Penetration testing plays an important role in securing websites. However, you need the right tools to run efficient tests. Penetration testing tools have different functions, pentest methodologies, features, and price ranges. It might be difficult to choose the ones most suitable for your organization. This post will briefly describe some of the finest penetration testing tools.
A Brief Overview Of Penetration Testing
Penetration testing allows you to stay one step ahead of hackers. Ethical hackers mirror their process, identify vulnerabilities, exploit them, and report them so that you can patch them up before any actual danger. They exploit the vulnerabilities to find out the degree of the damage they can cause. Therefore, you can prioritize the vulnerabilities and fix them accordingly. Conducting regular penetration tests including mobile pentesting, cloud pentesting, will help you enhance security, build customer trust, protect sensitive data, etc.
The 10 Penetration Testing Tools You Need
1. Astra Pentest
Source: getastra.com
Astra Pentest is a must-have penetration testing tool. It can pick up many vulnerabilities, including SQLi, SEO and comment spam, XSS, etc. The scanner can also identify credit card hacks, brute force attacks, malware, etc.
Astra Pentest is price competitive. You have the option for monthly or yearly payments according to the number of pentest and scope of testing.
2. Metasploit
Source: Opensourceforu.com
Metasploit is one of the world’s most sought-after penetration testing tools. You can use Metasploit to identify systematic vulnerabilities. It is free, compliant with most OS, and easily customized according to the user’s need. Metasploit contains payloads, exploits, listeners, shellcode, supplementary tools, and commands, etc. Therefore, it helps with reconnaissance, exploitation, maintaining access, and detection evasion. Metasploit truly is a powerful tool that has become vital for pen-testing.
3. Nikto
Nikto is free Perl-based software that helps in detecting vulnerabilities on web servers. It works with all web servers like Apache, Litespeed, IHS, etc. This tool is frequently updated and therefore it is very effective against any type of attack or vulnerability. You can use it to scan multiple ports or servers using a single input file.
4. Burp
Source: Burp Suite
Burp Suite is one of the most popular penetration testing tools with 14,000+ dedicated organizations and 55,000+ dedicated users. It is developed by PortSwigger. Burp Scanner is very powerful and can save time with faster scans but fewer requests. It protects your website from zero-day attacks and can uncover various vulnerabilities with very few false positives.
Burp Suite provides two pricing plans. First, Burp Suite Enterprise Edition Plan starts from $5,595/year and can go up depending on the number of scanning agents you need. Second, Burp Suite Profession costs S399/year.
5. Nmap
Source: Nmap.org
Nmap or Network Mapper is yet another free and highly-favored tool. You can use Nmap for reconnaissance and vulnerability scanning. It works well with all popular operating systems. Nmap is also powerful as it was created to work with large networks.
6. Nessus
Nessus is a renowned remote vulnerability assessment scanner created by Tenable. It helps you discover sensitive data, profile assets, uncover vulnerabilities and perform configuration auditing. This tool is easy to use as all the security tests come in the form of external plugins. So, you don’t have to risk downloading harmful items from the internet while updating.
Nessus provides two packages: Nessus Essentials and Nessus Professional. Nessus Essentials is free and you can directly download it from their website. On the other hand, Nessus Pro is a paid subscription that can cost up to $2,990 per year.
7. sqlmap
sqlmap is an amazing penetration testing tool. This tool has two main functions. The first is to identify and exploit SQLi attacks. This process is automated. Second, it also works as a database takeover tool. sqlmap is a python-based tool and will work with any system that supports python.
8. Fiddler
Fiddler is a kit of tools that you can use for web debugging. Some tools that Fiddler comes with are:
- Ammonite: Uncovers vulnerabilities like SQLi, XSS, file inclusion, etc
- Watcher: Monitors browser interaction with the website, detects potential vulnerabilities, etc
- Intruder21: helps in creating fuzz payloads, fuzz testing, etc
This tool also provides automated SSL decryption with a deception filter process. Hence, you get to decide what kind of traffic to decrypt.
Fiddler is a free penetration testing tool. However, you need to know that Fiddler mostly contains manual tools. Unfortunately, this will be difficult to work with if you do not have any technical background or a technical team onboard.
9. Arachni
Source: arachni
Arachni is a free, Ruby-based web application vulnerability scanner. It is a straightforward and friendly tool. We say this because you can deploy Arachni in any environment you want. Also, it works perfectly with all the major operating systems. Arachni scans for all types of web vulnerabilities like code injection, XSS, SQLi, and so much more. Its performance can be compared to premium paid scanners and can work even when network conditions are unstable.
10. Intruder
Lastly, let’s talk about Intruder. It is one of the good automated penetration testing tools out there. It provides over 10,000 security tests against publicly or privately accessible servers, websites, devices, etc. You can use Intruder to identify misconfiguration, weak encryption, SQLi, bugs, XSS, and other vulnerabilities. It is one of the best tools for small businesses as it does not require a dedicated technical team to operate.
Intruder is not free. The pricing starts from $108/month for the Intruder Essential package. Also, there is an Intruder Pro package that will cost you $180/month and an Intruder Verified package that will be $1,995/month.
Conclusion
Penetration testing is very important to enhance the security of your website. However, in order to run effective pen tests, it is vital to choose the best penetration testing tools. There are several penetration testing tools available that you can pick. Therefore, you need to choose the right fit for your organization.
