Exploring Web Directory and File Brute Forcing with WFUZZ

Penetration Testers and ethical hackers often perform vulnerability assessments to find flaws in web applications. One of the methods employed during the assessment is brute forcing, which is continuously testing every area to find vulnerabilities or hidden files or folders. We'll explore the idea of brute forcing web directories and files in this article utilizing the potent program WFUZZ.

What is Brute Forcing?

A brute force attack is a hacking method that uses trial and error to crack passwords, login credentials, and encryption keys. It is a simple yet reliable tactic for gaining unauthorized access to individual accounts and organizations’ systems and networks. The hacker tries multiple usernames and passwords, often using a computer to test a wide range of combinations, until they find the correct login information.

What is WFUZZ?

WFUZZ is a flexible and versatile tool designed for brute forcing web applications. It can be used to find hidden directories, files, and other web-related resources. WFUZZ leverages a customizable syntax and dictionary-based approach to launch automated requests, making it an essential tool in the arsenal of ethical hackers.

How it works

Wfuzz is based on a simple concept: it replaces any reference to the FUZZ keyword by the value of a given payload. This simple concept allows any input to be injected in any field of an HTTP request, allowing to perform complex web security attacks in different web application components such as: parameters, authentication, forms, directories/files, headers, etc.

• Wfuzz’s web application vulnerability scanner is supported by plugins.
• Wfuzz is a completely modular framework and makes it easy for even the newest of Python developers to contribute. Building plugins is simple and takes little more than a few minutes.
• Wfuzz exposes a simple language interface to the previous HTTP requests/responses performed using Wfuzz or other tools, such as Burp. This allows you to perform manual and semi-automatic tests with full context and understanding of your actions, without relying on a web application scanner underlying implementation.
• Installation Guide: Wfuzz comes pre-installed in the Unix operating system. You can also clone the public repository:

$git clone git://github.com/xmendez/wfuzz.git

• Getting Help:

$wfuzz –help shows all the options and payloads available. Refer to the official documentation for more options.

Specifying the Payloads:?

$wfuzz -w Downloads/common.txt https://testphp.vulnweb.com/FUZZ

Each line in the screenshots provides the following information:

• ID: The request number in the order that it was performed.
• Response: Shows the HTTP response code.
• Lines: Shows the number of lines in the HTTP response.
• Word: Shows the number of words in the HTTP response.
• Chars: Shows the number of characters in the HTTP response.
• Payload: Shows the payload used.

Filtering Responses:

The following command line parameters can be used to hide certain HTTP responses? such as 404 pages “–hc, –hl, –hw, –hh”. For example, the following command filters the web resources unknown by the web server.

$wfuzz -w Downloads/common.txt –hc 404 https://testphp.vulnweb.com/FUZZ

Some of the benefits of using wfuzz include:

• Automating the fuzzing process and saving time and effort
• Customizing payloads to identify specific vulnerabilities
• Identifying potential security issues before they can be exploited.

Conclusion:

wfuzz is a powerful and flexible tool for web application testing and security assessment. Its ability to automate the fuzzing process and customize payloads makes it an ideal choice for identifying vulnerabilities in web applications.