A Comprehensive Guide to Web Application Penetration Testing Report Writing
Finding the vulnerabilities is just a half of getting through penetration testing. The actual value is in sharing your discovery results in an effective way with clear and effective actionable reports that bring real security progress. A good penetration testing report should contain an executive summary of finding, a summary of the vulnerabilities and their impact on business and recommendation to address it.
This guide will provide both the experienced security professional and the entry-level security tester of web applications on how to quickly turn their raw technical information into powerful, business-relevant security reports that can make a difference. It should be noted that in case you are working in an organization, they have their proposal template and method of report presentation, it is advisable that you follow what they have come up with which is the standard method of presentation and add on to it the tools you may need to complete your report i.e. screen shot or gift.
Why Report Writing Matters More Than Ever
Organisations nowadays receive various security warnings and vulnerability reports. The wrong technique of presenting penetration testing report may mean the difference between patches on serious vulnerabilities being applied instantly or wasting away months without any processing. Penetration testing report gives detailed overview of the weaknesses of a system; it allows organizations to enhance their security positions.
Effective report writing insinuates that there is a missing link between technical expertise and business expertise. Your report should be tailored to many audiences, such as those at C-level who must know business risk, to those developers who need to receive certain remediation instructions.
Essential Components of a Web Pentest Report
Executive Summary
Executives who are reading materials usually read the executive summary extensively. It must reflect business-like levels of security, enlightening essential risks and how such are likely to affect business operations, image and compliance issue.
Some of the Important information to mention are:
- General risk evaluation and post defending
- The quantity of vulnerabilities of varied severity levels
- Business impact of critical finding
- Resource, and timeline requirements of high-level remediation
Methodology and Scope
It must all have an executive summary, methodology, scope, findings and vulnerabilities, risk ratings, remediation recommendations and appendices of technical information. It is necessary to clearly state what has been tested, what resources have been utilised and any restraints that have been experienced in the assessment.
Some of the Important information to mention are:
- Testing method and basis on test ( OWASP, NIST, etc.)
- Usage of applications and systems
- Testing duration and limitation
- Tools and methods used
Vulnerability Findings
Here is where you can satisfy your technical capability. All the vulnerabilities will be reported and accompanied by:
Description: A description about what the vulnerability entails in simple terms (e.g., XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) is a vulnerability where the attacker may inject malicious scripts to web pages).
Risk Rating: utilise tried and tested models like CVSS 3.1
Technical Description: Weakness well defined. This possibly may be made up of the following (hensible, but not restricted to):
a. Affected URLs/Endpoints: The URLs/Endpoints affected by the vulnerability (e.g. example.com/login).
b. Authentication Requirements: Does the vulnerability require authentication of any kind (e.g. “Exploitable only by an authenticated user or admin users”).
c. Attack Narrative: Description of the problem of how attacker used/got access to the systems.
Impact: Threat to any of the following consequences: devices, theft of data or stealing of data or access to this without permission.
Proof of Concept (PoC): A picture of the exploit or a line of code or even a video of the exploit in action (a screen shot of an exploiting script being run by the browser).
Remediation Actions: A particular action to alleviate the fault, or code input validation, and so on.
References: Sources of further, valuable information, e.g. OWASP Top 10 (OWASP), or a CVE entry.
Remediation Steps
Reward your discoveries into an action plan hierarchy. Categorize the group vulnerabilities according to their severity and give realistic schedules of repair. Take fix interdependency considerations and give short-term and long-term security suggestions. The section brings in wider security enhancements than patch solutions. Examples include:
- The use of secure coding to ensure there are no vulnerabilities in the future.
- Frequent update of web application frameworks and libraries.
- Periodical pentests used to keep the security.
The suggestions must be reasonable and aligned with the resource base of the organization and technology stack.
Appendices
Supplementary information may be provided as appendices to keep the main report from being cluttered. The usual things include:
- Unfiltered outputs or traces of tools such a Nessus or Burp Suite.
- A collection of technical terms as to the reader who is not a technologist.
- Mention standards like OWASP Top 10 or SANS 25.
Report Tools, Templates and Resources
Free and Open-Source Tools
These utilities are cheaper and most have compatibility with widely used scanning utilities hence best suited to small pentesting teams or a solo pentester.
Dradis Community Edition
GPLv2-licensed ‘open-source collaboration and reporting platform’.
Key Features: Compatibility with Burp Suite, Nessus and OWASP ZAP; compatibility with CSV import; flexibility in reports layouts.
PwnDoc
Pentest reporting tool developed in a user-friendly and simple way with the ability to customize to fit team level.
Major Characteristics: Multiple user access, generation of reports in DOCX, in-built management of vulnerability databases.
PeTeReport
A modular open-source security finding management and professional reporting tool.
Important Features: Results are supported in formats Markdown, HTML, and PDF; the possibility of adding attack run diagrams to better visualize the results.
Paid Tools
The commercial pentest tools do provide more functionalities such as automation, client portal, branding facilities, that could be used by professional pentest teams.
Pentest-Tools.com
An in depth system that has scanning and reporting functions.
Key Features: automatic report generation, export (PDF, HTML, CSV) and report templates.
AttackForge
The management and report platform of penetration testing that enables to work in real-time.
Key Feature: Branded and ready-to-send reports, teamwork, and numerous API integrations.
Dradis Pro
Dradis Pro is the pro version created with standardized reporting and group processes in mind.
