What is Application Penetration Testing?

October 30th, 2010

What is Application Penetration Testing?

It is a course of action where a computer & network professional analyze an application to explore procurable and current vulnerableness on a network. This course of action is labor-intensive and requires indepth cognition and experience in a variety of different mechanisms and a range of exploits.

How is this varied from PCI Compliance?

For most retailers, who authorize as “L4″ merchants (less than 25,000 Visa transactions/year), PCI Compliance utilizes blasé and well-established automated tools to explore and report procurable vulnerabilities. However, there are restrictions to automated tests, and a web application penetration test is designed to more thoroughly evaluate an application than can be realized through automated tests.

Who is an Ethical Hacker?

An Ethical Hacker goes through pervasive training to become well versed in variety of techniques and tools to mimic how an effective vicious hacker may gain route to your system. The ethical hacker works for the site holder, instead of against them.

What do you test for?

We need to test for range of vulnerabilities. These include but are not confined to:

  • Validation of input (Form, Data, Fields, URl, e-mail … etc)
  • Buffer Overflow (Memory, Function calls, Stack flow, stack over run, system stack … etc)
  • Cross Site Scripting (DOM-based, reflected vulnerability, second-order vulnerability … etc)
  • URL Manipulation (Trial and error, Directory traversal … etc)
  • SQL Injection (First order attack, second order attack, lateral injection … etc)
  • Cookie Modification
  • Bypassing Authentication (Direct page request, Parameter Modification, Session ID Prediction … etc)
  • Code Execution (Shell code attacks, malicious attack … etc)

Professional Typo3 CMS development solutions offered by Pixelbyte Lab

September 8th, 2010

Typo3 is one of the more renowned open source CMS. As it is an open source CMS solution, it is openly available under the GPL. Typo3 development is accomplished using PHP & MySQL and supported by leading web browsers like IE or Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari & Chrome. Typo3 CMS is also available in enterprise edition, which is predominantly used for delivering complicated & flawless Typo3 website solutions.

Typo3 development is a specialized service provided by Pixelbyte Lab as open source CMS solution is one of the key areas where we provide proficient quality development services. Pixelbyte Lab has catered Typo3 CMS development services to numerous corporate clients.

Our professional Typo3 development team has a extensive knowledge of open source development technologies and make every effort to provide exquisite Typo3 website customization services. Customers prerequisites are completely analyzed by our Typo3 development crew to deliver business solutions that cover all client business essentials.

A collection of Typo3 development services offered by Pixelbyte Lab are:

  • Typo3 development
  • customization of Typo3 & modules
  • Dedicated Typo3 development team
  • CMS development
  • Integration of other popular open source like vBulletin, phpBB etc. with Typo3.
  • Designing Typo3 Website
  • Customized extension development or Typo3
  • Designing templates for typo3

Why Pixelbyte Lab for Typo3 development?

  • Web development teams with professional, skilled & experienced Typ3 developers
  • Quality solutions at affordable costs
  • clear communication, 24/7/365 support, excellent maintanence services

For more information, get in touch with us for any Typo3 Development Solutions.

Features of Pbware CMS, PHP CMS

September 1st, 2010

Pbware CMS offers you lot of hallmarks that help promptitude up the work flow of composing & administer, a website that suits your requirements. We concentrate on bringing you a high quality attribute set to make sure you always have uptrend technologies available to use.

So you can see these attributes 1st hand, we have setup a working tryout that you can avail. Below is a carte of key attributes & other smaller (yet imperative) attributes that are actualized.

CMS Key Features :

Simple CMS Interface :

A inimitable neat interface not only makes Pbware CMS look visually exclusive, it also makes it not burdensome to work in due to the simplicity of the contrastive interface elements. The visual appearance can easily be swapped through an ever growing collection of themes.

Simple CMS Content Layout :

Both the front end website and Admin work panel are dexterously configurable in terms of content layout, signifies you can make choice of where things should be to compose the flawless environment to work in, and control what content is exhibited to your users.

Assigning permissions and managing user management using CMS :

Permission assign Levels, accord you to acclimatize what huddle of users have permission to certain content. This allows you to compose a authoritative structure of content which can be delimited to the different huddles. Groups can inherit access levels from each other, allowing you to compose an unbeatable chain of permissions.

