Pentesting with Burp Suite: Tools & Tricks

Burp Suite, developed by Portswigger, is a popular set of web application penetration testing tools. It offers comprehensive capabilities and can be enhanced with add-ons called BApps. It is widely favored by professional security researchers and bug bounty hunters over free alternatives like OWASP ZAP. Furthermore, a free community edition of the tool is also available for use.

The tools offered by BurpSuite are:

1. Spider:

The Spider tool in Burp Suite is a web crawler that automates the process of mapping a website. It follows links, submits forms, and handles authentication to discover all available pages and resources. The tool helps generate a detailed site map, which is crucial for comprehensive vulnerability assessments and understanding website structure. Key features include automated crawling, form submission, authentication handling, and custom configuration options. It is widely used by penetration testers, developers, and SEO specialists to ensure thorough exploration and analysis of web applications.

2. Proxy:

A proxy is an intermediary server that facilitates communication between a client and a server. It provides anonymity by masking the client's IP address, enhances security by filtering content and enforcing access controls, and improves performance by caching frequently accessed data. Proxies are commonly used for privacy, security, and efficiency in network communications.

Burp Suite includes an intercepting proxy, allowing users to view and modify requests and responses in real-time while they are being sent between the client and server. Additionally, it simplifies the process of sending monitored requests and responses to other relevant tools within Burp Suite, eliminating the need for manual copy-pasting. The proxy server can be set up to run on a specific local IP address and port. Users can also customize the proxy to filter out specific types of request-response pairs as needed.

3. Intruder:

Burp Suite's "Intruder" function serves as a fuzzer, which tests different sets of values as inputs into specific points of the target application. It then observes the responses for success or failure, as well as the content length. If any anomalies occur, such as changes in response codes or content length, it can indicate potential vulnerabilities.The Intruder feature in Burp Suite enables different types of payload positions, including brute-force, dictionary attacks, and single values. It is particularly useful for:

1. Brute-force attacks on password forms, PIN forms, and similar input fields.
2. Dictionary attacks on password forms and fields that might be susceptible to XSS or SQL injection. (Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks are a type of injection, in which malicious scripts are injected into otherwise benign and trusted websites. XSS attacks occur when an attacker uses a web application to send malicious code, generally in the form of a browser side script, to a different end user.)
3. Testing and bypassing rate-limiting mechanisms on the web application.

4. Repeater:

1. Repeater enables users to send requests repeatedly with manual changes, helping to validate the verification of user-supplied values.

2. It assesses how well the server verifies user-supplied values and identifies the expected values in input parameters and request headers.

3. Users can observe how the server handles unexpected values and whether proper input sanitation is applied.

4. Repeater helps assess the effectiveness of the server's input sanitization for user-supplied inputs and identifies the sanitation style being used.

5. It aids in determining the actual session cookie among all the cookies present.

6. Repeater also helps assess the implementation of CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) protection and whether there are potential ways to bypass it.

So, this is some of the best tools and tricks available in Burp Suite that i have experienced. Let me know your thoughts and queries!