Copy requests/responses to clipboard plugin for Burp Suite

Copies selected request/response to clipboard with some optional post-processing.

The idea behind this plugin was to speedup the process of documenting HTTP request/response exchanges between a web application and a corresponding web server.

What a pentester has often has to do is to provide evidences on how a web application behaves. It implies a lot of copy-pasting from Burp to some document processing software. It is not a big problem if the researcher just needs to copy the whole request/response, however, quite often one needs only a particular part of the response, for instance, with alert(1) payload. The pentester (and the report reader) may not need the whole response. In that case copy-pasting becomes a problem as a lot of manual post-processing has to be made like removing unnecessary content and adding some words which mark such removed data.

This plugin allows the pentester to select (highlight with mouse cursor) the important content (like alert(1)), access context menu and select "Copy selected" entry. After that system's clipboard will have only HTTP headers, the selected data and fillers around it. Then the pentester can just paste the content to where it should be.

Author's approach

The author of this plugin uses LibreOffice to write reports. He created two VisualBasic macros which significantly speedup pasting and formatting HTTP request/response pairs.

The macros below pastes from the system's clipboard the current content and applies a formatting style named "Request" (see the last few lines of the function). It also leaves the empty line with after the data marked with style "Text Body".

Sub InsertRequest
  Dim oClip, oClipContents, oTypes
  Dim oConverter, convertedString$
  Dim i%, iPlainLoc%

  iPlainLoc = -1

  Dim s$ : s$ = "com.sun.star.datatransfer.clipboard.SystemClipboard"
  oClip = createUnoService(s$)
  oConverter = createUnoService("com.sun.star.script.Converter")

  'Print "Clipboard name = " & oClip.getName()
  'Print "Implemantation name = " & oClip.getImplementationName()
  oClipContents = oClip.getContents()
  oTypes = oClipContents.getTransferDataFlavors()

  Dim msg$, iLoc%, outS
  msg = ""
  iLoc = -1
  For i=LBound(oTypes) To UBound(oTypes)
    If oTypes(i).MimeType = "text/plain;charset=utf-16" Then
      iPlainLoc = i
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
  If (iPlainLoc >= 0) Then
    convertedString = oConverter.convertToSimpleType( _
         oClipContents.getTransferData(oTypes(iPlainLoc)), _
         com.sun.star.uno.TypeClass.STRING)
    convertedString = Replace(convertedString, Chr(13), "")
    'MsgBox convertedString
  End If

  REM pasting cleared clipboard
  Dim oDoc As Object
  Dim oText As Object
  Dim oVCurs As Object
  Dim oTCurs As Object

  oDoc = ThisComponent
  oText = oDoc.Text
  oVCurs = oDoc.CurrentController.getViewCursor()
  oTCurs = oText.createTextCursorByRange(oVCurs.getStart())
  oText.insertString(oTCurs, convertedString, FALSE)

  REM Applying style to the inserted text
  oTCurs.ParaStyleName = "Request"

  REM fixing the end of new paragraph and setting style back to default
  oText.insertControlCharacter(oTCurs, com.sun.star.text.ControlCharacter.PARAGRAPH_BREAK, false)
  oTCurs.ParaStyleName = "Text Body"
End Sub

The following function is the same, it just sets the style named "Response" to the pasted data.

Sub InsertResponse
  Dim oClip, oClipContents, oTypes
  Dim oConverter, convertedString$
  Dim i%, iPlainLoc%

  iPlainLoc = -1

  Dim s$ : s$ = "com.sun.star.datatransfer.clipboard.SystemClipboard"
  oClip = createUnoService(s$)
  oConverter = createUnoService("com.sun.star.script.Converter")

  'Print "Clipboard name = " & oClip.getName()
  'Print "Implemantation name = " & oClip.getImplementationName()
  oClipContents = oClip.getContents()
  oTypes = oClipContents.getTransferDataFlavors()

  Dim msg$, iLoc%, outS
  msg = ""
  iLoc = -1
  For i=LBound(oTypes) To UBound(oTypes)
    If oTypes(i).MimeType = "text/plain;charset=utf-16" Then
      iPlainLoc = i
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
  If (iPlainLoc >= 0) Then
    convertedString = oConverter.convertToSimpleType( _
         oClipContents.getTransferData(oTypes(iPlainLoc)), _
         com.sun.star.uno.TypeClass.STRING)
    convertedString = Replace(convertedString, Chr(13), "")
    'MsgBox convertedString
  End If

  REM pasting cleared clipboard
  Dim oDoc As Object
  Dim oText As Object
  Dim oVCurs As Object
  Dim oTCurs As Object

  oDoc = ThisComponent
  oText = oDoc.Text
  oVCurs = oDoc.CurrentController.getViewCursor()
  oTCurs = oText.createTextCursorByRange(oVCurs.getStart())
  oText.insertString(oTCurs, convertedString, FALSE)

  REM Applying style to the inserted text
  oTCurs.ParaStyleName = "Response"

  REM fixing the end of new paragraph and setting style back to default
  oText.insertControlCharacter(oTCurs, com.sun.star.text.ControlCharacter.PARAGRAPH_BREAK, false)
  oTCurs.ParaStyleName = "Text Body"
End Sub

LibreOffice software has functionality to assign keyboard shortcuts to specific macros: Tools --> Customize --> Keyboard, select "Category" "LibreOffice macros" and find yours.

Once configured it makes copy-pasting process really quick: select the desired data in Burp (left mouse click and highlight), select the corresponding item in context menu (right mouse click, find entry, left mouse click), switch to Writer, press Ctrl+Shift+Q for query (in author's case) or Ctrl+Shift+R for response.

Features

• Copy request/response as-is ("Copy whole message" context menu)
• Copy only headers ("Copy headers" context menu)
• Copy only selected part with headers ("Copy selected" context menu)

• Copy Burp's highlights in case finding is selected ("Copy issue highlights" context menu if Burp's finding is selected)

• Configurable filler string. See Burp's main menu "Copy to Clipboard" entry.
• Minimize too long HTTP headers: make a long header to fit one line by inserting filler instead of excessive content. This can be enabled via settings menut.
• Configuration is persistent across Burp restarts.

Building

• Execute gradle build in the project's root directory
• Grab burp_copy-to-clipboard.jar from ./build/libs/

License

The whole project is available under MIT license, see LICENSE.txt.

Thanks to https://github.com/OgaworldEX/BurpExtender_OgaCopy, https://github.com/silentsignal/burp-requests and https://github.com/PortSwigger/backslash-powered-scanner/ for some snippets. :-)

Thanks to https://github.com/sapo/sscan.git for examples how to use markers.