Manage Media using CMS :

Uncomplicatedly upload and share pictures, Video’s & Audio for others to view and leave comments on. Media constituents can also be added from externals sources, such as YouTube, Meta Cafe etc. All Video and Audio files are played through the exquisite pbware player.

RSS Feeds :

Induces properly formatted RSS feeds for your audience to subscribe to, giving them to be kept up to date on your websites content.

W3c Compliance :

We postulate that all markup should accede to the standards set by the W3C, using semantically rightous HTML. This means your website will be authentic & helps ensure forward compatibility with offing technologies.

Enhancement intimate :

Our Pbware CMS intimates you when a new deliverance is available, assisting to ensure you’ll always have the update security & bug fixes as well as feature enhancements.

Alias URL :

Have charge of the structure of your websites URLs by aliases effortlessly & promptly. Alias lengthier URLs such as ‘page/home/contact’ to a much abbreviated & human readable ‘contact’.

For more information & features of Pbware CMS, get in touch with us.

CMS – Essential features for effective CMS solution

August 30th, 2010

CMS is a very effectual tool to perpetuate and administer websites and the content. But how well a CMS gratify to your requirements confide in a great deal on your choice of the same. While arbitrating a CMS solution for your website, there are many crucial attributes you should look out for. However, before you initiate opting a CMS solution for your website, you should have a clear examine about your essentials & fundamental functionality attributes that you want it to have. Here are some key hallmarks you need to look for.

Basic Functionality :

The content management system(CMS) should be able to carry out fundamental function like composing, removing, rewriting and arranging web pages. There are certain incomplex CMS solutions that allow composing of content but arranging the same as per default settings. Make sure you review about this attribute if want to have complete administrate over the contents of your web pages. Although you may have the impression that you don’t need the arranging attributes right now, you cannot be sure that you wouldn’t need them in the offing.

Visual WYSIWYG Editors :

The visual editors lets you compute, rewrite and revise the website contents without any technical knowledge whatsoever. Moreover, the editors provide you to embed headings, ordered/unordered lists, internal/external links and other aspects on a web page without giving any particulars about their appearance. Also, the editor should be allowed to deal with other assets such as pictures and files.

CMS Management :

The CMS should allow content managers to handle picures and files effectually. In fact, it should make it compulsory for content managers to add ALT tag for each image. Also, it should also provide fundamental rewriting features such as size modification, degree rotation etc. Additionally, another imperative consideration should be the possibility of the CMS to upload and attach prominient documents formats and other files and how they are rendered to the website users.

CMS Customization :

The CMS should be flexile enough to accord your essentials and requirements. Rather than pursue technology as a default setting, it should delve to allow separation of design & content. It should allow flexile for the data to be recouped and presented.

User Interaction with CMS :

The CMS should allow the congregate of user feedback or authorize a 3rd party plug-in to do the same. If you have a community/networking/forum on your website, then your CMS should have options for group chat, user comments, quality ratings and other user interaction tools. The CMS should allow you to enable forms & gather responses. The imperative purpose of a CMS is to accord tasks like fields customization without any technical expertise.

CMS User Management :

There may be times when you have sevaral content managers for administrating the website contents. Thus the CMS should be able to oversee who can rewrite what portion of the website contents. Eg. the HR dept. of the firm would need to rewrite content on the ‘Careers’ section of the website while the development crew would update the ‘attaché’ section. Thus the CMS should furtherance authorizations that allow particularization about what users can rewrite what pages & what portions of the website.

Regarding the Author :

Koushik Rajagopalan is a Quality Analyst at Pixelbyte Lab IT Services, a professional web development company that has a team of skilled Indian Web Designers & Developers. The company offers wide range of web design, web development, CMS Development, open source development services.

Custom Developed CMS versus ready built CMS

August 20th, 2010

In the current web industry the talk persists over the advantages of ready to go popular CMS like wordpress, Joomla etc. & rather than going for the custom CMS to be built from the scratch. Don’t forget, custom CMS is a personalized built which will act as exactly what you wanted. I would like to share my thought on this regard.

