#  Modes of Operation

• Regular (the default)
• Transparent
• Reverse Proxy
• Upstream Proxy
• SOCKS Proxy

Now, which one should you pick? Use this flow chart:

#  Regular Proxy

Mitmproxy’s regular mode is the simplest and the easiest to set up.

1. Start mitmproxy.
2. Configure your client to use mitmproxy by explicitly setting an HTTP proxy. By default, mitmproxy listens on port 8080.
3. Quick Check: You should already be able to visit an unencrypted HTTP site through the proxy.
4. Open the magic domain mitm.it and install the certificate for your device.

If you are proxying an external device, your network will probably look like this:

The square brackets signify the source and destination IP addresses. Your client explicitly connects to mitmproxy and mitmproxy explicitly connects to the target server.

#  Transparent Proxy

In transparent mode, traffic is directed into a proxy at the network layer, without any client configuration required. This makes transparent proxying ideal for situations where you can’t change client behaviour. In the graphic below, a machine running mitmproxy has been inserted between the router and the internet:

The square brackets signify the source and destination IP addresses. Round brackets mark the next hop on the Ethernet/data link layer. This distinction is important: when the packet arrives at the mitmproxy machine, it must still be addressed to the target server. This means that Network Address Translation should not be applied before the traffic reaches mitmproxy, since this would remove the target information, leaving mitmproxy unable to determine the real destination.

#  Common Configurations

There are many ways to configure your network for transparent proxying. We’ll look at two common scenarios:

1. Configuring the client to use a custom gateway/router/“next hop”
2. Implementing custom routing on the router

In most cases, the first option is recommended due to its ease of use.

#  (a) Custom Gateway

One simple way to get traffic to the mitmproxy machine with the destination IP intact, is to simply configure the client with the mitmproxy box as the default gateway.

In this scenario, we would:

1. Configure the proxy machine for transparent mode. You can find instructions in the transparent section.
2. Configure the client to use the proxy machine’s IP as the default gateway.
3. Quick Check: At this point, you should already be able to visit an unencrypted HTTP site over the proxy.
4. Open the magic domain mitm.it and install the certificate for your device.

Setting the custom gateway on clients can be automated by serving the settings out to clients over DHCP. This lets set up an interception network where all clients are proxied automatically, which can save time and effort.

#  (b) Custom Routing

In some cases, you may need more fine-grained control of which traffic reaches the mitmproxy instance, and which doesn’t. You may, for instance, choose only to divert traffic to some hosts into the transparent proxy. There are a huge number of ways to accomplish this, and much will depend on the router or packet filter you’re using. In most cases, the configuration will look like this:

#  Reverse Proxy

mitmproxy is usually used with a client that uses the proxy to access the Internet. Using reverse proxy mode, you can use mitmproxy to act like a normal HTTP server:

There are various use-cases:

• Say you have an internal API running at http://example.local/. You could now set up mitmproxy in reverse proxy mode at http://debug.example.local/ and dynamically point clients to this new API endpoint, which provides them with the same data and you with debug information. Similarly, you could move your real server to a different IP/port and set up mitmproxy in the original place to debug and or redirect all sessions.
• Say you’re a web developer working on http://example.com/ (with a development version running on http://localhost:8000/). You can modify your hosts file so that example.com points to 127.0.0.1 and then run mitmproxy in reverse proxy mode on port 80. You can test your app on the example.com domain and get all requests recorded in mitmproxy.
• Say you have some toy project that should get SSL support. Simply set up mitmproxy as a reverse proxy on port 443 and you’re done (mitmdump -p 443 --mode reverse:http://localhost:80/). Mitmproxy auto-detects TLS traffic and intercepts it dynamically. There are better tools for this specific task, but mitmproxy is very quick and simple way to set up an SSL-speaking server.
• Want to add a non-SSL-capable compression proxy in front of your server? You could even spawn a mitmproxy instance that terminates SSL (--mode reverse:http://...), point it to the compression proxy and let the compression proxy point to a SSL-initiating mitmproxy (--mode reverse:https://...), which then points to the real server. As you see, it’s a fairly flexible thing.

#  Host Header

In reverse proxy mode, mitmproxy automatically rewrites the Host header to match the upstream server. This allows mitmproxy to easily connect to existing endpoints on the open web (e.g. mitmproxy --mode reverse:https://example.com). You can disable this behaviour with the keep_host_header option.

However, keep in mind that absolute URLs within the returned document or HTTP redirects will NOT be rewritten by mitmproxy. This means that if you click on a link for “http://example.com” in the returned web page, you will be taken directly to that URL, bypassing mitmproxy.

One possible way to address this is to modify the hosts file of your OS so that “example.com” resolves to your proxy’s IP, and then access the proxy by going directly to example.com. Make sure that your proxy can still resolve the original IP, or specify an IP in mitmproxy.

#  Upstream Proxy

If you want to chain proxies by adding mitmproxy in front of a different proxy appliance, you can use mitmproxy’s upstream mode. In upstream mode, all requests are unconditionally transferred to an upstream proxy of your choice.

mitmproxy supports both explicit HTTP and explicit HTTPS in upstream proxy mode. You could in theory chain multiple mitmproxy instances in a row, but that doesn’t make any sense in practice (i.e. outside of our tests).

#  SOCKS Proxy

In this mode, mitmproxy acts as a SOCKS5 proxy.