I am trying to implement a Socks5 server that could relay both HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
As the RFC1928 mentions, the following steps to establish a connection and forward the data must be taken :
Client sends a greeting message to the proxy.
Client & proxy authentication (assuming it is successful).
Client sends a request to the proxy to connect to the destination.
The proxy connects to the destination and sends back a response to the client to indicate a successful open tunnel.
The proxy reads the data from the client and forwards it to the destination.
The proxy reads the data from the destination and forwards it to the client.
So far, the proxy works as it should. It is able to relay HTTP traffic using its basic data forwarding mechanism. However, any request from the client to an HTTPS website will be aborted because of SSL/TLS encryption.
Is there another sequence/steps that should be followed to be able to handle SSL/TLS (HTTPS) traffic?
The sequence you have described is correct, even for HTTPS. When the client wants to send a request to an HTTPS server through a proxy, it will request the proxy to connect to the target server's HTTPS port, and then once the tunnel is established, the client will negotiate a TLS handshake with the target server, then send an (encrypted) HTTP request and receive an (encrypted) HTTP response. The tunnel is just a passthrough of raw bytes, the proxy has no concept of any encryption between the client and server. It doesn't care what the bytes represent, its job is just to pass them along as-is.
Related
I am developing an https http/2 proxy server as mentioned here:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/net/docs/proxy.md#HTTPS-proxy-scheme
It is mentioned there that
HTTPS proxies using HTTP/2 can offer better performance in Chrome than a regular HTTP proxy due to higher connection limits (HTTP/1.1 proxies in Chrome are limited to 32 simultaneous connections across all domains).
But when users try to surf a website which is using websocket over raw http connection, the response contains 'Upgrade' http header which is forbidden to be used in http/2 as there is no websockets for HTTP/2.
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/06/15/no-websockets-over-http2/#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20websockets%20for%20HTTP%2F2.&text=That%20spec%20details%20how%20a,connection%20into%20a%20websockets%20connection.
The problem comes from the fact that when http1.1 traffic passes through an https proxy which implements http/2, headers must be transferred from http1.1 to http/2. Of course when the webpage is using TLS, there is no such a problem as all traffic passes through a connection made by http 'CONNECT' method. The problem occurs when the website does not use TLS.
If there is no solution to this problem, it means that HTTPS proxies should not implement HTTP/2 protocol.
As there is no websockets for HTTP/2
The link you posted is old, and since then WebSocket over HTTP/2 has been specified by RFC 8441.
The behavior of a HTTP/2 proxy is specified in RFC 7540, section 8.3.
When the client communicates with the proxy using secure HTTP/2, each HTTP/2 stream is a "tunnel" to the server.
Client and proxy communicate using secure HTTP/2, and the "tunnelling" happens because each HTTP/2 stream becomes an "infinite" request with an "infinite" response, i.e. an "infinite" series of HTTP/2 DATA frames in both directions that carry an opaque byte array payload.
The job of the proxy is to unwrap the DATA frames received by the client, and forward the byte array payload to the server, perhaps re-wrapping it into an HTTP/2 DATA frame if the communication between proxy and server is also HTTP/2 (it may be possible to optimize away the unwrapping and re-wrapping but it may be tricky -- for example the stream numbering could be different).
When a client attempts to perform WebSocket over HTTP/2, the browser will do as specified by RFC 8441, and the proxy will receive a CONNECT request with a :protocol pseudo-header, and the proxy will have to know what to do in that case, depending on what protocol it uses to communicate with the server.
What above describes what your proxy need to support when the communication with the client is HTTP/2.
If your proxy needs to support clients that speak HTTP/1.1, then you need to implement what is required for a proxy to support HTTP/1.1 and WebSocket proxying, and it's typically not difficult: the first is just HTTP/1.1 forwarding or HTTP CONNECT "tunnelling", the second is WebSocket HTTP Upgrade request forwarding followed by a "tunnel" connection or even a fully fledged WebSocket proxy.