It’s obvious that custom developed are always unique. Custom CMS that are developed from the scratch are more easier, optimized & offers best fit as per the clients requirement. To develop a website from a ready built CMS requires lengthy code as it consumes a lot of time to overrides the default attributes which comes as built-in.

For me, both custom developed CMS & ready built CMS has its own pro’s & con’s. Before choosing between them one needs to consider the below factors :

Time Line : Does time line is a preeminent factor?
Costing : Custom developed CMS are expensive. If in case the ready built CMS are not proximate to your needs then the custom developed CMS will help you in cost effectiveness.
Prerequisite : Does the ready built CMS matches your requirement? If the ready built CMS matches 75% or more, then it is ideal to go with ready built one’s.
Intended Users : Who are the intended users of the CMS? If they are business persons or not technically sounded, then usability & friendliness is the most imperative thing. On the other hand, if the users are technical people then the interface might not be so much imperative.

Other factors that are imperative while culling between a ready built CMS & CUstom developed CMS are Market Trend, Usability, Technology, speed & performance, user friendliness. These aspects needs to be considered while choosing the right CMS.

If you have any enquiries about custom developed CMS & Open source CMS, get in touch with us.

Why should every business invest in a website?

August 16th, 2010

There are abundant grounds why your business, no concern it maybe, requires a website. Think in this way, it will not have a abrogating effect but only beneficial for your business.

When a domain is registered for your business it certainly enact creditibility for your firm. Having a website online gives you complete freedom to let your customers know about your business on online directories such as yellow pages, Local listings etc. Getting listed in these directories certainly maximize potential customers to your business.

In a website, you have the capability to add(Information) what ever you want. Working Hours, Business days, marking your firm on the map is credible to help your customers identify easily & save time on calls every day.

Consumers are liked to be briefed about offers & will search on the internet for the best buys. Why don’t you have your website so that you can win potential customers & increase your sales online.

Like traditional shops, websites do not have any business days & is always unshut. This allows customers to find out your business 365/24/7. You could be making sales online even when you are asleep. How superb is that? Even if they are not buying online they will come to know about your company & the business hours to purchase & location to buy.

The content/information you have published can be changed, deleted at any time you prefer. By this, you can update your business needs, sales updates, job offerings etc.

Having local business(pursuit) & consistent customers, you need to advertise to nourish. With your website you can advertise on local searches that may earn you new sales. The website can provide huge amount of traffic from local searches who are anticipating to buy.

Answering a phone call while interacting with a customer can be a hassle or may be annoying at times. Having a website can lessen your calls by providing a FAQ or most of the answers in the web page. By this, time & money can be saved.

Conventional advertising methods can be expensive. Reduce these methods & post your products online. You can give a detailed explanation as well as promote with your website. I’m not here to say the traditional methods are not useful but lessening those with increase of advertising using website can actually reduce cost & money.

“Comments” are the most vital thing for any business. Most businesses except for restaurants do not have them. With a website, a customer can leave a response/feedback in the website, on seeing that, lot of new consumers too get anxious to buy your product. This will certainly create curiosity among new customers to go for your product or service.

A website can let people know the modes of contact to reach you. With couple of actions by forms or e-mail, customers can get in touch you easily. This will definitely improve your business. Internet enabled computers are growing briskly, so why not your firm/business too grow with that. A professionally designed website will be very useful for your business for a long time.

How robots.txt can define your domain to search engines?

August 6th, 2010

robots.txt is a casual file that is applied in the root/base directory of your web server. An illustration of placing is, http://www.example.com(Your domain)/robots.txt. This file is predominantly used to advert search engines & crawler robots to which part(sphere) of the website needs to be visited & indexed.

robots.txt can be placed only in the root/base directory & can be used once. That is, where your main/index page is.

When robots.txt is placed, it can be accessed by http://www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. It will not work if the robots.txt is placed as http://www.yourwebsite.com/sub-domain/robots.txt

Most of the search engine takes robots.txt into account. Obviously, spam botters(e-mail crawlers) cannot understand this. But it is advisable to place secured files in protected folders rather than trusting robots.txt to do the job completely. robots.txt is more about advising search engines rather than for security.

