Client-side proxies
A client-side proxy intercepts HTTP and HTTPS traffic, allowing a penetration tester to examine communications between the user and the application. It allows the tester to copy the data or interact with requests that are sent to the application, therefore allowing them to manipulate or bypass the client-side restrictions.
Client-side proxies were initially designed for debugging applications; the same functionality can be abused by attackers to perform man-in-the-middle or man-in-the-browser attacks.
Kali comes with several client-side proxies, including Burp Suite and ZAP. After extensive testing, we have come to rely on Burp Proxy, with ZAP as a backup tool. In this section, we will explore Burp Suite.
Burp Proxy
In this section, we’ll use Mutillidae, the web application that we installed when building our virtual lab in Chapter 1, Goal-Based Penetration Testing. Burp is primarily used to intercept HTTP(S) traffic; the latest version is...