Using Selenium to test input validation

June 06, 2006

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When testing for security, it is important to test that the application under test (AUT) handles unexpected input properly, i.e. does not enter an unsecure state. A typical example of an unsecure response to an unexpected input is to display an exception that reveals information about the system configuration that can help a malicious user breaking in to a system.

As I blogged about earlier, I am trying to use Selenium to do security testing. In order to be able to test how the AUT handles being passed a value that is not present in an HTML dropdown list, I created a Selenium extension that adds a new option to a dropdown list and selects it. This way, the test may add a new value before submitting the form to the application.

Here is the code for the Selenium action.


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Written by Vidar Kongsli who is a software professional living in Oslo, Norway. Works as a consultant, system architect and developer at Bredvid. You should follow him on Twitter