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Starting Burp from command line with a scan configuration file

Dan | Last updated: Aug 10, 2022 09:10AM UTC

Hi, I have version 2022.7.1 of Burp professional. I am trying to start it from command line, and when doing so, I am interested in providing a scan configuration as a parameter. By searching through your forums, I discovered how to export a scan configuration and how to use it from the command line...something like this : --user-config-file=C:\user_config.json --config-file=C:\Temp\DanConfigIgnoreAuditErrors.json --config-file=C:\config.json --project-file=C:\dast-project The file DanConfigIgnoreAuditErrors contains the exported scan configuration, where I want the error_handling part to be set on my values. However, after successfully starting the app...i go to Scan Configuration and if I edit it i see that the values from my file are not present there...What am I missing ? Thx

Ben, PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Aug 10, 2022 01:01PM UTC

Hi Dan, The --config-file parameter is actually designed to load project configuration files (so files containing the project option settings) rather than scan configurations. I am not sure if you have seen this already but the various available command line arguments are detailed on the page below: https://portswigger.net/burp/documentation/desktop/getting-started/launch-from-command-line Are you able to tell us a little more about what you are trying to achieve with this approach so that we can try and assist you further?

Dan | Last updated: Aug 10, 2022 01:10PM UTC

Hi, Yes I saw that page...and I also tried to provide my configuration file with --user-config-file ...but I got the same result... Isn't this the one that I should use for the scan configuration? I am trying to automate a process that would perform a scan.. hence the whole command line approach.

Ben, PortSwigger Agent | Last updated: Aug 10, 2022 01:31PM UTC

Hi Dan, As noted in the documentation, the --user-config-file parameter is used to load user configuration files (so this handles the settings that are configurable within the 'User options' section of Burp, similarly the --config-file parameter handles the settings that are configurable within the 'Project options' section of Burp). If you want to carry out some measure of automation within Burp Professional, have you tried using REST API? If you navigate to the User options -> Misc -> REST API section within Burp you can configure access to this (by default the service runs on http://127.0.0.1:1337 and if you access that URL in a browser you can find out the endpoints available to you).

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