Intercepting thick client communications
Summary: PortSwigger's Dafydd Stuttard describes a new Burp Suite Pro feature that lets testers intercept traffic from thick clients that cannot be configured to use a proxy, by forcing the client to talk to Burp Proxy directly and having Burp forward requests based on the Host header. He notes that modifying the hosts file can cause Burp to resolve hostnames to the loopback address and forward requests back to itself in an infinite loop, which the new in-Burp hostname resolution setting overrides.
Bottom line: Thick clients that ignore proxy settings are exactly the ones most likely to escape an organization's traffic inspection, and this technique turns them into interceptable traffic using only a hosts file change and Burp's own resolver.
Read the original at PortSwigger Research ↗
- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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