Chapter 2. Configuring Browsers to Proxy through Burp

The Burp Suite Proxy tool is an intercepting proxy. An intercepting proxy intercepts all the traffic that is sent toward it from a client and all the resulting responses from the server as well.

The primary job of the Burp Suite Proxy tool is to intercept regular web traffic, which goes over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and with additional configuration, encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) traffic as well. All of this to make it easy for you to see all interactions and data that goes to and come from the web server. If you can see what is happening in terms of requests and responses, you can test the website security using various techniques and approaches available to you.

Burp Suite can be used to intercept any client-server communication that goes over HTTP. The most common web clients are the web browsers that users like you and me use. There are other software capable of crafting and working with HTTP requests, such as curl and...