This post has two sections, the first explains how to obtain details of any website (Information Gathering) and the second deals with analysis and understanding of HTTP raw header information.

Addon 1: Domain Details

DomainDetails addon, can be helpful in finding out Server Type, Headers, IP Address, Location Flag, and Whois information of any website you browse with Firefox. Once you install the addon, Server name, Ip address of the current website is displayed in the status bar, and a tiny button is displayed, clicking on that will display a menu which gives access to explore more details of that website.

SecFox Addon, How?

How can this addon be useful while performing the security assessments?

1. Display’s Server Name and Version - This info can be used to search for the open vulnerabilities found in the target server. Several advisories publishes vulnerabilities associated with a particular version of various servers; the sites like milw0rm, cert, Secunia, etc holds a repository of latest advisories.

2. Displays IP Address – Input of several vulnerability scanners(like nmap) will be the IP address of the target website. Ideally, to obtain the IP address of the target, we would have to do ns lookup (open cmd prompt, then nslookup www.targetsite.com), but with with DomainDetails we can directly lookup IP address of the website immediately while the page loads.

3. Webpage fingerprint – Whois is used for querying authoritative registries/ databases to discover the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number of the target website. Online sites like Whois.net, DNSStuff, Central Ops gives server info any many other details about any site you search for. Domain Details just adds option to directly search for these details from the statusbar menu, saving us few of our preciuos keystrokes.

Demo

Download DomainDetails :

Addon 2 : LiveHTTP Headers

The addon LiveHTTP Headers is one of the must have addon if you are a security analyst. This addon displays the RAW HTTP Headers (Request and Response) for the webpage you are browsing.

SecFox Addon, How?

1. Display’s server Name and Version – As explained in the previous section, this can be used to find out and exploit the known vulnerabilities found in the target server.

2. Displays the Response Code - This is very helpful in knowing how the server responds for any client request. So if there is any misconfiguration in the server so that a particular request of the client forces the client to behave indifferently and exposing the vulnerability.

3. Cookie Config – This also displays the cookie config set at the server. For example if we observe that in the server response, for any request sent for any sensitive pages, that Cache-Control: no-cache is not present, then it means that those sensitive pages are cached and be visible for those who are not intended to.

4. Replay any forged request – We can modify the POST data and replay it from this addon. This means that we are bypassing any client side validations present in that site.

5. Monitor Cookie Info – We can also monitor the cookie value and try to reverse engineer and decode its value.

6. This list continues – Analysis of HTTP Headers would will be the first step when doing the security assessments and LiveHTTP Headers will be the key to get it. We can break the headers into parts and research on that to get the best out of it.

More info on HTTP Headers

Demo

Download LiveHTTP Headers :

Stay Tuned coming posts features more security addons and its usage…

–

Firefox is an amazing browser whose features can be extended by installing addons or tweaking the browser itself. This feature of it is utilized to the max for building a powerful hacking/testing tool, SecFox.

This articles(split into sections) details the process of creating SecFox and also includes the usage of various security related firefox addons with relevant examples and screencasts.

“Leave me alone” says Firefox (Create a new profile and let your default Firefox alone)

Before turning Firefox to Secfox, we need to make sure that we don’t mess up with the settings of the existing firefox browser (default profile). For that, we will have to create a new profile called ‘SecFox’. Any modifications, like installing addons or change browser settings, we make while using the SecFox profile will not affect the default profile.

Tweak Firefox Config. (Enable profilemanager)

1. Type about:config in the addressbar
2. In the filter, type ‘profile’ and change profile.manage_only_at_launch to true (default is false).
3. Close firefox

Now create a shortcut of firefox in your desktop and RightClick and open the properties. Now modify the target parameter as shown below.
%Firefox_Installation_Directory%firefox.exe -P -no-remote

Create a new profile ‘SecFox’ with Profile Manager.

