Uncover Hidden Web Paths Using DirBuster

**Note: The content in this article is only for educational purposes and understanding of cybersecurity concepts. It should enable people and organizations to have a better grip on threats and know how to protect themselves against them. Please use this information responsibly.** 

DirBuster is a nifty tool created by the OWASP community that comes pre-installed in Kali Linux. Its purpose is to find common pages within a web application.

How does it work ?

Suppose you wish to know whether or not a web application has a home_page; the logical method to find out is to try and access http://<TARGET_URL>/home_page. If you get something like a 404 Page Not Found error, you know the page doesn’t exist; however, if the page loads you know it exists.

DirBuster works on this simple technique. It comes with a set of wordlists, and when given a target and a wordlist will iterate through the list sending GET requests to the web server. If the HTTP status code returned in the response is a 404 error, DirBuster assumes the requested resource doesn’t exist and continues; otherwise, it will add it to the list of paths found before continuing.

Running DirBuster

To open DirBuster navigate to ‘Applications’ → ‘Web Application Analysis’ → ‘Web Crawlers & Directory Bruteforce’ → ‘dirbuster’ on the Kali Linux desktop.

Once open, you will be greeted with the DirBuster interface. In order to run DirBuster, there are two fields that must be filled out: the ‘Target URL’ and the ‘File with list of dirs/files’.

1. Enter the name of the website in the Target URL field.

2. The wordlists that are available for the ‘File with list of dirs/files’ can be found by clicking ‘Browse’ and then navigating to the ‘/usr/share/dirbuster/wordlists’ folder.

By following these two steps you’re good to go. 

You can start DirBuster and it will begin to query the web application.

Output

Once the scan has finished DirBuster generates a report of the different pages found. This report can be downloaded as a plaintext, XML or CSV file.

In conclusion, DirBuster is a powerful directory brute-forcing tool for uncovering hidden web resources, aiding ethical hackers and security professionals in identifying potential vulnerabilities. Its cross-platform compatibility, advanced features, and user-friendly interface make it an essential addition to any security toolkit.