Having trouble using my laptop as a proxy for my smartphone - ssl

Question

I want to capture my smartphone network logs on jmeter. This usually requires that my smartphone accesses the internet through my laptop by using it as a proxy and making jmeter listen on the port through which the smart phone is connected. Here are a few references I found on the internet:
http://findnerd.com/list/view/-How-to-Connect-the-Android-Mobile-Device-to-JMETER/4929/
https://dzone.com/articles/how-to-record-mobile-appli-cation-traffic
There are others references but they essentially say the exact same thing. I followed all the steps but my smartphone is unable to access the Internet when I set its proxy to my laptop's IP address . The only difference could be that since the motherboard wifi adaptor had started malfunctioning sometime back, I am using a USB WiFi adaptor on my laptop. I need to know how to make this work and capture my smartphone network logs on my laptop using jmeter. Any help appreciated
UPDATE - Found the issue. I needed to install an SSL certificate on my Android phone. This certificate is generated by jmeter in it's bin folder. I had to send to to my Android device and install it. Now, I can access the internet on my phone through my browser and o am able to see the https traffic being recorded in JMETER. but, when I try to access any apps, it gives me the following error:
javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: certificate_unknown.
I know it has something to do with the self-signed certificate generated by Jmeter, but I am not sure why it's working for chrome and not for apps. Anybody know any solutions to this?

Answer 1

First of all you need to install JMeter's MITM certificate onto your Android phone, the file is called ApacheJMeterTemporaryRootCA.crt and it's being generated in "bin" folder of your JMeter installation when you start the HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder
If your phone is running Android 7 or higher you will need to take some extra steps in order to be able to capture your application traffic
Add the next line to the application section of your application manifest file:
android:networkSecurityConfig="#xml/network_security_config"
Create network_security_config.xml file under your application resources folder and put the following code inside:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
<debug-overrides>
<trust-anchors>
<!-- Trust user added CAs while debuggable only -->
<certificates src="user" />
</trust-anchors>
</debug-overrides>
</network-security-config>
Compile and install your application in debug mode like:
gradlew installDebug
That's it, now you should be able to capture your application traffic using JMeter.
More information: Recording Using Android Devices