To Run the New Profile, create a new shortcut and use the following command
%Firefox_Installation_Directory% firefox.exe -P SecFox -no-remote

You can create 2 shortcuts, one for your default ‘firefox’ and other for ‘secfox’ by using the above command.

Note: -no-remote parameter is used to run mutiple firefox instances simultaneously.

Are you SecFox or Firefox? (How to identify)

While running Secfox and default profile simultaneously, we will have trouble in identifying and switching to the profile required profile. So we need to modify the GUI and other properties of the profiles so that the difference is very much visible and the needed is easily accessible.

Change Desktop Icons

The first activity in this step would be setting different icons for the 2 profiles. Try changing the Secfox to some geeky looking dark icon. IÂ used the icon from crystalXp, which can be downloaded from here.

Differentiate with help of themes

Once you have your firefox windows open, while switching the browser windows (during Alt-tab), you will still find difficulty in mapping browser window and its corresponding profile. So the best option would be to put easily identifiable theme on SecFox. I used black version of the default theme for my new Sec profile, which you can get it from here.

Change Firefox Title

Tweak your titlebar so that you can identify your profile even if Firefox windows are minimized. Download and install Titlebar Tweaks in both the profiles. After installation go to Titlebar Tweak Options and select ‘Browser Name – Webpage Title’ layout. Click on the Browser Name tab and type in ‘S’ and ‘F’ as Browser names, for SecFox profile and default profile respectively.

Install ‘Must Have’ Addons:

Before installing addons which can help us with testing the web applications, we would want to install couple of addons which will definitely help us at later point of time.

FaviconizeTab :

As a tester you might need to keep loads and loads of tabs open that means less space to work and more confusion. FaviconizeTab helps in reducing the size of the tabs and thereby helping us to keep more tabs in little space. Download FaviconizeTab.

Check the post, Ultimate Clutter reduction with Favicons, for amazing tips with FaviconizeTab.

FireGestures :

Control your Firefox with mouse gestures. This can be very useful when you want to do some quick browser navigation (like switching tabs, close tabs, open link in new tab etc). This again will be of great use once we start testing websites. Download FireGestures

GreaseMonkey :

Write custom scripts to modify the way in which the website works. Or load any existing greasemonkey scripts, which can be obtained from various repositories like userscripts.org, to enhance our testing. Download GreaseMonkey

Stylish :

This is similar to greasemonkey. Some cool Stylish scripts are available for download so we need this installed. Download Stylish.

Tweak Firefox Toolbar, Increase your work area:

• ‘Use Small Icons’

RightClick on the toolbar and select ‘Customize’. Check ‘Use small icons’, this reduces the width of the firefox toolbar thereby increasing the vertical space.

• Remove Home Button

We rarely use home button in present in the toolbar by default. We can remove the same by following simple steps. Open ‘Customize’ (check the above bullet) and drag-n-drop the home button from the navigation toolbar into the Customize Toolbars Window.

• Hide the Menus Toolbar (PersonalMenu)

Install Personal Menu (from here), so that we can completely replace the Menu Toolbar with a tiny menu button.

• Combine Stop & Reload Button

We can combine Stop & Reload buttons in the navigation bar by adding a small Stylish scriptfound here (check ‘Must Have’ addons section above to install Stylish). This will display stop icon while loading the page and changes to reload once the page has loaded.

Secfox-Firefox Side-by-Side

Once you complete all the above mentioned steps you have 2 independent firefox windows running with 2 different profiles simultaneously.

Now the new profile, SecFox, has to be made functional with various security related addons.

Upcoming posts related to SecFox will contain Info on installing and using the those addons.

(To be Continued….)

Note : You need to install Faviconize Tab before you proceed with following the below mentioned addons.

If you have faviconize tabs installed and know about it, then skip to Faviconize All Tabs Section

Faviconize Tabs

Faviconize Tab is a wonderful addon which can be helpful for the users who browse heavily with firefox. This addon provides an option to reduce the size of the tab to the favicon of the site reducing clutter.

