Towards Automated Bypass Testing of Web Applications

Abstract

The construction and testing of Web-based systems has become more complex and challenging with continual innovations in technology. One major concern particularly for the deployment of mission critical applications is security. In Web-based systems, the principal vulnerabilities revolve around deficient input validation. This chapter describes a partially automated mechanism, the tool InputValidator, which seeks to address this issue through bypassing client-side checking and sending test data directly to the server to test the robustness and security of the back-end software. The tool allows a user to construct, execute and evaluate a number of test cases through a form-filling exercise instead of writing bespoke test code.