I am working on a project that captures and analyses my network flow. For HTTPS, I am redirecting all traffic to a "fake" site; this site decrypts them and encrypts them again before sending to the real destination.
However, this man in middle attack does not work easily because Firefox will check the certificate and block the website (I am using a self-signed certificate).
Since there are many websites that I need to monitor, is there any way I can disable the certificate checking feature of Firefox? Or can I import the certificate once and have all websites unblocked? I have full control of the operating system of the browser.
It turns out that the best way to solve my problem is automatically signing a website certificate. I followed this tutorial and some techniques like Wildcard certificate. After importing the certificate to Firefox, it trusts all the traffic.
Related
I was trying to get myself familiarised with basic concepts of https when I came across its encryption, which in a nutshell functions as follows,
Now I have seen QA engineers in my company use this tool called burp-suite to intercept request.
What I am confused about is even though the data flows through an encrypted channel, how can any interception tool like burp-suite manage to intercept the request.
Just to try it out I tried to intercept facebook request in burp-suite,
Here you can clearly see the test email test#gmail.com I used in the intercepted request.
Why is this data not encrypted according to https standards?
Or if it is then how do burp-suite manage to decrypt it?
Thank you.
Meta: this isn't really a development or programming question or problem, although Burp is sometimes used for research or debugging.
If you LOOK AT THE DOCUMENTATION on Using Burp Proxy
Burp CA certificate - Since Burp breaks TLS connections between your browser and servers, your browser will by default show a warning message if you visit an HTTPS site via Burp Proxy. This is because the browser does not recognize Burp's TLS certificate, and infers that your traffic may be being intercepted by a third-party attacker. To use Burp effectively with TLS connections, you really need to install Burp's Certificate Authority master certificate in your browser, so that it trusts the certificates generated by Burp.
and following the link provided right there
By default, when you browse an HTTPS website via Burp, the Proxy generates a TLS certificate for each host, signed by its own Certificate Authority (CA) certificate. ...
Using its own generated cert (and matching key, although the webpage doesn't talk about that because it isn't visible to people) instead of the cert from the real site allows Burp to 'terminate' the TLS session from the client, decrypting and examining the data, and then forwarding that data over a different TLS session to the real site, and vice versa on the response (unless configured to do something different like modify the data).
... This CA certificate is generated the first time Burp is run, and stored locally. To use Burp Proxy most effectively with HTTPS websites, you will need to install Burp's CA certificate as a trusted root in your browser.
This is followed by a warning about the risks, and a link to instructions to do so.
Having its own CA cert trusted in the browser means that the generated cert is accepted by the browser and everything looks mostly normal to the browser user (or other client).
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding a bit about SSL, namely self-signed vs certified.
First, is my assumption that a self-signed certificate will still prompt the common browser warning message?
Second, data from a https domain doesn't transfer to a http domain, right? So if I had my site at domain.com, and my api at api.domain.com, I would need two certs, and have both of them setup for https?
Last, I noticed there are free SSL certs at sites like StartSSL. This feels fishy, given it can easily cost $100 for a cert at other sites. Am I wrong in being concerned?
Using a self-signed certificate will cause browser warnings. Your assumption is correct.
It depends; some browsers may warn when this occurs. But you absolutely should serve all of your services on HTTPS, so that clients can authenticate your site(s) and so that the connection is private.
It is possible to support multiple domains on a single certificate, via the Subject Alternative Name (SAN, subjectAltName) X.509 certificate extension. You could also use separate certificates.
StartSSL is trusted by all browsers; their certificates will be accepted and there is nothing "fishy" about them. You could use StartSSL's free offering to obtain two certificates - one for each domain.
If you want a single certificate for multiple domains via the SAN extension, you will have to find a product that supports that, and it will probably not be free. The Let's Encrypt initiative is working to
change the landscape in this regard, but they have not yet launched.
Is there an alternative to installing a CA SSL certificate for intercepting traffic for only one site?
