--- title: "Features" menu: "overview" menu: overview: weight: 4 --- # Mitmproxy Core Features - [Anticache](#anticache) - [Client-side replay](#client-side-replay) - [Proxy Authentication](#proxy-authentication) - [Replacements](#replacements) - [Server-side replay](#server-side-replay) - [Set Headers](#set-headers) - [Sticky Auth](#sticky-auth) - [Sticky Cookies](#sticky-cookies) - [Streaming](#streaming) - [Upstream Certificates](#upstream-certificates) ## Anticache When the `anticache` option is set, it removes headers (`if-none-match` and `if-modified-since`) that might elicit a `304 not modified` response from the server. This is useful when you want to make sure you capture an HTTP exchange in its totality. It's also often used during client-side replay, when you want to make sure the server responds with complete data. ## Client-side replay Client-side replay does what it says on the tin: you provide a previously saved HTTP conversation, and mitmproxy replays the client requests one by one. Note that mitmproxy serialises the requests, waiting for a response from the server before starting the next request. This might differ from the recorded conversation, where requests may have been made concurrently. You may want to use client-side replay in conjunction with the `anticache` option, to make sure the server responds with complete data. ## Proxy Authentication Asks the user for authentication before they are permitted to use the proxy. Authentication headers are stripped from the flows, so they are not passed to upstream servers. For now, only HTTP Basic authentication is supported. The proxy auth options are not compatible with the transparent, socks or reverse proxy mode. ## Replacements The `replacements` option lets you specify an arbitrary number of patterns that define text replacements within flows. A replacement pattern looks like this: {{< highlight none >}} /patt/regex/replacement {{< / highlight >}} Here, **patt** is a mitmproxy filter expression that defines which flows a replacement applies to, **regex** is a valid Python regular expression that defines what gets replaced, and **replacement** is a string literal that is substituted in. The separator is arbitrary, and defined by the first character. If the replacement string literal starts with `@`, it is treated as a file path from which the replacement is read. Replace hooks fire when either a client request or a server response is received. Only the matching flow component is affected: so, for example, if a replace hook is triggered on server response, the replacement is only run on the Response object leaving the Request intact. You control whether the hook triggers on the request, response or both using the filter pattern. If you need finer-grained control than this, it's simple to create a script using the replacement API on Flow components. ### Examples Replace `foo` with `bar` in requests: {{< highlight none >}} :~q:foo:bar {{< / highlight >}} Replace `foo` with with the data read from `~/xss-exploit`: {{< highlight bash >}} mitmdump --replacements :~q:foo:@~/xss-exploit {{< / highlight >}} ## Server-side replay The `server_replay` option lets us replay server responses from saved HTTP conversations. To do this, we use a set of heuristics to match incoming requests with saved responses. By default, we exclude request headers when matching incoming requests with responses from the replay file, and use only the URL and request method for matching. This works in most circumstances, and makes it possible to replay server responses in situations where request headers would naturally vary, e.g. using a different user agent. There is a slew of ways to customise the matching heuristic, including specifying headers to include, request parameters to exclude, etc. These options are collected under the `server_replay` prefix - please see the built-in documentation for details. ### Response refreshing Simply replaying server responses without modification will often result in unexpected behaviour. For example cookie timeouts that were in the future at the time a conversation was recorded might be in the past at the time it is replayed. By default, mitmproxy refreshes server responses before sending them to the client. The **date**, **expires** and **last-modified** headers are all updated to have the same relative time offset as they had at the time of recording. So, if they were in the past at the time of recording, they will be in the past at the time of replay, and vice versa. Cookie expiry times are updated in a similar way. You can turn off this behaviour by setting the `server_replay_refresh` option to `false`. ### Replaying a session recorded in Reverse-proxy Mode If you have captured the session in reverse proxy mode, in order to replay it you still have to specify the server URL, otherwise you may get the error: 'HTTP protocol error in client request: Invalid HTTP request form (expected authority or absolute...)'. During replay, when the client's requests match previously recorded requests, then the respective recorded responses are simply replayed by mitmproxy. Otherwise, the unmatched requests is forwarded to the upstream server. If forwarding is not desired, you can use the --kill (-k) switch to prevent that. ## Set Headers The `setheaders` option lets you specify a set of headers to be added to requests or responses, based on a filter pattern. A `setheaders` expression looks like this: {{< highlight none >}} /patt/name/value {{< / highlight >}} Here, **patt** is a mitmproxy filter expression that defines which flows to set headers on, and **name** and **value** are the header name and the value to set respectively. ## Sticky auth The `stickyauth` option is analogous to the sticky cookie option, in that HTTP **Authorization** headers are simply replayed to the server once they have been seen. This is enough to allow you to access a server resource using HTTP Basic authentication through the proxy. Note that mitmproxy doesn't (yet) support replay of HTTP Digest authentication. ## Sticky cookies When the `stickycookie` option is set, **mitmproxy** will add the cookie most recently set by the server to any cookie-less request. Consider a service that sets a cookie to track the session after authentication. Using sticky cookies, you can fire up mitmproxy, and authenticate to a service as you usually would using a browser. After authentication, you can request authenticated resources through mitmproxy as if they were unauthenticated, because mitmproxy will automatically add the session tracking cookie to requests. Among other things, this lets you script interactions with authenticated resources (using tools like wget or curl) without having to worry about authentication. Sticky cookies are especially powerful when used in conjunction with [client replay]({{< relref "#client-side-replay" >}}) - you can record the authentication process once, and simply replay it on startup every time you need to interact with the secured resources. ## Streaming By default, mitmproxy will read an entire request/response, perform any indicated manipulations on it, and then send the message on to the other party. This can be problematic when downloading or uploading large files. When streaming is enabled, message bodies are not buffered on the proxy but instead sent directly to the server/client. HTTP headers are still fully buffered before being sent. Request/response streaming is enabled by specifying a size cutoff in the `stream_large_bodies` option. ### Customizing Streaming You can also use a script to customise exactly which requests or responses are streamed. Requests/Responses that should be tagged for streaming by setting their ``.stream`` attribute to ``True``: {{< example src="examples/complex/stream.py" lang="py" >}} ### Websockets The `stream_websockets` option enables an analogous behaviour for websockets. When WebSocket streaming is enabled, portions of the code which may perform changes to the WebSocket message payloads will not have any effect on the actual payload sent to the server as the frames are immediately forwarded to the server. In contrast to HTTP streaming, where the body is not stored, the message payload will still be stored in the WebSocket flow. ## Upstream Certificates When mitmproxy receives a connection destined for an SSL-protected service, it freezes the connection before reading its request data, and makes a connection to the upstream server to "sniff" the contents of its SSL certificate. The information gained - the **Common Name** and **Subject Alternative Names** - is then used to generate the interception certificate, which is sent to the client so the connection can continue. This rather intricate little dance lets us seamlessly generate correct certificates even if the client has specified only an IP address rather than the hostname. It also means that we don't need to sniff additional data to generate certs in transparent mode. Upstream cert sniffing is on by default, and can optionally be turned off with the `upstream_cert` option.