The latest articles on DEV Community by Chinedu Daniel (@chinedu-daniel). https://dev.to/chinedu-daniel https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F2682698%2F06cfa9ff-eae6-4150-b631-b329065b40a2.jpg https://dev.to/chinedu-daniel en Chinedu Daniel Mon, 09 Nov 2026 10:47:30 +0000 https://dev.to/chinedu-daniel/built-my-web-security-lab-and-intercepted-my-first-request-35li https://dev.to/chinedu-daniel/built-my-web-security-lab-and-intercepted-my-first-request-35li <h2> <strong>Why I'm doing this</strong> </h2> <ul> <li>Learning it to help prevent and detect attacks in the web apps</li> </ul> <h2> <strong>What I set up</strong> </h2> <ul> <li>Kali Linux in VirtualBox</li> <li>Burp Suite Community</li> <li>Firefox proxied through Burp</li> </ul> <h2> <strong>The moment it clicked</strong> </h2> <ul> <li>I typed example.com, pressed Enter, and the page just... hung. Nothing loaded. For a second I thought I’d broken something. Then I switched to Burp and there it was: my browser’s request, in plain text, frozen mid-flight. I clicked Forward and the page finally appeared. I had just stopped a website request in the middle of the road and looked inside it.</li> </ul> <p><a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fhfsxpkf7kbg0l1ugogvm.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fhfsxpkf7kbg0l1ugogvm.png" alt=" " width="800" height="842"></a></p> <h2> <strong>One concept I had to understand: port</strong> </h2> <ul> <li>8080 is a port, like a door number in a building. We told Firefox to hand its requests to the program waiting at that door, which is Burp.</li> </ul> <h2> <strong>What confused me</strong> </h2> <p>Why HTTP/HTTPS looks the same: HTTPS is HTTP inside an encrypted TLS wrapper.</p> <p>Why Burp over other tools: it lets you edit, replay and automate requests, and the PortSwigger labs are built around it.</p> cybersecurity beginners webdev learning