Identify vulnerabilities with Microsoft’s CAT.NET tool

CAT.NET is a binary code analysis tool that helps identify common variants of certain prevailing vulnerabilities that can give rise to common attack vectors such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL Injection and XPath Injection.

CAT.NET is a snap-in to the Visual Studio IDE that helps you identify security flaws within a managed code (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#) application you are developing. It does so by scanning the binary and/or assembly of the application, and tracing the data flow among its statements, methods, and assemblies. This includes indirect data types such as property assignments and instance tainting operations.

The engine works by reading the target assembly and all reference assemblies used in the application – module-by-module – and then analyzing all of the methods contained within each. It finally displays the issues its finds in a list that you can use to jump directly to the places in your application’s source code where those issues were found.