An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Black-Box Web Application Scanners in Detection of Stored XSSI Vulnerabilities

Abstract

Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities are difficult to detect and state-of-the-art black-box scanners have low detection rates [1, 2]. Both Bau et al. and Doupe et al. investigated blackbox web application security scanners, and this paper extends their analyses of state-of-the-art black-box detection of stored XSS. We use our own custom testbed, SimplifiedTB, which is available upon request. Weaknesses and limitations of black-box scanners identified in our study confirm weaknesses and limitations discussed by Bau et al. [1] and Doupé et al. [2]. The paper provides a list of recommendations for improving black-box detection of stored XSS vulnerabilities.