Practical Buffer Overflow - Vulnerability Disclosure

Attackers generally use buffer overflows to corrupt the execution stack of a web application. By sending carefully crafted input to a web application, an attacker can cause the web application to execute arbitrary code, possibly taking over the machine. Attackers have managed to identify buffer overflows in a staggering array of products and components. Buffer overflow flaws can be present in both the web server and application server products that serve the static and dynamic portions of a site, or in the web application itself. Buffer overflows found in commonly-used server products are likely to become widely known and can pose a significant risk to users of these products. When web applications use libraries, such as a graphics library to generate images or a communications library to send e-mail, they open themselves to potential buffer overflow attacks.

Juicy Areas of Web Application For Pentesters

In this tutorial I am going to write small things which everyone knows already but I am trying to convey it in another manner of checklist. I am going to talk on some juicy areas for pen tester. Mainly it will be focusing on fingerprinting concept. While doing fingerprinting of any website, which are the areas mainly a pen tester or web application security analyst should target at high priority.

First thing to check is the server name and the version information. This information is really helpful to pen testers because older versions have already exploits in market. So If they got older server version they can directly check whether that exploit is working or not.