How can I locally intercept and respond to browser requests? - windows

I want to set something up on my computer where if something (program, browser, whatever) makes a request (to a certain domain, I guess) I can send my own response to the request. I once saw a program that did that, and I was wondering how it did it. How would it be done?

How about just editing hosts file? Popular operating systems have it. Just use it to redirect to whereever you want. To me it looks like the simplest solution to this question.

You can build a HTTP proxy that will intercept all requests from the browser. But you have to configure the browser to use the proxy.

What mikerobi said, but you can also set up your computer or gateway machine to act as a transparent proxy. (You need this if you either don't want to configure your browser, or you're working with an application that uses HTTP but doesn't allow for configuration of a proxy.)
On a FreeBSD or Linux machine (I'm sure there are other OSes that can do this; I mention the ones I use), you can set up your own firewall rules to intercept particular traffic (say, all port 80 traffic, or all port 80 traffic to a particular domain, or whatever) and forward the traffic to your own special proxy, which can return whatever you want.

Related

Send the request to Proxy server from Web server

I made a proxy server in python 3. It listens on the port 4444. It basically receives the request from clients and sends it to the server. I want to use it as a firewall to my Dvwa server. So added another functionality to the proxy. What it does is, before sending the request to the DVWA server, it validates the input.
But the problem is, the clients have to configure their proxy settings in the browser to use my proxy server. Is there any way to access the proxy without configuring the browser settings. Basically I want to host the proxy server instead of the original web server. So that all the traffic goes through the proxy before going to the webserver.
Thanks in advance...
You don't say whether your Python3 proxy is hosted on the same machine as the DVWA.
Assuming it is, the solution is simple: a reverse-proxy configuration. Your proxy transparently accepts and forwards requests to your server who then processes them and sends them back via the proxy to the client.
Have your proxy listen on port 80
Have the DVWA listen on a port other than 80 so it's not clashing (e.g. 8080)
Your proxy, which is now receiving requests for the IP/hostname which would otherwise go to the DVWA, then forwards them as usual.
The client/web browser is none the wiser that anything has changed. No settings need changing.
That's the best case scenario, given the information provided in your question. Unfortunately, I can't give any alternative solutions without knowing the network layout, where the machines reside, and the intent of the project. Some things to consider:
do you have a proper separation of concerns for this middleware you're building?
what is the purpose of the proxy?
is it for debugging/observing traffic?
are you actually trying to build a Web Application Firewall?

931107 - configuring squid

i'm too beginner in squid. i want a way to remain anonymous over the net. i also want to be able to access the contents of the internet which are filtered. my Windows computer is beyond firewall (filtered). my server (CentOS 5) is not. for example, when i enter http://facebook.com in the browser url, it redirects to an intranet ip which tells me to avoid going to this site!
now i've installed squid on server and traffic is propagated through this server. but this redirection occurs. so still i can't open filtered sites.
what can i do? a friend of mine told that the only way is to use https. ie. the connection between browser (Firefox) and the server must use this protocol. is it right? and how can i do that?
what's your suggestion? i don't want necessarily to use squid. besides, https protocol gets banned or decreased in speed in my country sometimes. so i prefer the protocol remain http. i thought also about writing a code in client and server to transform, compress/decompress and packetize as hoax binary http packets to be sent as much speed and success as possible. but i'm not an expert in this context and now i prefer more straightforward ways.
i respect any help/info.
I assume you are located in Iran. I would suggest using TOR if you mainly access websites. The latest release works reasonably well in Iran. It also includes an option to obfuscate traffic so it is not easily detectable that you are using TOR.
See also this question: https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/1639/using-tor-in-iran-for-the-first-time-user-guide
A easy way to get the TOR package is using the autoresponder: https://www.torproject.org/projects/gettor.html
In case the website is blocked, it works as follows:
Users can communicate with GetTor robot by sending messages via email.
Currently, the best known GetTor email address is gettor#torproject.org.
This should be the most current stable GetTor robot as
it is operated by Tor Project.
To ask for Tor Browser a user should send an email to GetTor robot
with one of the following options in the message body:
windows: If the user needs Tor Browser for Windows.
linux: If the user needs Tor Browser for Linux.
osx: If the user needs Tor Browser for Mac OSX.

what is the difference between a proxy server like tor and a proxy tool like paros?

it seems to be a big difference between them but eventually, both of them use a proxy
but paros can modify an intercept HTTP and HTTPS request , and tor just "make me invisible" ?
how does it work ?
Paros and Tor serve different purposes. The first is a vulnerability scanner which might take your input, modify it and send it to the target website. Tor on the other side doesn't modify your requests, but wraps around encryption layers and send the requests over some servers until it reaches the target.
If you have Paros installed locally and send your requests through the software, the target website will see your IP address. Tor's purpose is to hide your IP address. So the target website will see some other address than your.
For specific questions on Paros you might want to have a look at security.SE site. Questions about Tor are handled at tor.SE.