Key Functionalities: Word custom report creation, automation and workgroup project management functions.
PlexTrac
An an AI-enabled platform that helps penetration testers to write faster reports with help of AI.
Key Features: The centralized management of the findings, the innovative dashboards for clients, and the speed of executions of the remediation tracking.
These tools can save pentesters many hours since they perform the data gathering, deduplicate the results, and format reports
Free Templates and Frameworks
The structures, vocabularies, and presentation of the results of penetration-tests are simplified by the following publicly available templates and frameworks. By implementing one (or multiple) of these tools, you will develop your report in accordance with industry standards acknowledged around the globe, as well as make it clear and actionable.
Free Templates and Frameworks
Legal and Compliance Considerations
Essential Documentation
Rules of Engagement (RoE) Never start any penetration test, before laying down any effective rule of engagement. In this document, the following items should be stated:
- Scope of testing
- Authorized test procedures
- Emergency contact procedures
- Data processing needs
- The schedule timelines on reporting and disclosure
Legal Agreements Ensure proper legal protections through the following documents:
- Master Service Agreements (MSA)
- Statements of Work (SOW)
- Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA)
- Liability and indemnification clauses
Authorization Letters Before testing any systems, including those performed internally, get written permission of the system owners.
Compliance Framework Alignment
Map your testing methodology and reporting to relevant compliance requirements if applicable to the penetration test only:
- PCI DSS: Penetration testing once per year and phenomenal vulnerability scanning four times a year
- HIPAA: Periodic screening and testing of healthcare systems
- SOX: IT general controls testing of financial systems
- ISO 27001: Requirements of risk based security assessment
Writing Tips for Maximum Impact
Know Your Audience
Try to write report in your own words. Instead of using jargon, technical expressions, or acronyms, use simple language to explain your reports. Write in business friendly language in executive areas and also ensure that you also give the technical details in executive areas where necessary.
Use Visual Elements Effectively
Add charts, graphs, screen shots, and diagrams made by AI to enhance your story and add clarity. The visual components must aim at facilitating comprehension, not congestion and diversion of the main message. Since appearance of AI generating images one can always use Chatgpt to sketch diagrams and graphs per instructions. However, at times we may need to annotate screenshots and create other graphs, in that case we may require other tools and some of the convenient tools include:
1. Tools to Capture and Annotate Screenshots
- https://flameshot.org/. I personally use flameshot to annotate my screenshots. And in this web pentest blog series we used
flameshot to annotate many diagrams. Here is one of the annotated screenshot from our 15th blog in this series.. This tool helps you to blur, add steps, draw arrows and annotate your screenshots.
Sharex (Windows): Advanced capture editor, automated upload, and GIF recording functionality.
Snappy (lightweight Linux alternative): Quick, annotated screengrabs.
2. Animate Processes with GIFs
peek (Linux): Select screen area and export as short-looped GIF.
Gifcap (browser‑based): Capture on‑the‑fly screen segments without installation.
Screentogif (Windows): Timeline‑based recording with editing and export capabilities.
3. Tools to Generate Architecture and Conceptual Diagrams with AI
This tool / AI is highly recommended when it comes down to draw architecture diagram. Visit Easer.io
Below is an architecture diagram, which was drawn with help of eraser and this is an theoretical recreated architecture diagram of rengine an attack surface management tool.
Imagine what if you can convert all the technical wordings into an conceptual diagram? Here is where napkin AI comes, it helps you to translate an paragraph or multiple paragraphs into an conceptual diagram . Below is one of the conceptual diagram we have draw using this AI for our JWT blog
Pro Tips
Keep anything in visuals streamlined and simple.
Blur or remove sensitive data.
Label steps or add descriptive parts where images are used in displaying a workflow.
Keep style coherent throughout images, diagrams and GIFs.
Keep GIFs length short (5 to 10sec) and have a smooth looping and readability.
Prioritize Actionability
Each finding must have remediation steps that could be acted upon. Instead of giving generic advice such as to implement security controls, make sure you give clear advice such as configure Content Security Policy headers in order to be able to prevent or avoid XSS attacks.
Maintain Professional Standards
Ensure your reports are:
- Professionals standardised and branded
- Without grammatical and spelling mistakes
- Duly organized within parts
- Properly done as cited and refered
Whenever you have time to triple check, it is never advisable to skip the process by giving your reports a double check across your team.
Measuring Report Effectiveness
Monitoring of your report success through:
- Stakeholder Feedback: Apartment surveys and feedback on a regular basis
- Business Alignment: The alignment of business with Recommendations
- Follow Up Assessments: Oversight of follow up to ensure correct fixes have been done per recommendation
Conclusion
The emergence of penetration testing reporting is more of art and science. It also involves technical skill to recognize and authenticate weaknesses and integration ability to explain security requirements in a polite way into business knowledge. It is important to keep in mind that most stakeholders may only associate with the penetration testing process through your report. Make it count by providing digestible, practical and professionally prepared findings to act on as a step towards positive change in security.
The tools and templates referred to in this guide have a concrete basis to able to generate professional penetration testing documents. But understanding the audience, being able to make the risk clear, and giving guidance that organizations could actually use is where the magic lies. With these principles and by constantly improving your process through the feedback of the stakeholders, you will produce reports that do not just record security weaknesses, but are drivers of actual security enhancement throughout the organization.
