[MoBP] Passive vulnerability scanning
Summary: PortSwigger's Burp Scanner splits its checks into active checks, which send crafted requests derived from the base request and analyze the responses, and passive checks, which send no new requests and instead analyze the contents of the base request and response. The article lists situations where passive-only scanning helps: testing a critical production application where you want control of every request sent, applications that terminate sessions or lock accounts on apparently malicious requests, and targets where you don't yet have authorization to attack.
Bottom line: A scanner that sends no new requests can still surface a dozen reportable issues purely by browsing as a normal user, which matters on production systems and session-locking applications where an active scan would knock things over or cut you off.
Read the original at PortSwigger Research ↗
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- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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