Pentest HTTP Smuggling

Purpose

Detect and exploit discrepancies between front-end proxies and back-end servers in HTTP request parsing. These attacks bypass security controls, poison caches, and hijack requests — entirely absent from standard taint analysis pipelines.

Prerequisites

Authorization Requirements

• Written authorization with explicit scope for protocol-level testing
• Infrastructure awareness — identify all reverse proxies, CDNs, load balancers in path
• Rollback plan for cache poisoning tests (CDN purge access)
• Emergency contacts for infrastructure team (smuggling can affect other users)

Environment Setup

• Python 3.x with raw socket capability for crafted HTTP requests
• Burp Suite Professional with HTTP Request Smuggler extension
• curl compiled with HTTP/2 support (--http2-prior-knowledge)
• Turbo Intruder for timing-sensitive attacks
• Network capture tool (Wireshark/tcpdump) for response analysis