DEFINITION of 'Gray Box'

The testing of software with limited knowledge of its internal workings.

Gray box testing is an ethical hacking technique where the hacker has to use limited information to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a target's security network.

Gray box is the hybrid of white box testing, where the tester examines the internal logic and structure of the software’s code, and black box testing, where the tester knows nothing about the software’s code.

Gray box testing includes important components of both black and white box testing to get a better result than either could obtain alone.

Both end users and developers perform gray box testing with limited (partial) knowledge of an application’s source code.

Gray box testing can be manual or automated.

It is more comprehensive and more time consuming than black box testing, but not as comprehensive or time consuming as white box testing.

Gray box testers require detailed design documents.

Gray box testing involves identifying inputs, identifying outputs, identifying major paths and identifying subfunctions.

It then moves on to developing inputs and outputs for subfunctions, executing test cases for subfunctions, and verifying those results.
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