mitmproxy: proxy any network traffic through your local machine

mitmproxy is your swiss-army knife for interactive HTTP/HTTPS proxy. In fact, it can be used to intercept, inspect, modify and replay web traffic such as HTTP/1, HTTP/2, WebSockets, or any other SSL/TLS-protected protocols.

Moreover, mitproxy has a powerful Python API offers full control over any intercepted request and response.

ref:
https://mitmproxy.org/
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/

Concept

ref:
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/concepts-howmitmproxyworks/

Installation

$ brew install mitmproxy

$ mitmproxy --version
Mitmproxy: 4.0.4
Python:    3.7.0
OpenSSL:   OpenSSL 1.0.2p  14 Aug 2018
Platform:  Darwin-18.0.0-x86_64-i386-64bit

ref:
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/overview-installation/

Configuration

Make your computer become the man of man-in-the-middle attack.

macOS

$ ipconfig getifaddr en0
192.168.0.128

$ mitmproxy -p 8888
# or
$ mitmweb -p 8888
$ open http://127.0.0.1:8081/

Flow List keys:

  • ?: Show help
  • q: Exit the current view
  • f: Set view filter
  • r: Replay this flow
  • i: Set intercept filter
  • hjkl or arrow: Move left/down/up/right
  • enter: Select

Flow Details keys:

  • tab: Select next
  • m: Set flow view mode
  • e: Edit this flow (request or response)
  • a: Accept this intercepted flow

ref:
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/tools-mitmproxy/
https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/blob/master/mitmproxy/tools/console/defaultkeys.py

iOS

  • Go to Settings > Wi-Fi > Your Wi-Fi > Configure Proxy
    • Select Manual, enter the following values:
      • Server: 192.168.0.128
      • Port: 8888
      • Authentication: unchecked
  • Open http://mitm.it/ on Safari
    • Install the corresponding certificate for your device
  • Go to Settings > General > About > Certificate Trust Settings
    • Turn on the mitmproxy certificate
  • Open any app you want to watch

ref:
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/concepts-certificates/

Usage

The most exciting feature is you could alter any request and response using a Python script, mitmdump -s!

ref:
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/tools-mitmdump/
https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/tree/master/examples

Deal With Certificate Pinning

You can use your own certificate by passing the --certs example.com=/path/to/example.com.pem option to mitmproxy. Mitmproxy then uses the provided certificate for interception of the specified domain.

The certificate file is expected to be in the PEM format which would roughly looks like this:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
<private key>
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
<cert>
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
<intermediary cert (optional)>
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
$ mitmproxy -p 8888 --certs example.com=example.com.pem

ref:
https://docs.mitmproxy.org/stable/concepts-certificates/#using-a-custom-server-certificate

Redirect Requests To Your Local Development Server

# redirect_to_localhost.py
from mitmproxy import ctx
from mitmproxy import http

REMOTE_HOST = 'api.example.com'
DEV_HOST = '192.168.0.128'
DEV_PORT = 8000

def request(flow: http.HTTPFlow) -> None:
    if flow.request.pretty_host in [REMOTE_HOST, DEV_HOST]:
        ctx.log.info('=== request')
        ctx.log.info(str(flow.request.headers))
        ctx.log.info(f'content: {str(flow.request.content)}')

        flow.request.scheme = 'http'
        flow.request.host = DEV_HOST
        flow.request.port = DEV_PORT

def response(flow: http.HTTPFlow) -> None:
    if flow.request.pretty_host == DEV_HOST:
        ctx.log.info('=== response')
        ctx.log.info(str(flow.response.headers))
        if flow.response.headers.get('Content-Type', '').startswith('image/'):
            return
        ctx.log.info(f'body: {str(flow.response.get_content())}')

ref:
https://discourse.mitmproxy.org/t/reverse-mode-change-request-host-according-to-the-sni-https/466

You could use negative regex with --ignore-hosts to only watch specific domains. Of course, you are still able to blacklist any domain you don't want: --ignore-hosts 'apple.com|icloud.com|itunes.com|facebook.com|googleapis.com|crashlytics.com'.

Currently, changing the Host server for HTTP/2 connections is not allowed, but you could just disable HTTP/2 proxy to solve the issue if you don't need HTTP/2 for local development.

$ mitmdump -p 8888 \
--certs example.com=example.com.pem \
-v --flow-detail 3 \
--ignore-hosts '^(?!.*example\.com)' \
--no-http2 \
-s redirect_to_localhost.py

ref:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29414158/regex-negative-lookahead-with-wildcard