Monitor network activity of specific program

I have a program that I'm trying to reverse engineer.
It gets a specific key by using HTTP GET on some URLs.
I need to figure out the details on how this works.
The good news is that there's the option to preform these requests over an HTTP proxy.
Would anybody know of a program to monitor a specific application's network traffic?
I've tried Wireshark, but its no giving me enough information (Headers, URL path).
After Wireshark, I tried FreeProxy. The problem with FreeProxy is that it only gives headers for around 1/3 of the requests and it doesn't give the full path either.
Could anyone suggest a better alternative for monitoring the internet activity of my application?
I thought Wireshark was able to capture the full packet with all its content? If so, how can it not give you enough information? Maybe you need to revise your traffic capture config?
It's been a while since I used Wireshark, but if you have trouble capturing full packets, what you can do is use tcpdump to capture and write to file, then view the capture file using Wireshark. tcpdump's -s option will allow you to set the packet size so as to capture full packets.
I use Fiddler for all my HTTP traffic monitoring. It is very powerful and displays data in the HTTP layer only. Wireshark will get all of your data, but it displays the details at a much lower layer. It even has capability to decrypt SSL traffic.
Fiddler installs itself as a proxy, and configures IE and FF automatically to use it when it is on. If you are having too much traffic mix in, then you can install Fiddler on a remote box, and point your proxy to that IP address.
I was recommemded another program called "mitmproxy" which worked perfectly for what I needed. Fiddler also worked, but SSL was giving me problems.

How to build local web proxy without configuring the browsers

How does Netnanny or k9 Web Protection setup web proxy without configuring the browsers?
How can it be done?
Using WinSock directly, or at the NDIS or hardware driver level, and
then filter at those levels, just like any firewalls soft does. NDIS being the easy way.
Download this ISO image: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=36a2630f-5d56-43b5-b996-7633f2ec14ff
it has bunch of samples and tools to help you build what you want.
After you mount or burn it on CD and install it go to this folder:
c:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\src\network\ndis\
I think what you need is a transparent proxy that support WCCP.
Take a look at squid-cache FAQ page
And the Wikipedia entry for WCCP
With that setup you just need to do some firewall configuration and all your web traffic will be handled by the transparent proxy. And no setup will be needed on your browser.
netnanny is not a proxy. It is tied to the host machine and browser (and possibly other applications as well. It then filters all incoming and outgoing "content" from the machine/application.
Essentially Netnanny is a content-control system as against destination-control system (proxy).
Easiest way to divert all traffic to a certain site to some other address is by changing hosts file on local host
You might want to have a look at the explanation here: http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/help/hookup.asp
This is how Fiddler2 achieves inserting a proxy in between most apps and the internet without modifying the apps (although lots of explanation of how-to failing the default setup). This does not answer how NetNanny/K9 etc work though, as noted above they do a little more and may be a little more intrusive.
I believe you search for BrowserHelperObjects. These little gizmos capture ALL browser communication, and as such can either remote ads from the HTML (good gizmo), or redirect every second click to a spam site (bad gizmo), or just capture every URL you type and send it home like all the WebToolBars do.
What you want to do is route all outgoing http(s) requests from your lan through a reverse proxy (like squid). This is the setup for a transparent web proxy.
There are different ways to do this, although I've only ever set it up OpenBSD and Linux; and using Squid as the reverse proxy.
At a high level you have a firewall with rules to send all externally bound http traffic to a local squid server. The Squid server is configured to:
accept all http requests
forward the requests on to the real external hosts
cache the reply
forward the reply back to the requestor on the local lan
You can then add more granular rules in Squid to control access to websites, filter content, etc.
I pretty sure you can also get this functionality in different networking gear. I bet F5 has some products that do some or all of what I described, and probably Cisco as well. There is probably other proxies out there besides Squid that you can use too.
PS. I have no idea if this is how K9 Web Protection or NetNanny works.
Squid could provide an intercept proxy for HTTP and HTTPs ports, without configuring the browsers and it also supports WCCP.

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