Lion Cipher Lab
Make HTTP requests by hand with curl
- AppSec / DevSecOps
- Beginner
- ~30 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
A browser hides HTTP behind buttons and rendered pages; curl strips all of that away and lets you send a request and read the exact bytes that come back. That is the same move every web-security tool makes under the hood — a proxy, a scanner, a fuzzer, an API client are all just sending crafted HTTP and reading the response. Learning to do it by hand, on public test endpoints that welcome it, means you can see precisely what you're sending, change one piece at a time, and read the server's answer without a browser deciding things for you. It is the literal prerequisite skill for essentially…
What you'll learn
- sending a GET and reading the raw response
- viewing response headers (-I / -i)
- reading HTTP status codes
- following redirects (-L)
- sending a POST with data (-d)
- setting a custom request header (-H)
Steps in this lab
- Meet curl — and set the ground rules first
- Your first request: a plain GET
- See the headers, not just the body
- Read the status code
- Follow a redirect with -L
- Send data with a POST
- Set a custom header with -H
- What you just learned — and where it goes next