ABSTRACT
Many of today’s hottest new enterprise technologies are centered around free “open-source” technology. Most of the open source software or applications have a web front end, and they are available universally to their users. The growing popularity of the open source software or applications is turning them to be tools of everyday. Access to these applications can be gained from anywhere, widely exposing any security vulnerability which can most probably be exploited or exposed by the hackers. Web vulnerability scanners can detect weaknesses in a black-box method of security testing, they are easy to use as well. There are many scanners to choose; organizations can select them based on their requirements and conditions. In this paper, we study vulnerabilities in one of the widely used open source software learning management system named MOODLE. The experimental study using the open source web vulnerability scanners not only helps in detecting potential vulnerabilities but also helps in providing an effective way for evaluation of security mechanisms. It not only points out their weaknesses but also provides ways to improve them.
