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Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

debugproxy.com

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Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#21

Post by patcheudor »

Matt3o12_ wrote: post #4

> debugProxy is a HTTP/S hosted proxy server that lets you interact with the traffic passing through it, using a web based dashboard. So, when I use your proxy you can see and store my http and https traffic (assuming I install the certificate in my device). Furthermore, all the traffic from the my pc to your proxy is also transmitted unencrypted so everyone who sits between my device and your proxy can see my traffi…

>So, when I use your proxy you can see and store my http and https traffic (assuming I install the certificate in my device)

Not just see and store, but obviously also tamper with if you want to be thorough in a risk statement.

For years I've done presentations and whatnot to top notch web developers where I've invited them to connect to my proxy in order to demonstrate security flaws - rarely asking them to install my root CA. No matter how many warnings and disclaimers I provide, I always see sensitive traffic through my proxy because someone always connects, despite my advisement against it, with the machine they use for work as opposed to a test VM. Further, weeks after a presentation, I'll still have people connecting through my proxy because they forgot to clear out the settings. Be very, very, very cautious about using this service and do so on a machine that's not configured with email or anything else you care about or will be in the future. Even if you don't install the root CA, there are enough serious flaws in enough non-browser clients (email, chat, and whatnot) as well as sites we tend to use frequently that you should consider that even proxy exposure of HTTP traffic could be a security issue.

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#22

Post by tarnacious_ »

johns wrote: post #20
tarnacious_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. I couldn't find any services offering this when we started building debugProxy. It's good to see there might be a viable business model here :)

There might be, but our experiences running our original product[0] are contrary to that. Happy to chat about it if you’d like. [0]: https://www.runscope.com/docs/debugging

Hi John, thanks for the offer. I might take you up on that and email you in coming days.

I learned of Runscope some time after I started building this, it looks very interesting.

I too have doubts a proxy service like debugproxy will be very successful as it is, mostly because using it is still very difficult and in some cases not possible on various devices (buggy proxy implementations on early iPhones, Android 7 not allowing root certificates to be added etc..)

I figured there are some other cool things you can do with a proxy though that might be interesting. For example getting remote debugging working smoothly by injecting a script into HTML pages sent through the proxy. Or going the other way and proxy existing websites through a sub-domain of debugproxy.com, which I used to do to demonstrate changes to clients websites.

I'll see what feedback I get in the coming weeks and decide what to do, if anything, from there.

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#23

Post by johns »

tarnacious_ wrote: post #22
johns wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be, but our experiences running our original product[0] are contrary to that. Happy to chat about it if you’d like. [0]: https://www.runscope.com/docs/debugging

Hi John, thanks for the offer. I might take you up on that and email you in coming days. I learned of Runscope some time after I started building this, it looks very interesting. I too have doubts a proxy service like debugproxy will be very successful as it is, mostly because using it is still very difficult and in some cases not possible on various devices (buggy proxy implementations on early iPhones, Android 7 no…

Email is in the profile if you ever want to chat

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#24

Post by tarnacious_ »

patcheudor wrote: post #21
Matt3o12_ wrote: post #4

> debugProxy is a HTTP/S hosted proxy server that lets you interact with the traffic passing through it, using a web based dashboard. So, when I use your proxy you can see and store my http and https traffic (assuming I install the certificate in my device). Furthermore, all the traffic from the my pc to your proxy is also transmitted unencrypted so everyone who sits between my device and your proxy can see my traffi…

>So, when I use your proxy you can see and store my http and https traffic (assuming I install the certificate in my device) Not just see and store, but obviously also tamper with if you want to be thorough in a risk statement. For years I've done presentations and whatnot to top notch web developers where I've invited them to connect to my proxy in order to demonstrate security flaws - rarely asking them to install…

This is a good comment and touches a lot of concerns I have with the service.

On debugProxy, username and password "sessions" are disabled after 20 minutes of inactivity. This was implemented, in part, to combat the issue of people forgetting they were still connected to the proxy.

Also, I don't want to, nor do I have a enough disk space to store things for long. So body data over 20 minutes old is periodically permanently removed. Header data lasts a bit longer, but is also periodically permanently removed.

This will not prevent users sending private credentials over the proxy, but it's hard to prevent that as you say, so hopefully this mitigates the problem a bit.

Of course you still have to trust the service, for some people that will be totally unacceptable, which is fine.

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#25

Post by aggregator-ios »

For those of you looking for a fully native experience or don’t want to deal with a command line, checkout Peek: https://peek.tools

Just a few highlights:

- Fully native iOS app

- You can intercept traffic from any device and your data stays in Peek

- Intercept traffic from other iOS apps on the same device, so you don’t need a Mac or a 2nd iOS device

- Modify requests and responses as they come in

Disclaimer: I am the creator. Would love to hear your feedback here or support@peek.tools

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#28

Post by nnd »

aggregator-ios wrote: post #25

For those of you looking for a fully native experience or don’t want to deal with a command line, checkout Peek: https://peek.tools Just a few highlights: - Fully native iOS app - You can intercept traffic from any device and your data stays in Peek - Intercept traffic from other iOS apps on the same device, so you don’t need a Mac or a 2nd iOS device - Modify requests and responses as they come in Disclaimer: I am t…

How does it work? AFAIK you can't run a local webserver on iOS without a jailbreak.

What's the benefit compared a traditional network setup with a MITM proxy?

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#29

Post by nnd »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #13
gressquel wrote: post #9

Moderns app use SSL pinning, same with big websites using HSTS. So this won't really decrypt HTTPS traffic

You may be a little optimistic here. Just because the technology exists does not mean everyone uses it. I use a MITM proxy to reverse engineer my IoT apps all the time (a lot of them don't provide public APIs but I want to use them from my controller app). I have not once ran into one that used pinning.

Most of the popular consumer apps use SSL pinning these days.

Re: Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic

#30

Post by tarnacious_ »

nnd wrote: post #26

Great execution, I had the same idea a while ago after playing with mitmproxy. My concern would be that people would tentative towards using it as you can tamper with requests on the server which they don't have control of.

Thanks! I figured (most) people were pretty fast and loose with their security these days, so that wasn't my concern. I've found the problem is that it still isn't easy to use, you still need to configure a proxy with credentials and install a root certificate to proxy HTTPS traffic. Lots of vistors to debugproxy today, not that many requests through proxy.
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