Skipfish Security Scanner for Web Apps
Google's online security teams has come out with a free security scanner for web apps, named Skipfish.
The command line tool acts as Web crawler and prepares an interactive sitemap for the targeted site. The Web app is then subjected to a number of nondisruptive security probes, such as for cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (XSRF) and server-side SQL injection. The software can probe websites developed under multiple technologies and frameworks.
Skipfish is written in C and, according to its developers, shows great performance: Internet requests can produce over 500 responses per second, LAN/MAN requests over 2,000 responses and local requests over 7,000 responses per second. The developers implemented a custom HTTP stack for Skipfish.
The Skipfish developers indicate that their tool digs up many relevant security vulnerabilities, but not all. As with many security scanners, permission to test the website is the prerequisite, unless you own it outright.
Skipfish is open source software under Apache 2.0 licensing. The Google Code site has its own Skipfish page, with downloads of a source tarball and online documentation.
Issue 14: Raspberry Pi Handbook/Special Editions
Tag Cloud
News
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SCO Rises from the Swamp
Longtime litigator revives an ancient suit against IBM alleging Linux infringes on Unix copyrights.
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UberStudent Project Releases UberStudent 3.0
Specialty distro keeps the focus on advanced learning.
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openSUSE Conference Approaches
The openSUSE Conference will be held July 18-22, 2013, at the Olympic Museum in Thessaloniki, Greece.
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Drupal.org Hacked
Security breached at home sites of the CMS project.
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Oracle Takes Action on Java Security
Lead Java developer vows policy changes and more attention to fixing problems.
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Google and NASA Partner in Quantum Computing Project
Vendor D-Wave scores big with a sale to NASA's Quantum Intelligence Lab.
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Mageia Project Announces Mageia 3 Linux
Many package updates and Steam integration highlight the latest from the Mandriva-based community Linux.
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FSF Outs the World Wide Web Consortium over DRM Proposal
Richard Stallman calls for the W3C to remain independent of vendor interests.
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Debian 7.0 Debuts
The new release supports nine architectures, 73 human languages, and zero non-Free components.
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Alpha Version of Fedora 19 Released
Fedora developers release the first alpha version of Fedora 19, known as Schrödinger’s Cat, for general testing. The final release is expected in July 2013.