An attacker employs forceful browsing (direct URL entry) to access portions of a website that are otherwise unreachable. Usually, a front controller or similar design pattern is employed to protect access to portions of a web application. Forceful browsing enables an attacker to access information, perform privileged operations and otherwise reach sections of the web application that have been improperly protected.
High
High

1
Explore
[Spider] Using an automated tool, an attacker follows all public links on a web site. They record all the links they find.
Use a spidering tool to follow and record all links.
Use a proxy tool to record all links visited during a manual traversal of the web application.

2
Experiment
[Attempt well-known or guessable resource locations] Using an automated tool, an attacker requests a variety of well-known URLs that correspond to administrative, debugging, or other useful internal actions. They record all the positive responses from the server.
Use a spidering tool to follow and record attempts on well-known URLs.
Use a proxy tool to record all links visited during a manual traversal of attempts on well-known URLs.

3
Exploit
[Use unauthorized resources] By visiting the unprotected resource, the attacker makes use of unauthorized functionality.
Access unprotected functions and execute them.

4
Exploit
[View unauthorized data] The attacker discovers and views unprotected sensitive data.
Direct request of protected pages that directly access database back-ends. (e.g., list.jsp, accounts.jsp, status.jsp, etc.)

The forcibly browseable pages or accessible resources must be discoverable and improperly protected.

Forcibly browseable pages can be discovered by using a number of automated tools. Doing the same manually is tedious but by no means difficult.

None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack. A directory listing is helpful, but not a requirement.

Confidentiality
Read Data

Confidentiality
Access Control
Authorization
Bypass Protection Mechanism

Authenticate request to every resource. In addition, every page or resource must ensure that the request it is handling has been made in an authorized context.
Forceful browsing can also be made difficult to a large extent by not hard-coding names of application pages or resources. This way, the attacker cannot figure out, from the application alone, the resources available from the present context.

A bulletin board application provides an administrative interface at admin.aspx when the user logging in belongs to the administrators group.
An attacker can access the admin.aspx interface by making a direct request to the page. Not having access to the interface appropriately protected allows the attacker to perform administrative functions without having to authenticate themself in that role.

34
Predictable Resource Location

Forced browsing

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2014-06-23

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2015-12-07
Updated Related_Attack_Patterns

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2017-08-04
Updated Related_Attack_Patterns, Resources_Required

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2018-07-31
Updated Attack_Phases, Attacker_Skills_or_Knowledge_Required, Typical_Likelihood_of_Exploit

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2020-07-30
Updated Example_Instances, Execution_Flow

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2020-12-17
Updated Description, Taxonomy_Mappings