A comparative study of web application security scanners for vulnerability detection

Abstract

A Web Vulnerability Scanner (WVS) is a software tool that assesses the security of web applications by conducting automated penetration tests. It speeds up the process, reduces costs, and eliminates the need for specialized testing engineers. This study evaluates the vulnerability detection capabilities of six WVSs, three commercial scanners, and three open-source scanners. The goal is to identify and mitigate potential security risks before they are exploited by malicious users. The study employed two well-known vulnerable web applications and four relevant metrics, such as detection rate of accuracy, recall, precision, and the ability to detect different vulnerabilities using the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) as a reference.