path: root/docs/howmitmproxy.rst

How mitmproxy works
===================

Mitmproxy is an enormously flexible tool. Knowing exactly how the proxying
process works will help you deploy it creatively, and take into account its
fundamental assumptions and how to work around them. This document explains
mitmproxy's proxy mechanism in detail, starting with the simplest unencrypted
explicit proxying, and working up to the most complicated interaction -
transparent proxying of TLS-protected traffic [#tls]_ in the presence of `Server
Name Indication`_.

Explicit HTTP
-------------

Configuring the client to use mitmproxy as an explicit proxy is the simplest and
most reliable way to intercept traffic. The proxy protocol is codified in the
`HTTP RFC`_, so the behaviour of both the client and the server is well defined,
and usually reliable. In the simplest possible interaction with mitmproxy, a
client connects directly to the proxy, and makes a request that looks like this:

.. code-block:: none

    GET http://example.com/index.html HTTP/1.1

This is a proxy GET request - an extended form of the vanilla HTTP GET request
that includes a schema and host specification, and it includes all the
information mitmproxy needs to proceed.

.. image:: schematics/how-mitmproxy-works-explicit.png
    :align: center

1. The client connects to the proxy and makes a request.
2. Mitmproxy connects to the upstream server and simply forwards the request on.


Explicit HTTPS
--------------

The process for an explicitly proxied HTTPS connection is quite different. The
client connects to the proxy and makes a request that looks like this:

.. code-block:: none

    CONNECT example.com:443 HTTP/1.1

A conventional proxy can neither view nor manipulate an TLS-encrypted data
stream, so a CONNECT request simply asks the proxy to open a pipe between the
client and server. The proxy here is just a facilitator - it blindly forwards
data in both directions without knowing anything about the contents. The
negotiation of the TLS connection happens over this pipe, and the subsequent
flow of requests and responses are completely opaque to the proxy.

The MITM in mitmproxy
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is where mitmproxy's fundamental trick comes into play. The MITM in its
name stands for Man-In-The-Middle - a reference to the process we use to
intercept and interfere with these theoretically opaque data streams. The basic
idea is to pretend to be the server to the client, and pretend to be the client
to the server, while we sit in the middle decoding traffic from both sides. The
tricky part is that the `Certificate Authority`_ system is designed to prevent
exactly this attack, by allowing a trusted third-party to cryptographically sign
a server's certificates to verify that they are legit. If this signature doesn't
match or is from a non-trusted party, a secure client will simply drop the
connection and refuse to proceed. Despite the many shortcomings of the CA system
as it exists today, this is usually fatal to attempts to MITM an TLS connection
for analysis. Our answer to this conundrum is to become a trusted Certificate
Authority ourselves. Mitmproxy includes a full CA implementation that generates
interception certificates on the fly. To get the client to trust these
certificates, we :ref:`register mitmproxy as a trusted CA with the device
manually <certinstall>`.

Complication 1: What's the remote hostname?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To proceed with this plan, we need to know the domain name to use in the
interception certificate - the client will verify that the certificate is for
the domain it's connecting to, and abort if this is not the case. At first
blush, it seems that the CONNECT request above gives us all we need - in this
example, both of these values are "example.com".  But what if the client had
initiated the connection as follows:

.. code-block:: none

    CONNECT 10.1.1.1:443 HTTP/1.1

Using the IP address is perfectly legitimate because it gives us enough
information to initiate the pipe, even though it doesn't reveal the remote
hostname.

Mitmproxy has a cunning mechanism that smooths this over - :ref:`upstream
certificate sniffing <upstreamcerts>`. As soon as we see the CONNECT request, we
pause the client part of the conversation, and initiate a simultaneous
connection to the server. We complete the TLS handshake with the server, and
inspect the certificates it used. Now, we use the Common Name in the upstream
certificates to generate the dummy certificate for the client. Voila, we have
the correct hostname to present to the client, even if it was never specified.


Complication 2: Subject Alternative Name
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Enter the next complication. Sometimes, the certificate Common Name is not, in
fact, the hostname that the client is connecting to. This is because of the
optional `Subject Alternative Name`_ field in the certificate that allows an
arbitrary number of alternative domains to be specified. If the expected domain
matches any of these, the client will proceed, even though the domain doesn't
match the certificate CN. The answer here is simple: when we extract the CN from
the upstream cert, we also extract the SANs, and add them to the generated dummy
certificate.


Complication 3: Server Name Indication
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

One of the big limitations of vanilla TLS is that each certificate requires its
own IP address. This means that you couldn't do virtual hosting where multiple
domains with independent certificates share the same IP address. In a world with
a rapidly shrinking IPv4 address pool this is a problem, and we have a solution
in the form of the `Server Name Indication`_ extension to the TLS protocols.
This lets the client specify the remote server name at the start of the TLS
handshake, which then lets the server select the right certificate to complete
the process.

