Burp Suite: The Basics

Last night I finished off “HTTP in detail”. There was a cool little emulator to create HTTP requests and see the code sent, then the response contained the flag for that particular question. Today starts Burp.

What is Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a framework written in Java that aims to provide a one-stop-shop for web app penetration testing. Also commonly used when assessing mobile applications because the same features translate well into testing the APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) powering most mobile apps.

Core of framework is capturing and manipulating all traffic between attacker and web server. After capture, can choose to (modify and) pass on requests or send to various parts of the suite. Can do the same with responses.

Features of Burp Suite

Burp Community includes:

  • Proxy - Most well-known aspect, allows interception and mosification of requests/responses when interacting with web applications
  • Repeater - Second most well-known aspect, allows capture, modify, then resend the same request multiple times. Absolutely invaluable when needing to craft a payload through trial and error (i.e. SQLi) or testing functionality of an endpoint for flaws
  • Intruder - Allows spraying an endpoint with requests, often used for bruteforce attacks or fuzzing endpoints
  • Decoder - Transforms data, decoding captured information, or encoding a payload before sending to target. Other services available, but is convenient and efficient within Burp Suite
  • Comparer - Allows comparing two pieces of data at word or byte level. Not unique, but being able to send (especially large) pieces of data to a comparer with a keyboard shortcut helps efficency
  • Sequencer - Used for assessing randomness of tokens (like session cookie values). Algorithms that don’t generate secure random values can open up devastating attacks

Java codebase makes it very easy to write extensions to add to the functionality of the framework. Can write extensions in Java, Python (Jython), or Ruby (JRudy). Extender module allows easier extension loading and marketplace for third-party modules (BApp Store). Many require a pro license to download and add in, some are available for Community (i.e. Logger++).

The Questions

Both tasks 2 and 3 had questions about editions and usage, and features, respectively.

Now to try and fixe my GitHub page building issue.