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Projects randomly stop collecting target information.

Tim | Last updated: Oct 22, 2018 06:54PM UTC

During class last week, every student at one point or another encountered an issue where Burp stopped collecting information in the target tab while the proxy history continued to collect information. Restarting Burp did not fix the issue. We were using 2.08b. I had a few students upgrade to 2.09b. The old projects still didn't work in the new version, and after restarting Burp with a new project, the students encountered the same issue, so it does not appear to be fixed in 2.09b. I had the entire class revert to 2.07b because that worked great a couple weeks ago. We had no further issues with 2.07b and were able to complete the 3 day class successfully. The only way I know to replicate the issue is just use the tool until it stops functioning properly. That's all we did and students encountered issues at different points during the training. We could not discern any specific action that led to the behavior.

Liam, PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Oct 23, 2018 07:04AM UTC

Thanks for this report Tim. Do you have performance feedback enabled (User options > Misc > Performance feedback)? If so, could you provide us with the diagnostics (Help > Diagnostics) for the instance of Burp this has occurred with?

Burp User | Last updated: Nov 09, 2018 02:22PM UTC

Hi there, We are facing the exact same issue (2.0.11b) with the target not tracking movements anymore ("show all" is selected). The site map remains empty while browsing the target but all queries appear in the proxy history. It was the first try with v2 so we simply reverted back to v1 builds. @op: thanks for the trick, I will try with 2.0.7b see if it the target tab works again.

Burp User | Last updated: Nov 09, 2018 03:04PM UTC

Hi Again, So I tested with 2.0.7b, same issue: the site map under the target tab remains empty with "show all", while the proxy history captures all the traffic. Back to version 1.

Burp User | Last updated: Nov 09, 2018 03:09PM UTC

@Liam: The event log shows only 2 info level entries "proxy service started on..." and "using socks proxy at....". p.s.: I see you are mentioning my firstname in the public forum. It seemed to me that this information was not public. Where can I edit my profile and remove these details?

Liam, PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Nov 09, 2018 03:14PM UTC

AF, I've removed the post displaying your first name. Additionally, I've sent you an email displaying the task execution engine paused message. This message is above the event log.

Liam, PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Nov 09, 2018 03:16PM UTC

A, we're going to add a warning to the Dashboard when individual tasks are paused and make the warnings more prominent. Unfortunately, we can't provide an ETA.

Burp User | Last updated: Nov 09, 2018 04:00PM UTC

@Liam: thank you for your email, it looks like the issue is resolved. The 2 default tasks were indeed paused. I resumed task 1 (live passive crawler) and items were pushed into the target tab. Problem solved, thank you! 2 comments following this experience: 1) My interface doesn't show the message ("task execution is paused") that is shown in your screenshot. I clicked around and it looks like it only appears if the global pause button is pressed, not the individual ones (which is what I did. 2) The description of the task ("live passive crawl") makes it hard to understand that it could block the display of items in the "target" tab. Additionally, un-pausing flushes all the items waiting in a buffer into the site map. To be honest, I don't see the scenario where it's useful to wait before these items are shown in the site map. I will certainly soon :) In terms of improvements/suggestions: For item 1: an improvement would be to show the message under 2 conditions: - when the global pause is pressed - after a task is paused AND all tasks are in paused status. For item 2: it looks to me like this would not be an issue for new Burp users. Long time users might have "bad" habits: I have been pausing active/passive scanning tasks for years by default and I immediately paused these tasks when I saw them in V2. Maybe you could add a little notification message in the site map tab like the one in the dashboard to inform the user that it is paused? That would help the long time V1 users (and maybe Tim Tomes above is having the same issue with his students). Best, A. p.s.: thanks a lot for your quick responses and support, it is highly appreciated.

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