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Showing posts from November, 2015

Black Box versus White Box testing and when to use them

I have recently been speaking to many security professionals and asking them about black box and white box testing. I have used it as an interview question on many occasions as well. People's answers are varied and interesting, but I thought I would share my views briefly here. Firstly, what are black box testing and white box testing, or grey box testing for that matter? Simply put, a black box test is one where the tester has no knowledge of the internal structure or workings of the system and will usually test with security protections in place. They may not even be given credentials to a system that requires authentication. This would be equivalent to what a hacker would have access to. The opposite extreme is a white box test, where the tester has full knowledge of the system and access to the code, system settings and credentials for every role, including the administrator. The tester will likely be testing from inside the security perimeter. Grey box testing sits somewhe