups or small teams
• Configuration isn’t beginner-friendly

4. Nmap

Nmap is another popular open source pentesting tool. It stands for network mapper, which offers network discovery and vulnerability scanning. It helps pentesters to analyze networks, identify hosts, applications, and even the running OS by sending and analyzing packets.

Nmap offers many features to probe networks and test servers, providing port scanning, host version detection, host scanning, and other reconnaissance. The tool supports popular operating systems like Windows, Linux, Mac OS, BSD, Solaris, and more.

Pros:

• Offers features like parallel scanning, rate control, and optimization of history discovery
• Detailed vulnerability reports are generated in formats like XML, HTML, plain text, etc.
• Offers pre-built scripts for vulnerability scanning, brute force attacks, and TLS/SSL analysis
• Scans large networks with great accuracy and speed
• Supports many types of network protocols like UDP, ICMP, TCP, and more

Cons:

• It only scans networks
• No business logic testing
• Slow with deep scans
• Not easy configuration

5. OWASP ZAP

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is a well-recognized open source pentesting tool with an easy interface and powerful features. It offers advanced features to perform script-based attacks, intercept and manipulate traffic, generate reports, and more.

ZAP empowers pentesters to conduct customizable penetration tests and detect a wide range of vulnerabilities in web applications. As a free tool for web app pen testing, it is widely utilized among ethical hackers, developers, and security professionals to discover and fix vulnerabilities.

Pros:

• No license fees
• Large community support
• Supports manual and automated testing for XSS, CSRF, SQL injection, and misconfigurations.
• Spidering and crawling
• Active and passive scanning
• Fuzzing and attack simulation

Cons:

• Slower scanning on complex or large web apps
• Limited effectiveness for detecting business logic flaws

Crush Zero-Day Vulnerabilities with ZeroThreat’s Automated Pen Testing

Automated penetration testing is vital to strengthen cybersecurity defenses by allowing teams to rapidly discover critical vulnerabilities, including zero-day exploits. It enables them to proactively test applications and discover vulnerabilities that may go unnoticed during build and release cycles.

With the right automated pen test tool – ZeroThreat, your team can conduct continuous vulnerability scanning effectively, empowering you to stay ahead of hackers by identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities before they hit you hard.

With ZeroThreat’s accurate vulnerability detection, faster scanning, and AI-powered remediation reports, your team can promptly fix issues, keeping your web applications and APIs safe from potential cyberattacks. Give it a shot to understand how it helps.

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Closing Thoughts

In the midst of rising cyberattacks, a defensive security strategy is inadequate to protect your applications. Therefore, offensive strategies like automated penetration testing have become the new normal. It sets a new benchmark in cybersecurity and prevents potential threats before they occur.

Automated penetration testing helps uncover critical vulnerabilities without human intervention. It offers a powerful measure to keep your applications secure by staying one step ahead of hackers. With an automated pen testing tool, your AppSec team can continuously test applications for hidden loopholes and build a stronger security posture.