Running Burp Suite in Docker
hexcowboy · ·

On my soul quest to create a fully featured penetration testing Docker container, I came across a few issues.

  1. Docker doesn't run graphical applications on it's own
  2. The network proxy won't work unless the 8080 port is exposed
  3. You can't just install Burp Suite with apt-get install burpsuite

Apart from these issues, there isn't a maintained Burp Suite Community repository in the Docker Hub or on GitHub. I did manage to find a maintained Burp Suite Professional Docker repo on GitHub which I ended up forking.

Setup

To make this Docker container run GUI applications, we can make use of an X Server. On macOS, I used XQuartz which was as simple as running

brew install --cask xquartz

For accepting connections on local host, one setting needs to be changed. In the XQuartz settings, enable XQuartz > Preferences > Security > Allow connections from network clients.

Allow connections from network clients needs to be enabled in the XQuartz settings

Now the X Server can be started by running this command:

xhost + 127.0.0.1

Note that you need to run this command from your host terminal, not the XQuartz terminal.

I won't go into covering how to run a local X Server on Windows or Linux, because Google does exist.

Running Burp Suite

From Docker Hub

The prebuilt container can be retrieved from Docker Hub.

docker pull hexcowboy/burpsuite
docker image tag hexcowboy/burpsuite burpsuite

Building the image

First, clone this GitHub repository on your host:

git clone https://github.com/hexcowboy/docker-burp-suite-community.git && cd docker-burp-suite-community

Then, build the Docker image using the following command.

docker build -t burpsuite .

While building the image, the latest JAR (Java ARchive) of Burp Suite Community is pulled from the PortSwigger portal.

Using Burp Suite Community

docker run --rm \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  burpsuite

This command will run the container, expose port 8080 on the host to port 8080 on the container, and delete the container afterwards. You should see a new window open up in your X Server if you followed the setup instructions above.

Verify that the proxy is working by running the following command on your host:

curl -x http://127.0.0.1:8080 http://example.com

Conclusion

Software can easily be Dockerized. Burp Suite Community could likely take 5+ minutes to install manually, but by pulling a prebuilt Docker image it can take just seconds.

The future of the west is Dockerized.