How does a robots.txt looks like?

# robots.txt created by http://www.pixelbytelab.com
User-agent: *
Disallow:

The above information tells the search engines to crawls & index all the directories and no need to omit any directories.

# robots.txt created by http://www.pixelbytelab.com
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

The above information tells the search engines to not to crawl & index any directory.

As it is already told robots.txt is very simple, a simple “/” could make search engines not crawl & certainly would affect the SEO rankings.

As per one’s needs, after uploading robots.txt in the root directoy do not forget to set permissions for the search engines to crawl.

If you have any issue with the timing in the web server, then relay timing can be set in order make each crawler to access the web directory with a delay.

Most commonly known search engines bots are :

Googlebot, MSNBot (Bing), Yahoo slurp, Ask Teoma, Gigabot, Scrubby, Robozilla, Twiceler

The below example is a combination of allowing & disallowing bots,

# robots.txt created by http://www.pixelbytelab.com
User-agent: Googlebot (Allows google)
Disallow:
User-agent: MSNBot (Allows Bing)
Disallow:
User-agent: Slurp (Allows Yahoo)
Disallow:
User-agent: Teoma (DisAllow ASK)
Disallow: /
User-agent: Gigabot (DisAllow gigablast)
Disallow: /
User-agent: Scrubby (DisAllow scrub the web)
Disallow: /
User-agent: Robozilla (DisAllow Dmoz)
Disallow: /
Crawl-delay: 60 (This is the timer used for delay)
Disallow: /log/ (directory to disallow)

General Checklists for testing Website & Web Application

July 23rd, 2010

In this article we would like to highlight key points to be considered while testing web applications & websites. Hereby below are website & web application testing checklist,

Essentials of Functionality Testing:

Check the status of all links in the web pages, establish connection with the database, acquiescence of forms in the web pages, login information, cookies & sessions testing.

Make sure with the links:

Test for all the out links in the domain for all the web pages.

  • Check whether all the internal links are working correctly.
  • Test whether all the anchored links within the page works correctly.
  • Check links that sends e-mail for the admin or other users.
  • Check if there are any orphan links found.
  • Lastly & most importantly, check for any broken links present.

Test all the forms in all the web pages :

Forms are the most important part in any web site. Generally, forms are used to get information from the users & keep in touch with them. Hence, what needs to be tested in forms?

  • Basic, Firstly, check all the field validations are correct.
  • Test the default values in all the fields.
  • Input incorrect & null values in all the fields.

Take an example, in an search engine project, you might have affiliates & advertise signing & login, then, each step will be different & and will be related for the next step. In that case, the work flow needs to be tested accurately.

Testing Cookies:

Cookies are small entities stored on the user’s machine. They are mostly used to maintain login sessions. Make sure when the cookies are stored they are encrypted. Check the application by switching on/off the cookies in the browser. Login to the application & delete the cookies & check the status of the application. If you are using session cookies, check if the cookies expire after session time.

W3 HTML/CSS Validation :

If you are developing a web site search engine optimization is very important. Make sure your web site is validated using w3 to make sure the web site is crawlable by the search engines.

Testing Database:

constancy while storing & retrieving data is very important in web application. Test if any error occurs on modifying & deleting , or any Database functionality. Test whether all the queries executes & update correctly.

Importance of Usability Testing:

Check whether the web site or web application is easy to use. Test whether the usage manual is understandable & satisfies the needs. Main menus needs to be accessed from all the web pages.

Examining Content:

Content should be related to the web site & should be easily understood. Check for spelling mistakes. Back ground color & the text color should not more or less the same. That might not provide comfort while reading. Check for font size, BG colors, other colors, frames if used.
Check whether all the links are working properly in the content. When images are placed check whether all the images are of correct sizes.
These are the essentials(basic) needs to be followed in the web development.

Other helpful information:

Like search options, FAQ, Working manual, sitemap needs to be present in all the web pages. Test whether all the links are working correctly in the site map. If have a search, make sure all the criteria are met when the results are fetched.

