8 Useful Firefox Extensions For Ethical Hacking (2024)

When performing penetration testing of any web-based application, the Mozilla Firefox browser is the most favorable browser for almost every Ethical Hacker and Security Researcher. Mozilla Firefox has proved itself a more featured browser than various browsers like Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc. One of the main reasons behind its popularity is the More Tools features, including Web Developer Tools, Extension for developers, Task Manager, and many more. Although there are several extensions available for Ethical Hackers and Security Researchers to automate or make their testing easier, in this article, we will mention some common and most beneficial extensions that can be useful for almost every Ethical Hacker and Security Researcher.

Let’s get started with the list:

1. Wappalyzer

Information Gathering is the very initial step of the Ethical Hacking Process. As the name suggests, Information Collection is important to approach our target. While Testing any Web-based Application, there is a well-known strategy of “The more you collect, The easier will be attacking.” So Information about our target helps in every phase of Testing. So to get information about the target application, Wappalyzer Extension helps a lot to Security Testers. We can get information like Programming Languages used by the application, Mobile Frameworks, Security, JavaScript Libraries, Web Server Information, etc.

2. HackBar

Interception of request and response is a very important concept while testing Web-based applications. For checking Parameter Tampering, No Rate limiting Vulnerabilities, you always need to play with request and response, so HackBar Extension comes into focus for this interception. HackBar extension is used by developers or security researchers to customs HTTP requests. The user is responsible for the code that’s been executed on the domain site. You can test web-based applications for XSS or SQL Injection vulnerability by inserting the malicious query into the input and executing. So to make this easy, HackBar helps a lot.

3. Tamper Data

Have you ever used Burp Suite? If yes, then surely you have changed the HTTP, and HTTPS requests various times to find any bugs like open redirection, etc. So Tamper Data is similar to the Burp suite used to monitor and modify HTTP and HTTPS requests and responses which are not generally visible to users. We can say that Tamper Data is a piece of Burp Suite. Most Security Researchers do fuzzing, and for this, we often have to play with requests and responses by changing the headers, modifying the parameter, etc. So for this purpose, Tamper Data will help you a lot.

4. base64-decoder

Nowadays, many web-based applications used encrypted data for storing, communicating, or passwords. But Ethical Hackers and Security Researchers can decrypt this encrypted data and read out the contents to decrypt encrypted data in the base64. So if Security Researcher gets any encrypted data, he can easily decrypt it with this base64-decoder in a single click. We only need to select the hash code or encrypted data and click the right button on our mouse; in a single click, you will get decrypted data or the result of the selected input.

5. Cookie Quick Manager

Cookies are important and small pieces of data that are stored on the client side. So, various types of attacks can be performed using cookies data like Cookie Hijacking, Cookie Stealing, etc. So Cookie Quick Manager Editor allows you to view, edit, create, delete, backup, and restore cookies and search them by particular domain names. Cookie Quick Manager provides you to maintain your privacy and security on the internet. As you can edit and delete cookies, your privacy is more secure as you will be less vulnerable to hijacking attacks. The Cookie Quick Manager extension allows you to import external cookies or export your cookies for different browsers.

6. Easy XSS

XSS or Cross-Site Scripting is the most common Vulnerability which is identified in many web applications. Being a penetration tester while testing a Web Application for the functionality of Web-Page, you must encounter the input fields, so these input files are the carrier to data into the database or web server. The information which is inserted into these fields is stored or executed on the server side. So what if We insert some malicious query or code which performs some dangerous activity? This can lead to XSS Vulnerability which can be of any type like Stored or Reflected. Easy XSS is the extension that provides the context menu from which you can easily add the XSS payloads into the fields and test the application for XSS rather than going to Burp Suite and loading attack.

Port Scanning is the crucial step in the phase of Reconnaissance and Scanning. Some of the sensitive contents can be active on the port, which is not so common. A Normal user cannot have any idea about this port and the information hosted on it. Still, the penetration tester should know how to check the Port Enumeration on the Web application and discover the various ports open on the Web-Application. Port Checker Tool is handy for penetration testers and Bug Bounty Hunters. You can check the available ports on any Web Application without manually scanning the Application using Network Mapper or Nmap. The cool thing about this extension is that it can check or Scan the port if the firewall is on the Target Network.

8. NoScript Security Suite

The aggressive side is a must in the profession of Penetration Tester, but the Defensive side is also essential. Saving any Computer System or Web Network is challenging work. XSS is the Vulnerability that has more chances of execution on the Web application. Prevention or Mitigation from Cyber Threats can be aware of the community and public. So to save yourself from script attacks, there is an excellent extension named NoScript Security Suite. In the below Screenshot, You can see that we have added geeksforgeeks.org as an Untrusted site. So the JavaScript is not executed on this Site. As geeksforgeeks.org site has default dark mode due to JavaScript, this Extension has blocked the JavaScript.

Other Useful Extensions :

• Proxy SwitchyOmega
• Penetration Testing Kit
• Greasemonkey
• Injector
• uBlock Origin