Disclaimer, I have implemented all of the above in the Jetty Project.
You can use Jetty 10 or later to implement an HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, or WebSocket, both client and server (and therefore a proxy). WebSocket over HTTP/2 is supported too.
Finally, to answer your last question, it is perfectly possible to have secure proxies support HTTP/2, even in presence of WebSocket.
For example, a clear-text WebSocket connection to a server starts with an HTTP upgrade request; this request will be sent, encrypted, to the proxy which will decrypt it and forward it to the server (using any protocol the server supports -- could even be WebSocket over secure HTTP/2); the server will reply with a 101 and upgrade the connection to WebSocket; the proxy will receive the 101 from the server and upgrade to a "tunnel" or to a WebSocket proxy; the proxy encrypts the 101 response and forward it to the client; the client decrypts it and upgrades the connection to WebSocket.
At this point, the client is speaking clear-text WebSocket to the server through a secure connection with the proxy (the proxy sees the clear-text WebSocket communication).
Viceversa, a secure WebSocket connection to a server starts with establishing a HTTP CONNECT tunnel through the proxy to the server; then the client will establish the secure communication with the server; then it will send the HTTP upgrade to WebSocket to the server (through the proxy tunnel).
At this point, the client is speaking secure WebSocket to the server through a secure connection with the proxy (the proxy cannot see the WebSocket communication).
The HTTP/2 variants are similar, just taking into account the HTTP/2 specific ways of "tunnelling" and transporting WebSocket.
What is the procedure to change ws into wss?
Whether wss is make upgrade over normal HTTP or wss works only HTTPS?
webSocket = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:port/Esv/ocp");
works fine, when I changed ws to wss
webSocket = new WebSocket("wss://localhost:port/Esv/ocp");
it shows this error:
Error in connection establishment: net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR
Short version
To SSL or not SSL
You may have a SSL certificate issue. The connection point rule can be summarized as:
wss connects on https only
ws connects on http
and vice-versa:
https accepts wss only
http accepts ws only
Errors
Following situations will lead you to an error (tests done under Firefox):
If you want to connect a wss connection to a http endpoint. In my tests, I had an
InvalidStateError: An attempt was made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable
If you want to connect a ws connection to a https endpoint, you'll have the error
SecurityError: The operation is insecure.
Formal answer
The bible of websocket is RFC 6455. In section 4.1.5:
If /secure/ is true, the client MUST perform a TLS handshake over the connection after opening the connection and before sending the handshake data [RFC2818]. If this fails (e.g., the server's certificate could not be verified), then the client MUST Fail the WebSocket Connection and abort the connection. Otherwise, all further communication on this channel MUST run through the encrypted tunnel [RFC5246].
The secure flag is defined by the URI. Section 3 defines what is secure
The URI is called "secure" (and it is said that "the secure flag is set") if the scheme component matches "wss" case-insensitively.
TL;DR
If you want to use wss:
you must have SSL activated
your endpoint point must be secured (https://...): "security downgrade" is not allowed
If you want to use ws:
Make sure your endpoint does not have SSL enabled (http://...)
There are several different approaches to security for web proxying:
No security. Client connects to proxy with HTTP, makes GET request (proxy probably uses HTTP to reach destination).
HTTPS connection to proxy, then GET request. Encryption only between proxy and client.
HTTP to proxy, CONNECT tunnel to destination (host named in clear-text), letting client HTTPS to destination. Security-wise, seems equivalent to direct HTTPS.
HTTPS to proxy, CONNECT tunnel to destination, then HTTPS to destination. (E.g., so that not even the destination host name metadata can be eavesdropped on an untrusted local network like public wifi.)
My question is about the final case. Is there any standard or RFC that describes it?
Does/must the content get double-encrypted or not? That is, on the client side, should the proxy simply forward the raw data stream (without manipulation) after the CONNECT is established, or should it still continue applying its (now-redundant) secure wrapper?