I don't like the idea of being able to modify any request, and would like to technically limit it to one domain only, is this possible or if using a MITM do you need to trust the MITM with everything?
Example: You are intercepting all calls to testing site example.com for development reasons, so to dogfood you install a CA certificate onto the devices of the testers. Now you can intercept all domains. The testers dislike this as it invades their privacy.
Is there a way instead to use a certificate installed on devices that will only work for example.com without modifying the certificate given out by the site, or handing over the actual certificate of example.com to mitmproxy?
As far as I know, you either route all traffic through the proxy, or you use the network without a proxy. To make the (re)configuration of the network settings easy, a mobile app like proxydroid or a browser extension such as foxyproxy may work for you.
I had installed SSL certs one one of my cloud server by following this:
http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/installing-an-ssl-certificate-on-apache
I am running jetpack plugin on my wordpress blog. The jetpack plugin is not getting connected to wordpress. I have talked with the Jetpack support guys and they say this:
Support Reply
"The problem is that OpenSSL doesn't recognize your certificate's Certificate Authority's certificate. The that URL works in browsers is because most modern browsers allow for certificate discovery by reading the "Authority Information Access" metadata from the certificate, which contains a URL from which the browser can download the CA's certificate. OpenSSL does not.
The best solution is if you can configure your webserver to supply the entire SSL certificate chain, rather than just your own certificate. That's what we do on WordPress.com. Sending the entire chain will also make your sites more compatible with older (and I believe some mobile) browsers."
Can any one describe me how can I install or provide entire certificate chain???
Thanks
These pages might help with setting up a CA and then creating a certificate: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSSL#SSL_Certificates
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/certificates-and-security.html
I need to implement a SSL certificate for a website, I've got three questions after some research.
1) I believe i need to buy a SSL certificate and ask my host to install it. My question is do you need to alter any code for the website for the certificate?
2) Before I buy the certificate, the website is going to be built for a couple of month at least. I'm just wondering is there a developing SSL certificate I can use for the developing environment?
3) Or do I have to use self assigned certificate? If so are there any good tutorials on how to create a SSL self assigned certificate on a local machine (wamp) and a developing url site?
Thank you very much.
Sam :)
1) No, you do not need to alter any code on your website at all in order to use an installed SSL certificate. It is as simple as prefixing your desired destination link with the HTTPS: protocol specification instead of the typical HTTP: protocol. However, if you want to determine if your site visitor is using an encrypted page before they do something, such as submit a web form with potentially sensitive data, then depending on what you are developing your site in, you will need to detect if the current page request has been sent over HTTP or HTTPS, then if it is an HTTP requested page, you probably want to redirect the page request to the HTTPS version before proceeding.
2) Other than creating your own "self signed" certificate (more on this in #3), no your only option for a publicly valid SSL certificate is to obtain one from a publicly recognized Certificate Authority (CA). Long story short, a certificate of the same key length using the same encryption standard supported by your server and visitor's web browser, is no stronger or weaker regardless of vendor for purposes of encryption. So you can simply shop by price for your SSL certs. I have no affiliation with GoDaddy, but have been using them for years for public SSL certificates.
3) You certainly can create your own self signed certificate. The methods for doing this vary based on your host server and version. The limitation to a self signed certificate, is that if you go to share this with anyone, you get that warning message from your browser that the certificate is not published from a verifiable source. In most current browsers, it looks like a big scary message that something is wrong and they attempt to warn your user away from doing this. However, of course, there is certainly nothing wrong with using a self signed certificate. This is obviously true for your own development uses. Even a self signed certificate of the same key length and encryption method is as cryptographically secure as a commercially provided certificate. If you want to use a self signed certificate, just search for instruction for doing that for your server OS and version for details. Once it is installed, you will get the warning from your browser when you try to browse to a page over HTTPS. Your browser should show you an option to permanently remember and accept your self signed certificate, after which you will no longer see that warning while that certificate remains installed and valid.