Defining a web application target with Burp Suite

When performing a penetration test, it is important to be sure that your attacks are only targeting intended systems. Attacks performed against unintended targets can result in legal liability. To minimize this risk, it is important to define your scope within Burp Suite. In this recipe, we will discuss how to define in-scope targets using the Burp Suite proxy.

Getting ready

To use Burp Suite to perform web application analysis against a target, you will need to have a remote system that is running one or more web applications. In the examples provided, an instance of Metasploitable2 is used to perform this task. Metasploitable2 has several preinstalled vulnerable web applications running on TCP port 80. For more information on setting up Metasploitable2, refer to the Installing Metasploitable2 recipe in Chapter 1, Getting Started, of this book. Additionally, your web browser will need to be configured to proxy web traffic through a local instance...