the-web-application-hackers-handbook

Chapter 4 n Mapping the Application 75
(see Chapter 3 for more details). The traditional web spider’s URL-based view
of the application is useful in these situations. In the EIS application, the
/shop and /pub paths employ REST-style URLs, and spidering these areas easily
provides unique links to the items available within these paths.
Figure 4-1: Mapping part of an application using Burp Spider
Although it can often be effective, this kind of fully automated approach to
content enumeration has some significant limitations:
n Unusual navigation mechanisms (such as menus dynamically created
and handled using complicated JavaScript code) often are not handled
properly by these tools, so they may miss whole areas of an application.
n Links buried within compiled client-side objects such as Flash or Java
applets may not be picked up by a spider.
n Multistage functionality often implements fine-grained input validation
checks, which do not accept the values that may be submitted by an automated
tool. For example, a user registration form may contain fields for
name, e-mail address, telephone number, and zip code. An automated