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Generally, a web penetration test is conducted as a black box test, that means that you're only going

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to have an IP range or your URL and then you will display the application in your browser.

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And then start the test, so that point, you don't have the code and any of the other resources of

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the application, so it's not even possible to view and analyze the code in a situation like that.

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And let's say even if it is possible a person won't be able to have a comprehensive information on the

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applications code because Web developers can build an application over several different languages,

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frameworks and databases for technologies.

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So it is rare to have knowledge about all the technologies that the application is built on.

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OK.

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So that's why I said before, while conducting a web penetration test, we will need to understand the

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basic web technologies, but we don't need to be masters in them.

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But it is why in the next few minutes, we are going to cover some of these technologies.

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Web browsers, the web browser or simply browser is software, right.

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Takes you anywhere on the Internet.

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It's great.

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It's better than a limo.

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I love it because, of course, you're watching this course right now in a browser.

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Now, they request Web pages over HTTP and display them into a human readable content, will call it.

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So despite the fact that they're used every day, a lot of people don't really care to understand how

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they work.

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I mean, it's kind of like driving a car for the most part.

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Everybody gets in a car and turns a key and vroom, off they go.

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No, what he thinks about the engine or what's happening in it or any of the other systems because they

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don't have to.

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It makes sense for regular users.

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However, what if you're a mechanic?

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All right.

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So it's pretty much the same for us as a web penetration tester.

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We need to know more about browsers because they are the first point that we touch in a Web application.

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In fact, I believe they're like a battlefield.

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I mean, stick with me here.

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We've got privacy, interface security, all kinds of other options that are very important while using

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a browser.

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But in this video, I'm just going to show you how they work and how to use them in a penetration test.

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Right.

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So, anyway, Web browsers, they come in many different flavors and they're designed to run on different

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operating systems.

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Now, you've probably heard of the most popular Web browsers.

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We've got Google Chrome, Mozilla, Firefox, Microsoft Edge or Explorer Opera.

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And then in addition to these big players, some many others exist.

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Max Thorn and Vivaldi, brave torch epic.

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And they all have different features with their pros and cons, so for me, I've been using Firefox

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from the very first day that I started pen testing, but and I'm still using it today.

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I like working with Firefox.

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It has a simple interface that you can control almost anything from.

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And also, it has many useful add ons, and I'm going to use them while I conduct a penetration test.

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Now, when you install an ad on generally, you will get an icon on the toolbar like I have here, or

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you can go to an ad on this list.

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And in this window, you can manage your add ons.

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But for you, you can choose any of the known browsers that you want to for this course, you probably

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already have.

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But now let's come to the main question, how does a Web browser actually work?

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All right, so I'm going to tell you briefly.

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Basically, a browser uses a protocol such as HTP to retrieve data from a network.

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The browser can point this data from the URL, which is the address of a specific page or any other

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asset.

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And to be viewed by a Web browser, this data should be presented in HTML success and JavaScript.

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Now, right, click on the page.

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Click view page source.

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And here is the source of the page.

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Of course, this is not the actual code of the developer.

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We'll get to that topic a little later, but for now, pretty much you can think of what you're looking

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at on the screen as a translation of the code of the developer.

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So let's have a look at it.

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It consists of HTML, she says JavaScript.

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Now, another super feature is web developer tools.

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Now, all pretty much all known browsers have this feature, I don't want to go out on a limb and say

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every single one.

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It's mostly developer oriented, as the name would suggest.

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So we're going to use this as well, especially when we're viewing the HTTP messages and dealing with

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document object models.

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So I don't want to make an advertisement for Firefox, but my point is that all browsers have a long

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story.

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I won't tell you or go into the browser history or you, yeah, what's also called the browser wars,

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you can figure that out for yourself.

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You probably already have a favorite browser.

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But obviously these days, the browser market is still developing and I think it will continue to develop,

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at least for my lifetime anyway.

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Point to that story is features are constantly being added.

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So, of course, you can visit the website called The Evolution of the Web.

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So you can view these improvements.

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Unfortunately, it's not updated as frequently as perhaps you might want, but at least it'll give you

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a pretty good idea as to how these improvements all came to be.

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It also shows the evolution of the Web browsers, but also I just wanted to have a look at the page.

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At the moment, so if so, you do want to have a look at browser's more carefully, the general design

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of the browser is explained in these documents and it's very good.

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Well, it's long, but it's a pretty well explained document, so let's scroll down.

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And I want to talk about this image a little bit more.

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So let's analyze this figure a little bit.

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User interface, this includes the address bar, the back forward button bookmark menu, all this and

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every part of the browser display except the window where you see the requested page.

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The browser engine marshals' actions between the UI and the rendering engine.

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The rendering engine is responsible for displaying the requested content, for example, if the requested

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content is HTML, the rendering engine parses e-mail access and it'll display the parsed content on

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the screen.

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And different browsers use different rendering engines, for example, Firefox uses Geko now for networking,

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for network calls such as HTTP requests using different implementations for different platforms behind

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a platform independent interface JavaScript interpretor that's used to parse and execute JavaScript

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code.

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And guess what?

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Each browser has its own JavaScript interpreter.

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For example, Firefox uses Spider Monkey.

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What about the UI back end used for drawing basic widgets like combo boxes and windows?

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Data storage, this is a persistent layer, so the browser may need to save all sorts of data locally.

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For instance, cookies and browsers also support storage mechanisms such as local storage index, DB,

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Web ESKIL and filesystem.

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We're going to get into some of the local storage attacks later in some of the other sections.

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OK, so it's important to choose the right browser for you while we test due to the different rendering

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engines, each browser can sometimes treat HTML success and just codes in different ways.

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So that's why it's important to figure that out is can affect obviously accomplishing some of the web

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attacks.

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So this point, I want to emphasize that it's always good to know which Web browser is, well, the

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most widely used in whatever the target users environment is.

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I remember several times and some of my customers use a much older browser versions due to some compatibility

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reasons.

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So that means that if I test this application with a newer Web browser, I might get different results.

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Right.

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And I won't be able to accomplish some of the attacks that I wanted to purvey.