Switching Between Web Proxies using FoxyProxy

I normally use one of the three most common intercepting web proxies while conducting web application penetration tests (viz. Paros, WebScarab or Burp). All these proxies come with their own benefits and shortcomings and thus any one of these may not be suitable for all situations. Therefore, at times, you may have to use more than one proxy to complete your task. But switching between proxies can be a real pain and time consuming and thus may divert your attention from the actual work you are doing.

I had found a little firefox extension some time ago called FoxyProxy. This is an open-source advanced proxy management tool. I find this tool very handy during pentests as it makes the task of switching between web proxies totally effortless. It comes with some cool features and allows you to configure various proxies at the same time within Firefox. Once this is done, you just have to fire your favourite proxy and select the proxy name from the FoxyProxy menu. If you want to switch to a different proxy, just change the name of the proxy within the FoxyProxy menu and you're done. It's that simple!

There is one more reason why I like this extension. You can set patterns for which you want the browser requests to be routed through this proxy, while all other requests would bypass the proxy completely. This is again very handy when you are conducting penetration tests as this helps you to maintain a clean audit trail of all the requests sent to the target server.

I hope you enjoy using this little tool as much as I do. More information for this FireFox extension can be found here.