Get up and running quickly with this easy-to-follow tutorial on creating and running your own custom XSS lab with ChatGPT.

Having trouble learning a vulnerability type? Just have ChatGPT make you a lab!

1. What do you want to learn?

DOM XSS is a popular vulnerability type to hunt for because they’re everywhere, hard to scan for, and typically have high rewards.

Prompt:

Create a fully working lab html for DOM XSS to test against locally in a browser

2. Run the XSS Lab

Now that you have the HTML code, copy the code and paste it into your favorite text editor. Save the file as a .html file and open it in a browser.

3. Play with It

Just like a real target in the wild, interact with the page as a normal user first. In this case, anything entered in the search box is reflected on the page and becomes a GET request parameter in the URL:

4. Open Developer Tools

Open the developer tools panel of your browser by right-clicking on the page and selecting “Inspect” if using Chrome. You can manipulate the q parameter value directly in the URL bar of the browser. Try different probes or XSS payloads to test how they reflect.

5. Pop that XSS alert()

For this lab, any basic XSS payload such as <script>alert()</script> will work, but also try other ones to see them in action in this context.

6. More Labs

• XSS labs for different contexts such as injecting directly inside javascript.
• More complex XSS labs involving different types of filters and character restrictions.
• Other vulnerability types such as CSRF, IDOR, and XXE. As you try these other labs, it may require a web server to function. Try asking ChatGPT for instructions if you’ve never done it before.