A software code audit is a mandatory activity that provides a holistic analysis of the source code of the project for finding security threats, errors, bugs, and violations of standard conventions. A software code audit can be accomplished by professional help to achieve the best results.
Dreamworth Solutions is a leading software development company guiding its esteemed readers about software source code audit services and its significance through this platform.
What is a Software Source Code Audit?
A software source code audit is a complete analysis of project source code to find bugs, threats, breaches and standard violations in it. However, the software source code audit process is not as easy as it sounds, rather it is the most critical and complex stage of the software processes. One of the prominent reasons behind this is that it serves to confirm and validate the code maintainability and maturity.
Reasons To Conduct A Source Code Audit
A software source code audit is performed with the following prime goals
- Understanding of the present project structure.
- Clarity of project functionality.
- Finding current and potential bugs.
- A major intent is to find security breaches and vulnerabilities.
- Performance monitoring.
- Understanding project scalability
- Getting insights on costs and associated risks.
- Finding code maintainability level
- Adherence to software development standards, guiding principles, and practices.
Along with these goals, the software source code review is also beneficial from a business perspective, saving money, avoiding losses by losing customers.
Structuring A Source Code Audit
A source code audit procedure is conducted by breaking it into the following steps.
- Primary code study to get acquainted with the code snippets, functionalities, and modules.
- Automatic code analysis is performed for finding basic issues, vulnerabilities, and standard and guideline violations.
- Manual code analysis to find bugs and issues, security vulnerabilities, performance bottlenecks, and maintainability risks. This step is performed by software engineers.
- Combining the outcomes from the automatic and manual analysis performed in steps 2 and 3. Creating a comprehensive report that provides a summary of both analysis and listing the observed issues and possible recommendations.
The Technical Details of Code Audit
In current IT paradigms, code auditing is an essential step in the system development life cycle. Source code auditing is performed for numerous reasons including risk assessment, flow check, vulnerability checking, etc. A classical approach to source code audit involves the following two methods
- Static Analysis
- Dynamic Analysis
1. Static Analysis
Static Code Analysis involves the execution of Static Code Analysis tools that can highlight and throw light on possible vulnerabilities within static source code with the help of techniques like Data Flow Analysis and Taint analysis, etc. A typical static analysis can include -
Data Flow Analysis : It is performed to gather dynamic information about data in a system that is in a static state. Data flow analysis is performed through the following methods.
- Control Flow Graph: This graph denotes an abstract representation of software and system by use of nodes. The nodes in this graph refer to basic blocks and directed edges are used to show paths or routes from one block to another.
- Lexical Analysis: Lexical Analysis is intended to convert the source code syntax into a token of information.
- Taint Analysis: Programming languages such as Perl and Ruby provide a built-in taint checking mechanism to collect input or data through CGI. Taint Analysis is beneficial to security researchers to point out variables tainted with user-controllable input and its further tracing.
2. Dynamic Analysis
Dynamic program analysis is carried out by implementing programs on a real or virtual processor. This method proves very effective if the target programme is executed using ample test inputs to generate interesting behaviour.
Benefits of static and dynamic code analysis
Benefits of static and dynamic code analysis
- Represents code weaknesses and vulnerabilities at a precise location.
- Capability to scan the complete code base.
- Speedy procedure if automated tools are employed.
- Code vulnerabilities are observed in the early stages of development thereby, it reduces the associated future costs.
- Risk mitigation approach and hence, future issues can be noticed by developers.
Benefits of Dynamic Code Analysis:
- Early recognition of vulnerabilities in a runtime environment.
- It can be employed for live applications.
- It identifies false negatives even in static code analysis.
- Checks the validity of static code analysis results.
Solutions by Dreamworth
Dreamworth Solutions technical experts have tested and performed code reviews for a big array of programming languages right from classical C, C++, PHP, CGI, to j2EE, ASP, Perl, and .Net platform. We also offer mobile app code reviews for various mobile app development platforms including Android, Windows, iOS, and Blackberry.
Cybercrime growth increase has seriously taken the attention of source code auditors to take care of software security. White box and black box techniques can add and complement your source code auditing procedures. With the white-box method, source code is audited during the development phase and it is made more vulnerable. We also strengthen this process by penetration testing.
We offer comprehensive and risk-free source code audit and system review service package for our patrons. These services can improve their software products, the addition of new features, or implementation of any changes in the present codebase.
Dreamworth Solutions' source code audit process is intended to recognize threats, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities in the code that may impact the performance, scalability and development process of your application. Our audit experts will review and assess the information and code to reduce false-positive and prioritize the bugs to fix. Our source code review and audit framework not only reduce the risks but also mitigates future risks. Our auditors will collaborate with your development team to find minute details of every issue from different perspectives including coding language, goals, context, audience, availability, and priorities, etc.
Goals of source code review and audit
- To prevent cyber-attacks.
- Preventive measures for compliance.
- Source code bug detection.
- Finding insights on hidden bugs.
- Minimise errors.
Source code auditing advantages
- Early-stage detection of risks and vulnerabilities.
- Enhance the security of the website and app.
- Increase in user confidence.
- Risk mitigation.
Common cases that introduce vulnerabilities in the system include
- Input Validation Defects
- Buffer Overflows
- Stack Overflows and Integer Overflows
- Exceptions
- Race Conditions
- SQL Injection
- SQL Injection
It is a common technique where attackers insert SQL into a web application database query and take entire control over your web application database.
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
In this type of injection, malicious scripts are injected into gentle and trusted websites. This takes place when an invader inserts HTML or client-side script in the UI of a web-based application.
Source code audit Framework
- Authentication
- Cookie Handling and Management
- Input Data Validation
- Finding of security bugs
- Audit records
Share your source code audit service requirements at any time and get connected with the top software development company in India.