Interface Testing:

Test all the reciprocal action of Application, Web, Database servers are executed properly. Make sure all the errors are handled properly. If database server turns back any error message make sure the users get the appropriate messages. Test what happens when a connection is reset in between a transaction & what happens when the user does the same.

Need of Compatibility Testing:

Compatibility testing is the most important part in web testing.

Cross Browser compatibility:

Few application might be dependent on browsers. Generally browsers configurations & settings are differentiated. Hence, make sure the web site & web application are compatible with all the popular browsers. Performing security testing & validations might vary from browser to browser. So test the web site with or web application with Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera.

Operating System(OS) compatibility:

There might be scenarios where the web application might not be compatible with operating systems like the designing, API integrations, interfaces. Hence, it is very essential to make sure the web site or web application works with all operating system(Windows, Linux, MAC, Solaris)

Mobile Testing:

Test whether all the web pages appear correctly in the mobile browsers. There can be lot of compatibility issues on mobile.

Need of Performance testing:

Load & stress testing are part of performance testing.
Test web application using various internet speed. Test the application by accessing with lot of users(Atleast Virtually). Check whether the application is able to sustain the load. DB connection & large load requests should be handled by web application.
Test the application till how much the system is able to handle. Dismantle the web site with huge amount of stress & test when the application crashes.

Security Testing:

Check when the post login url is passed in the browser it should be failed without entering proper login information. Try changing the url parameters after login in Eg. Change the login ID & try give different login ID & test whether the system allows you to login. Test whether the FTP/Web directory is accessible. Test the captcha automation. If SSL used, make sure the user is accessing the url with https:// instead of http://. Make sure all the activities are tracked in the log files.

Features & benefits of Pbware Newsletter

July 3rd, 2010

If you are planning for e-mail marketing promotion, Pbware newsletter offers you the ideal solution. Whether your goal is promotion of products, knowledgable based e-letters, or both, pbware solution offers customized solution for every marketing need.

Hereby below are the key features to go for pbware newsletter :

  • Pbware newsletter allows you to establish frequent link between the customer & you.
  • News letter provide instant updates to the customer on releases.
  • Your customers will be able to view your message at home or work even with their mobile.
  • A newsletter with valuable information can educate your customers better.
  • Majority of your customers may spend majority of their time with computers.
  • Pbware newsletter have the ability to connect with your sales team of ease.
  • Customization is very easier using pbware newsletter than any other marketting mode (or) tools.
  • With newsletter it is more vulnerable to earn potential customers easily & to gather their needs & interest.
  • Advance information can be provided for your customers about prereleases.
  • Frequent newsletter provides critical bonding with your customers.
  • E-Mail newsletters is one of the best method for large communication.
  • Regular communication with customers helps your website with increased traffic.
  • Frequent communication with your customers might make them interested & loyal.
  • Customized frequent dynamic content will help you to know your customer needs.
  • Customers will definitely welcome your e-mails regarding valuable information & special offerings.

It just does not end there. We realize the importance of every business & their marketing needs. For more information, get in touch with us to let us know about your needs to provide correct solution for you.

General Principles for website development

June 26th, 2010

Below mentioned are general guidelines to be followed in website development:

  • Develop an website with new code & make sure it can be reused & easy to maintain.
  • Separation of scripts(Templates, CSS, JS …) into different files for faster load. Content should be easily modified by any non-technical user with an visual editor.
  • Complete support for the latest w3 standards.
  • Dependency on plugins can be avoided. Instead develop new concept.
  • Unwanted graphics needs to be avoided. No use of special graphics for text especially.
  • Develop new code based on w3standards & make sure it supports all the browsers rather than improvising for particular browser. Good coding standards might support old browser version too.
  • Developers are expected to work with text editor supports code highlighting. But working with dreamweaver/WYSIWYG editor/Front Page can be avoided to improve the coding standards of the developer.

Technically :

  • All the website pages must be developed using XHTML DTD except for rare instances.
  • All the website pages(HTML & CSS) must be validated using w3 validator.
  • All the styling must be witten in separate Cascading style sheets. Using inline styles needs to be avoided.
  • All client side scripting(Eg. Javascript) files needs to be saved as separate files.