I'm building a WebClient library. Now I'm implementing a proxy feature, so I am making some research and I saw some code using the CONNECT method to request a URL.
But checking it within my web browser, it doesn't use the CONNECT method but calls the GET method instead.
So I'm confused. When I should use both methods?
TL;DR a web client uses CONNECT only when it knows it talks to a proxy and the final URI begins with https://.
When a browser says:
CONNECT www.google.com:443 HTTP/1.1
it means:
Hi proxy, please open a raw TCP connection to google; any following
bytes I write, you just repeat over that connection without any
interpretation. Oh, and one more thing. Do that only if you talk to
Google directly, but if you use another proxy yourself, instead you
just tell them the same CONNECT.
Note how this says nothing about TLS (https). In fact CONNECT is orthogonal to TLS; you can have only one, you can have other, or you can have both of them.
That being said, the intent of CONNECT is to allow end-to-end encrypted TLS session, so the data is unreadable to a proxy (or a whole proxy chain). It works even if a proxy doesn't understand TLS at all, because CONNECT can be issued inside plain HTTP and requires from the proxy nothing more than copying raw bytes around.
But the connection to the first proxy can be TLS (https) although it means a double encryption of traffic between you and the first proxy.
Obviously, it makes no sense to CONNECT when talking directly to the final server. You just start talking TLS and then issue HTTP GET. The end servers normally disable CONNECT altogether.
To a proxy, CONNECT support adds security risks. Any data can be passed through CONNECT, even ssh hacking attempt to a server on 192.168.1.*, even SMTP sending spam. Outside world sees these attacks as regular TCP connections initiated by a proxy. They don't care what is the reason, they cannot check whether HTTP CONNECT is to blame. Hence it's up to proxies to secure themselves against misuse.
A CONNECT request urges your proxy to establish an HTTP tunnel to the remote end-point.
Usually is it used for SSL connections, though it can be used with HTTP as well (used for the purposes of proxy-chaining and tunneling)
CONNECT www.google.com:443
The above line opens a connection from your proxy to www.google.com on port 443.
After this, content that is sent by the client is forwarded by the proxy to www.google.com:443.
If a user tries to retrieve a page http://www.google.com, the proxy can send the exact same request and retrieve response for him, on his behalf.
With SSL(HTTPS), only the two remote end-points understand the requests, and the proxy cannot decipher them. Hence, all it does is open that tunnel using CONNECT, and lets the two end-points (webserver and client) talk to each other directly.
Proxy Chaining:
If you are chaining 2 proxy servers, this is the sequence of requests to be issued.
GET1 is the original GET request (HTTP URL)
CONNECT1 is the original CONNECT request (SSL/HTTPS URL or Another Proxy)
User Request ==CONNECT1==> (Your_Primary_Proxy ==CONNECT==> AnotherProxy-1 ... ==CONNECT==> AnotherProxy-n) ==GET1(IF is http)/CONNECT1(IF is https)==> Destination_URL
As a rule of thumb GET is used for plain HTTP and CONNECT for HTTPS
There are more details though so you probably want to read the relevant RFC-s
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2068.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2817.txt
The CONNECT method converts the request connection to a transparent TCP/IP tunnel, usually to facilitate SSL-encrypted communication (HTTPS) through an unencrypted HTTP proxy.
My websocket server listens on port 8080 with no proxy.
Most of the time I'm getting requests with the Upgrade Websocket header and it works fine.
Sometimes I'm getting HTTP CONNECT requests.
Is this a valid request?
Does it means that there is a proxy server between the client and the server?
How my server is suppose to respond to the CONNECT request?
Thanks
You are getting CONNECT requests because you are likely to have configured your browser to use a proxy. If you directed your browser to use port 8080 on your local IP address, it will assume there is a proxy and that means when you ask for a secure connection, the browser leads with CONNECT.
You will need to add support for SSL/TLS tunnelling to your server to deal with this.