How to specify a user id and password for Visual Studio Code with an authenticating proxy? - proxy

Question

How to specify a user id and password for Visual Studio Code with an authenticating proxy?
I've seen the Proxy Server Support on the main VS Code site, but this only mentions two settings ...
"http.proxy": "http://10.203.0.1:5187/"
"http.proxyStrictSSL": false
I've set these, but still no luck, e.g. I can't install extensions ... can't even get a list of them
I suspect it's our proxy, as it needs a user id and password :-(
So how can you set these values?

Answer 1

Set credentials inside the proxy url:
http://username:password#10.203.0.1:5187/
WARNING: Setting your password in plaintext in a file can easily lead to your account being compromised. Further it might violate your companies data security guidelines. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/256.html

Answer 2

If you don't want to store your credentials in the settings file, fiddler can be used to proxy the call to the proxy. Furthermore, I believe the above only works for proxy servers using basic authentication, the following should work for NTLM.
VSCode Open Settings File:
%APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json
add the following:
{
"http.proxy": "http://127.0.0.1:8888",
"http.proxyStrictSSL": false
}
Fiddler Confirm fiddler settings:
Fiddler Ensure Fiddler set to automatically authenticate:
VSCode Extensions should now be online:
Update
This is now no longer required following implementation of PR #22369 which was implemented in version 1.15 Proxy server authentication.
In my case I still needed to add:
"http.proxyStrictSSL": false

Answer 3

My favorite response here is David Martin's suggestion of using Fiddler. But in case that is not something you want to undertake, below is how to set your credentials for the proxy.
To specify DOMAIN + username + password: (It will likely not work with a slash, so use %5C in the place of the slash as shown below)
// The proxy setting to use. If not set will be taken from the http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables
"http.proxy": "http://DOMAIN%5Cusername:password#proxy_name_or_ip:port",
"https.proxy": "http://DOMAIN%5Cusername:password#proxy_name_or_ip:port",
// Whether the proxy server certificate should be verified against the list of supplied CAs.
"http.proxyStrictSSL": false,
To specify just username + password:
// The proxy setting to use. If not set will be taken from the http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables
"http.proxy": "http://username:password#proxy_name_or_ip:port",
"https.proxy": "http://username:password#proxy_name_or_ip:port",
// Whether the proxy server certificate should be verified against the list of supplied CAs.
"http.proxyStrictSSL": false,

Answer 4

The venerable CNTLM could help you. You give it your credentials, tell it about the upstream proxy, run it on your local machine, then point VS to the proxy at http://localhost:3128.
http://cntlm.sourceforge.net/
It's a handy solution for any application that doesn't support authenticated proxies.

Answer 5

I really like the solution David Martin posted (further below) using Fiddler, however I wanted to figure out how to use http.proxyAuthorization and here is my solution considering you are OK to have credentials saved in base64 encoded format in the settings.json file.
WARNING: Saving credentials in base64 encoded format is certainly better than plain text, however consider base64 encoding as obfuscation not an encryption and the account can still be compromised - use at your own risk. Consider modifying the ACL of the settings file to reduce read access to it.
Step 1: Encode your credentials using the code below:
var s = #"DOMAIN\user:pass";
var bytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(s);
Console.WriteLine(Convert.ToBase64String(bytes));
RE9NQUlOXHVzZXI6cGFzcw==
Step 2: Update VS Code settings by adding http.proxyAuthorization using the base64 encoded value from above:
{
"https.proxy": "https://internal-proxy.corp.net:8080",
"http.proxyAuthorization": "Authorization: Basic RE9NQUlOXHVzZXI6cGFzcw=="
}
Step 3: Secure the settings.json by updating it's ACL
Since you have stored credentials in the file to increase the security you can modify the ACL of the settings file by removing the local administrators group - make sure only you can read this file. I used the following PowerShell script to remove the local admin group for example:
#Requires -Version 5.1
# PowerShell 5.1 min version required for the code below
$settings = "$env:appdata\Code\$env:username\settings.json"
$acl = (Get-Item $settings).GetAccessControl('Access')
$acl.SetAccessRuleProtection($true,$true) # removes the ACL inheritance
$accesToRemove = $acl.Access | ?{ $_.IsInherited -eq $false -and $_.IdentityReference -eq 'BUILTIN\Administrators' }
$acl.RemoveAccessRule($accesToRemove)
Set-Acl -AclObject $acl $settings

Answer 6

Please take ref to this article.
https://taeguk.co.uk/blog/working-in-visual-studio-behind-the-firewall/
Let’s assume my NTLM login is DOMAIN\User Name and my password is P#ssword!
The format for the credentials needs to be DOMAIN\User Name:P#ssword!, but you need to URL Encode the user name and password.
A simple online URL encoded can translate your username and password to: DOMAIN%5CUser%20Name and P%40ssword!.
Piece all this info into a single string like so: http://DOMAIN%5CUser%20Name:P%40ssword!#proxy-cluster.fqdn.local:8881
Then add this into your User Settings in File, Preferences against the "http.proxy" value:
// Place your settings in this file to overwrite the default settings
{
"http.proxy": "http://DOMAIN%5CUser%20Name:P%40ssword!#proxy-cluster.fqdn.local:8881"
}

Answer 7

"http.proxy": "http://DOMAIN//USER:PASSWORD#wsg.test.com:8080".
Do not forget to add the port.

Answer 8

Use the below command and replace the username,password and ip address of you proxy:port
PS C:\Users\rathakrishnan> npm config set proxy http://username:password#172.18.10.27:3128
PS C:\Users\rathakrishnan> npm install -g #angular/cli

Answer 9

in Visual Studio Code (my version is 1.32.3) you write a request, i.e.
### my request
GET https://defdomain.prefix.com/app/resource
Authorization: bXl1c2VyOnVzZXIyMkBwYXNzd29yZA==
Wherefore the Authorization header is of type "Basic base64encoded" and consists of
myuser:user22#password (username:usercredentials) base64 encoded. Thats all.