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Credentials to insert while scanning a site in Burp Enterprise

chandraveer | Last updated: Dec 04, 2018 05:31AM UTC

I am currently using Burp ENT beta version. While putting a site into a scan, there is provision for login credentials. In case of a hierarchy of users, how can it be ensured that the credentials give will work for crawling the application to its fullest? Which credentials should be provided- higher privileged, lower privileged, or both?

PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Dec 04, 2018 10:02AM UTC

This is an interesting question. In general, you want to provide enough users that all the pages in your app will be accessed, and in all their possible states. In some cases, providing the administrator user is enough. Otherwise, you may need to provide multiple sets of credentials. Be aware that providing admin credentials will almost always result in the scan changing settings in an unwanted way. Only do this in a test environment. At present the scanner has few checks for authorization bypass issues; these need to be investigated manually be a pen tester. In future we add more of these and it will be important to provide low privilege users and well as high privilege so access controls can be properly tested. Please let us know if you need any further assistance.

Burp User | Last updated: Dec 04, 2018 11:17AM UTC

"In some cases, providing the administrator user is enough" This holds true only when the administrator has access to all those functionalities that a normal user (lower-privileged) has in the same line. Basically, the functionalities of a normal user should be the exact subset of functionalities accessible to admin (with some extra permissions). What if the admin has access to an entirely different set of functionalities? In such cases, only those functionalities will be scanned which fall in line with those of admin, rest all will be excluded out.

PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Dec 04, 2018 11:59AM UTC

In that case you need to provide Burp with multiple sets of credentials, which you can do while setting up the scan.

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