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Cheatography

HTTP Request Methods Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

Request Methods

GET
OPTIONS
POST
CONNECT
HEAD
PUT
TRACE
DELETE
Some other web apps and/or servers add other methods.

GET Method

Used to obtain a web resource from the server by passing parameters via URL
Easily manipu­lated by attackers
Could be dangerous for authen­tic­ati­on-­related and session tracking parameters
Easier to script against an app using GET
Enables an attacker to test requests without waiting for payload

POST Method

Requests a web resource but passes parameters via the HTTP payload
Can still be manipu­lated
Can be changed to a GET for simpler scripting if the app supports Method Interc­hange and regist­er_­globals is how this happens in PHP
Parameters will not get logged

TRACE Method

Will echo the request as seen by the server back at the client
It is for diagnostic purposes
Enables the attacker to see any changes made by proxies (inbound or outbound)

OPTIONS Method

Asks the server to return the list of request methods supports
Enables an attacker to determine methods for attacks

PUT Method

Uploads data tot he location specified by the URL
Data upload is the HTTP payload
Should not be supported on public intern­et-­facing servers.

DELETE Method

Removes the resource specified by the URL
Could lead to DoS
Can be used to change config­ura­tions, such as deleting .htaccess file
Should not be supported on public intern­et-­facing servers.
 

Attacker's Perspe­ctive of HTTP

Look for methods that should NOT be supported: PUT, DELETE, CONNECT
TRACE can help map network archit­ecture
Check for method interc­hange, which can ease XSS attacks and scripting because parameters can be passed in the URL

Websocket

Designed to establish connection to a back-end server allowing for long-term commun­ciation
Supports bidire­ctional commun­ication over a single TCP socket
Designed to handle blocked ports/­network restri­ctions
Depends on the server and the client support for JavaScript and HTML5
Handshake over HTTP(S):
ws :// Protocol handler initiates the request
wss :// for sercure is more widely used

Websocket Tools

Many tools do not handle Websocket to capture, intercept, or fuzz
Wireshark can capture raw network traffic but cannot parse
ZAP was one of the first to support interc­eption and fuzzing of Websocket connec­tions

Use Netcrat to Determine HTTP Methods

#! /bin/bash
for method in GET POST PUT TRACE CONNECT OPTIONS;
do
  printf "$method / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost:domain\r\n\r\n" | nc domain 80
done
Can manually type HTTP commands into Netcat or use a bash script like the one above.