Hacking, like technology, has come a long way. Hacking tactics and tools have become more sophisticated and dangerous, just like the digital world. Security is crucial when it comes to the development of a web application. However, it’s critical to maintain your website or web apps safe from hostile attacks.
Sadly, many web applications are developed poorly and suffer from security issues. Hackers use various techniques to infect websites, and cross-site scripting is one of them. You can protect your websites against cross-site scripting attacks using various robust tools.
In this article, we are going to discuss some of the best tools for scanning cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. Here’s the table of contents:
What is a Cross-Site Scripting Attack?
Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is a code injection attack on the client-side. The attacker attempts to execute harmful scripts in the victim’s web browser by embedding malicious code in a genuine web page or online application.
The real attack occurs when the victim visits a website or uses a web application containing malicious code. The malicious script is delivered to the user’s browser via the web page or application. If a web page or web application gives output containing unsanitized user input, it is vulnerable to XSS.
For a cross-site scripting attack, an attacker can:
- Modify the content on your page.
- Steal and expose user information such as credit card numbers and passwords.
- Attack other users of your site.
- Session cookies that the user has authenticated are captured.
- Create a phishing page and upload it.
Tools For Scanning XSS Vulnerability
Vulnerability scanners automate security auditing and can help you secure your network and websites by scanning them for various security concerns. These vulnerability scanners can also generate a prioritized list of vulnerabilities that need to be patched, describe the vulnerabilities, and provide instructions on how to fix them.
In order to investigate a web application, XSS scanning tools are commonly used. Pentesters and security analysts use these tools extensively.
XSStrike
XSStrike is an advanced XSS detection suite. It is intelligent enough to detect and break out of various contexts. It can bypass WAFs with ease by using advanced context analysis, fuzzing, and intelligent payload generation. Moreover, it can detect XSS in the newest of browsers, including the HTML5 browsers.
XSStrike uses multiple techniques to identify XSS, including context analysis, static and dynamic analysis of web pages, WAF detection and fingerprinting, DOM-based XSS detection, etc.
Key Features:
- Fuzzing for XSS with multiple payload injections.
- Context analysis engine to detect and break out of filters.
- Smart Unicode encoding engine to bypass many types of filters.
- Intelligent payload generator to detect and bypass WAFs by using built-in or custom-made tamper functions.
- Has browser proxy so you can intercept, modify and replay requests sent by your browser without setting up Burp Suite, etc.
Learn: How to Scan Sites for XSS Vulnerability using XSStrike.
XSS Hunter
XSS Hunter is a useful tool for finding stored XSS vulnerabilities in a website. It will help you find the XSS vulnerability and show how it is possible to exploit it.
It generates an XSS payload and injects it into the site without getting detected by any WAF or other security mechanisms. The generated XSS payload executes when anyone visits the infected page.
If the payload executes, it will send a request to the XSS hunter with details of the victim who executed the payload. You can get more information about this tool on their official website.
Key Features:
- Support for reflected and stored attacks.
- Set custom attack vectors on a per-target basis.
- Set cookies and headers on a per-target basis.
- Support for multiple types of payloads.
- Generate new payloads with ease.
XSSER
XSSER is an open-source penetration testing tool that detects and exploits cross-site scripting (XSS) injections in a variety of applications. It has a robust fuzzing engine and uses fuzzy matching to produce 0% false-positive outcomes.
Key Features:
- Fully automated XSS attacks on getting and POST data, including multipart/form-data requests, XMLHttpRequest, and DOM-based ones.
- Intelligent brute force payload generator.
- XSS Fuzzer (XMLHttpRequest).
- HTML5 features support (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, Cross-Site WebSocket Hijacking, Web Workers, etc.).
- DNS Rebinding attack vectors.
- Phishing Attack vectors.
- DOM-Based Attacks.
- Automated BeEF integration.
- NoSQL Injections (MongoDB).
Acunetix
Acunetix performs a comprehensive crawl of your entire website to identify all entry points, including URL parameters, cookies, form fields, hidden fields, headers, JSON/XML/SOAP data, and uploaded files. It also detects any custom HTTP headers that may be used to attack your web application.
Once all entry points are identified during website crawling, Acunetix tests them individually for XSS vulnerabilities. Acunetix is the only web vulnerability scanner that can detect DOM-based XSS – the most sophisticated type of XSS flaw.
Key Features:
- Web server security scan (Port Scanner) against DNS, SSH, and other services.
- Test the strength of passwords on login pages or HTTP authentication.
- Recognize some new HTML5 elements that attackers can use.
Burp Suite
Burp Suite is an integrated platform for performing web application security testing. Its technologies operate together to assist the full testing process, from mapping and analyzing an application’s attack surface to detecting and exploiting security vulnerabilities.
Burp gives you full control, combining advanced manual techniques with state-of-the-art automation to make your work faster, more effective, and fun.
Key Features:
- Extensive automation capabilities.
- Support for attacking individual AJAX requests and services.
- Access low-level details of each HTTP message to perform highly customized attacks against individual requests.
- Advanced features for manipulating requests and responses.
- Scanner insertion points.
Intruder
Intruder is a sophisticated cloud-based vulnerability scanner that detects flaws throughout the web application infrastructure. It is enterprise-ready and provides a simple government and bank-level security scanning engine.
Intruder helps you save time by prioritizing findings based on their context and monitoring your systems for new vulnerabilities in real-time. It can also integrate with Slack and Jira and major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Key Features:
- Schedule vulnerability scans to automatically check all new devices.
- recommend updates for machines out of the current.
- Excellent user interface — excellent for high-level insights as well as deep breakdowns.
- Provides human-powered penetration testing.
DalFox
Dalfox is a little Go tool to find and exploit XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) vulnerabilities in web applications. It’s quite simple and doesn’t have a lot of options. It also has no external dependencies.
Its main purpose is to be used during penetration testing for quick XSS discovery and exploitation. Dalfox is easy to use, and the best part is you can use it from the browser itself. You don’t need to download any software to work with this tool.
Key Features:
- Locate the reflected parameter.
- Identify the SSTi, Credential, SQL Error, and other basic information leaks.
- The encoder is evaluated parallel with all test payloads (built-in, custom/blind).
- Use a single URL target mode.
- Make use of file mode (targets list or raw data).
- Payload mode, creation, and enumeration.
Conclusion
The truth is that there are many shady websites out there, and they have become an epidemic. If you are running a website, it is always good to check your website for security vulnerabilities and malware. While the advantages of using online malware scanning tools are obvious, consider the best tool based on your requirements.
In this article, we have highlighted the best tools for XSS vulnerability scanning that can help you protect your website from cybercriminals.
Related: How to Scan Sites for XSS Vulnerability.