Before Faviconize

After Faviconize

Download page for Faviconize Tab :

Faviconize All Tabs

I love using Faviconize Tabs and was thinking why is this not a default firefox feature and why in the world would I need to see ‘Site Name – Some Crap Text‘ (Like ‘Gmail – Inbox(3123) – xxx@gmail.com‘) in the tab title to know that its gmail’s tab, if I can simply understand that it is the tab for gmail from the favicon displayed in the tab.

So we can faviconize each tab and keep it simple. But the prob is, every time I have to faviconize any tab, I need to right click and select faviconize and I have to repeat for all the tabs… Is it so? Not really..

Go to Faviconize Preferences and in the Auto Faviconize, put ‘*’ as wildcard. Now every tab you open will be faviconized

Gmail FavIcon Alerts 3

But now you might ask me that the long title in the tab, Gmail – Inbox (No of Unread Messages), is very useful. Atleast you can get to know if you get a new mail, which is not possible with a faviconized tab. But there is an useful greasemonkey script which displays unread count in the tab and also the incoming chat indication in the tab…

Unread Messages

No Unread Message

Incoming Chat

Download Page :

GReader FavIcon Alerts

So what about Google Reader? Fortunately we have something for that too…

Unread Message Count

Unread Message greater than 1K

Download Page :

NOTE: You need GreaseMonkey installed to setup the above to scripts

Tree tabs

So you dont like the tabs on the top or do you think that you need to know from whether you opened this page (Parent page)? Then treetabs is there for you…  Its self explanatory, check the screenshot.

Download page :

Faviconize tabs +(Gmail +Greader) Favicon Alerts +Tree Tabs =  Ultimate Clutter Reduction in Firefox…

Features:

• Choose 1,2,3 and 4 columns of Google results. The columns are automatically adjusted while resizing the browser window. This is especially useful if you have a wide screen monitor.

• A background or border hue to your search results., configurable from the user dialogue with a simple color picker.

• Remove the Google “Sponsored Links”

• Auto-load more results. This version of the scripts code has been streamlined to allow almost seamless result fetching when you approach the bottom of the screen. Never have to load the next page by hand!

• Result numbering. When looking at loads of results you can use this feature to quickly identify where you are and what relevance they may have (especially useful when we come to Auto-loading more results!)

• Remove the web search dialogues from your Google pages. If you use the Google Search Box in Firefox why waste your valuable screen space when you can hide the extraneous elements away.

• Make external Google links open in a new window/tab.

• Disable Google tracking your search results. This function allows you to disable this reporting to Google completely or add an extra “Trackless” link to each of your search results

• Thumbnails for each of your results. Incorporating resources from GooglePreview.com now allows you to see a thumbnail of the home page of each of your search results. If you use this feature think about helping out with the server costs and donate!

• favicons for each of your results. Show the sites favicon if you so choose… and, of course, they actually have one !)

• And all of this can be configured through one simple screen. Simply click on the GoogleMonkeyR link at the top right of the page and choose your preferences

Note: You need to Install GreaseMonkey, from here, before installing this script. After Installing GreaseMonkey just Install this script and reload the Google Serach Results page.

Install GoogleMonkeyR :

More Info : GoogleMonkeyR

Refresh Google Reader and click on filter settings button on the right top and enter your rules in plain text. For specifying advanced rules, few of the RegEx chars can be used.

* Here Trial|Shareware|Demo|Adware in the Excludes section implies that any one of the keyword match from the four specified will exclude (greys out) that post

Google Reader Filter in Action

The above screenshot gives us an idea on how this script was used to highlight the free apps from the trial/demo versions from the Softpedia repository

Note

• You need GreaseMonkey Installed in your Firefox to make this script work!
• This script works only in the list view and not in expanded view
• Check the script Discussions page for more Tips and Tweaks

Install Google Reader Filter :

More Info : Homepage