The Web Application Hacker's Handbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 3Web Application Technologies

Web applications employ a myriad of technologies to implement their functionality. This chapter is a short primer on the key technologies that you are likely to encounter when attacking web applications. We will examine the HTTP protocol, the technologies commonly employed on the server and client sides, and the encoding schemes used to represent data in different situations. These technologies are in general easy to understand, and a grasp of their relevant features is key to performing effective attacks against web applications.

If you are already familiar with the key technologies used in web applications, you can skim through this chapter to confirm that it offers you nothing new. If you are still learning how web applications work, you should read this chapter before continuing to the later chapters on specific vulnerabilities. For further reading on many of the areas covered, we recommend HTTP: The Definitive Guide by David Gourley and Brian Totty (O'Reilly, 2002), and also the website of the World Wide Web Consortium at www.w3.org.

The HTTP Protocol

Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) is the core communications protocol used to access the World Wide Web and is used by all of today's web applications. It is a simple protocol that was originally developed for retrieving static text-based resources. It has since been extended and leveraged in various ways to enable it to support the complex distributed applications that are now commonplace. ...