SNI breaks our upstream certificate sniffing process, because when we connect
without using SNI, we get served a default certificate that may have nothing to
do with the certificate expected by the client. The solution is another tricky
complication to the client connection process. After the client connects, we
allow the TLS handshake to continue until just **after** the SNI value has been
passed to us. Now we can pause the conversation, and initiate an upstream
connection using the correct SNI value, which then serves us the correct
upstream certificate, from which we can extract the expected CN and SANs.

Putting it all together
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lets put all of this together into the complete explicitly proxied HTTPS flow.

.. image:: schematics/how-mitmproxy-works-explicit-https.png
    :align: center

1. The client makes a connection to mitmproxy, and issues an HTTP CONNECT request.
2. Mitmproxy responds with a ``200 Connection Established``, as if it has set up the CONNECT pipe.
3. The client believes it's talking to the remote server, and initiates the TLS connection.
   It uses SNI to indicate the hostname it is connecting to.
4. Mitmproxy connects to the server, and establishes an TLS connection using the SNI hostname
   indicated by the client.
5. The server responds with the matching certificate, which contains the CN and SAN values
   needed to generate the interception certificate.
6. Mitmproxy generates the interception cert, and continues the
   client TLS handshake paused in step 3.
7. The client sends the request over the established TLS connection.
8. Mitmproxy passes the request on to the server over the TLS connection initiated in step 4.

Transparent HTTP
----------------

When a transparent proxy is used, the connection is redirected into a proxy at
the network layer, without any client configuration being required. This makes
transparent proxying ideal for those situations where you can't change client
behaviour - proxy-oblivious Android applications being a common example.

To achieve this, we need to introduce two extra components. The first is a
redirection mechanism that transparently reroutes a TCP connection destined for
a server on the Internet to a listening proxy server. This usually takes the
form of a firewall on the same host as the proxy server - `iptables`_ on Linux
or pf_ on OSX. Once the client has initiated the connection, it makes a vanilla
HTTP request, which might look something like this:

.. code-block:: none

    GET /index.html HTTP/1.1

Note that this request differs from the explicit proxy variation, in that it
omits the scheme and hostname. How, then, do we know which upstream host to
forward the request to? The routing mechanism that has performed the redirection
keeps track of the original destination for us.  Each routing mechanism has a
different way of exposing this data, so this introduces the second component
required for working transparent proxying: a host module that knows how to
retrieve the original destination address from the router. In mitmproxy, this
takes the form of a built-in set of modules_ that know how to talk to each
platform's redirection mechanism. Once we have this information, the process is
fairly straight-forward.

.. image:: schematics/how-mitmproxy-works-transparent.png
    :align: center

1. The client makes a connection to the server.
2. The router redirects the connection to mitmproxy, which is typically
   listening on a local port of the same host. Mitmproxy then consults the
   routing mechanism to establish what the original destination was.
3. Now, we simply read the client's request...
4. ... and forward it upstream.

Transparent HTTPS
-----------------

The first step is to determine whether we should treat an incoming connection as
HTTPS. The mechanism for doing this is simple - we use the routing mechanism to
find out what the original destination port is. All incoming connections pass
through different layers which can determin the actual protocol to use.
Automatic TLS detection works for SSLv3, TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2 by
looking for a *ClientHello* message at the beginning of each connection. This
works independently of the used TCP port.

From here, the process is a merger of the methods we've described for
transparently proxying HTTP, and explicitly proxying HTTPS. We use the routing
mechanism to establish the upstream server address, and then proceed as for
explicit HTTPS connections to establish the CN and SANs, and cope with SNI.

.. image:: schematics/how-mitmproxy-works-transparent-https.png
    :align: center

1. The client makes a connection to the server.
2. The router redirects the connection to mitmproxy, which is typically listening on a local port
   of the same host. Mitmproxy then consults the routing mechanism to establish what the original
   destination was.
3. The client believes it's talking to the remote server, and initiates the TLS connection.
   It uses SNI to indicate the hostname it is connecting to.
4. Mitmproxy connects to the server, and establishes an TLS connection using the SNI hostname
   indicated by the client.
5. The server responds with the matching certificate, which contains the CN and SAN values
   needed to generate the interception certificate.
6. Mitmproxy generates the interception cert, and continues the client TLS handshake paused in
   step 3.
7. The client sends the request over the established TLS connection.
8. Mitmproxy passes the request on to the server over the TLS connection initiated in step 4.

.. rubric:: Footnotes

.. [#tls] The use of "TLS" refers to both SSL (outdated and insecure) and TLS
          (1.0 and up) in the generic sense, unless otherwise specified.

.. _Server Name Indication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
.. _HTTP RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7230
.. _Certificate Authority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority
.. _Subject Alternative Name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubjectAltName
.. _iptables: http://www.netfilter.org/
.. _pf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_\(firewall\)
.. _modules: https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/tree/master/mitmproxy/platform