HackHound: Building a Modern Web Security Testing Tool with React and Python

Building HackHound: A Modern Web Security Testing Tool 🔒

Hey DEV community! 👋 I'm excited to share my latest project - HackHound, an open-source web security testing tool that combines the power of Python with a modern React frontend. In this post, I'll walk you through the architecture, key features, and some interesting challenges I encountered during development.

Why Another Security Tool? 🤔

While there are many security testing tools available, I found that most either:

• Lack a modern, user-friendly interface
• Don't provide real-time feedback
• Require complex setup and configuration
• Don't support concurrent testing methods

HackHound aims to solve these problems by providing a streamlined, visual approach to web security testing.

Tech Stack Overview 🛠️

Frontend

• React 18 with Vite for blazing-fast development
• Real-time updates using WebSocket connections
• Clean, responsive UI for better visualization
• Firebase for authentication

Backend

• FastAPI for high-performance async operations
• Python 3.10 for robust security testing capabilities
• Comprehensive logging and error handling
• Modular architecture for easy extensions

Key Features 🌟

1. Multi-Mode Fuzzing

   @app.post("/fuzz")
   async def fuzz(data: FuzzRequest):
       results = {}
       if actions.get("fuzz_directory"):
           results["directories"] = run_directory_fuzzing(url)
       if actions.get("fuzz_subdomain"):
           results["subdomains"] = run_subdomain_fuzzing(domain)
       # More fuzzing modes...
       return results

1. Real-time Progress Updates

   const FuzzingProgress = () => {
     const [progress, setProgress] = useState(0);
     useEffect(() => {
       socket.on('fuzz_progress', (data) => {
         setProgress(data.progress);
       });
     }, []);
     return <ProgressBar value={progress} />;
   };

Interesting Challenges Solved 💡

1. Handling Long-Running Tests

One of the main challenges was managing long-running security tests without timing out the client. I solved this using a combination of:

• Async operations in FastAPI
• WebSocket progress updates
• Chunked result streaming

async def stream_results(test_generator):
    async for result in test_generator:
        yield {
            "status": "in_progress",
            "current_result": result
        }

2. Rate Limiting and Target Protection

To ensure responsible testing, I implemented:

• Configurable rate limiting
• Automatic target validation
• Safe mode options

def validate_target(url: str) -> bool:
    # Check if target is in scope
    # Verify rate limits
    # Ensure safe mode compliance
    return is_valid

Development Environment 🚀

I used Daytona for standardizing the development environment:

{
    "name": "HackHound Dev Environment",
    "dockerFile": "Dockerfile",
    "forwardPorts": [5173, 5000],
    "postCreateCommand": "npm install && pip install -r requirements.txt"
}

What's Next? 🎯

I'm planning several exciting features:

1. Integration with other security tools
2. Custom payload generators
3. Advanced reporting capabilities
4. CI/CD pipeline integration

Try It Out! 🔥

The project is open source and available on GitHub: HackHound Repository

To get started:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/aayushman-singh/hackhound.git

# Install dependencies
npm install
cd frontend && npm install
cd ../app && pip install -r requirements.txt

# Start the application
npm start

Contributing 🤝

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's:

• Adding new fuzzing techniques
• Improving the UI/UX
• Enhancing documentation
• Reporting bugs

Feel free to open issues and submit PRs!

Conclusion 🌈

Building HackHound has been an exciting journey in combining modern web development with security testing. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!

Have you built similar tools? What challenges did you face? Let's discuss in the comments below! 👇

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