IO::Socket::SSL::Intercept -- SSL interception (man in the middle)

  1. SYNOPSIS
  2. DESCRIPTION
  3. How Intercepting SSL Works
  4. METHODS
  5. AUTHOR

SYNOPSIS

    use IO::Socket::SSL::Intercept;
    # create interceptor with proxy certificates
    my $mitm = IO::Socket::SSL::Intercept->new(
proxy_cert_file => 'proxy_cert.pem',
proxy_key_file  => 'proxy_key.pem',
...
    );
    my $listen = IO::Socket::INET->new( LocalAddr => .., Listen => .. );
    while (1) {
# TCP accept new client
my $client = $listen->accept or next;
# SSL connect to server
my $server = IO::Socket::SSL->new(
    PeerAddr => ..,
    SSL_verify_mode => ...,
    ...
) or die "ssl connect failed: $!,$SSL_ERROR";
# clone server certificate
my ($cert,$key) = $mitm->clone_cert( $server->peer_certificate );
# and upgrade client side to SSL with cloned certificate
IO::Socket::SSL->start_SSL($client,
    SSL_server => 1,
    SSL_cert => $cert,
    SSL_key => $key
) or die "upgrade failed: $SSL_ERROR";
# now transfer data between $client and $server and analyze
# the unencrypted data
...
    }

DESCRIPTION

This module provides functionality to clone certificates and sign them with a proxy certificate, thus making it easy to intercept SSL connections (man in the middle). It also manages a cache of the generated certificates.

How Intercepting SSL Works

Intercepting SSL connections is useful for analyzing encrypted traffic for security reasons or for testing. It does not break the end-to-end security of SSL, e.g. a properly written client will notice the interception unless you explicitly configure the client to trust your interceptor. Intercepting SSL works the following way:

METHODS

IO::Socket::SSL::Intercept helps creating the cloned certificate with the following methods:

$mitm = IO::Socket::SSL::Intercept->new(%args)

This creates a new interceptor object. %args should be

proxy_cert X509 | proxy_cert_file filename

This is the proxy certificate. It can be either given by an X509 object from Net::SSLeays internal representation, or using a file in PEM format.

proxy_key EVP_PKEY | proxy_key_file filename

This is the key for the proxy certificate. It can be either given by an EVP_PKEY object from Net::SSLeays internal representation, or using a file in PEM format. The key should not have a passphrase.

pubkey EVP_PKEY | pubkey_file filename

This optional argument specifies the public key used for the cloned certificate. It can be either given by an EVP_PKEY object from Net::SSLeays internal representation, or using a file in PEM format. If not given it will create a new public key on each call of new.

serial INTEGER|CODE

This optional argument gives the starting point for the serial numbers of the newly created certificates. If not set the serial number will be created based on the digest of the original certificate. If the value is code it will be called with serial(original_cert,CERT_asHash(original_cert)) and should return the new serial number.

cache HASH | SUBROUTINE

This optional argument gives a way to cache created certificates, so that they don't get recreated on future accesses to the same host. If the argument ist not given an internal HASH ist used.

If the argument is a hash it will store for each generated certificate a hash reference with cert and atime in the hash, where atime is the time of last access (to expire unused entries) and cert is the certificate. Please note, that the certificate is in Net::SSLeays internal X509 format and can thus not be simply dumped and restored. The key for the hash is an ident either given to clone_cert or generated from the original certificate.

If the argument is a subroutine it will be called as $cache->(ident,sub). This call should return either an existing (cached) (cert,key) or call sub without arguments to create a new (cert,key), store it and return it. If called with $cache->('type') the function should just return 1 to signal that it supports the current type of cache. If it reutrns nothing instead the older cache interface is assumed for compatibility reasons.

($clone_cert,$key) = $mitm->clone_cert($original_cert,[ $ident ])

This clones the given certificate. An ident as the key into the cache can be given (like host:port), if not it will be created from the properties of the original certificate. It returns the cloned certificate and its key (which is the same for alle created certificates).

$string = $mitm->serialize

This creates a serialized version of the object (e.g. a string) which can then be used to persistantly store created certificates over restarts of the application. The cache will only be serialized if it is a HASH. To work together with Storable the STORABLE_freeze function is defined to call serialize.

$mitm = IO::Socket::SSL::Intercept->unserialize($string)

This restores an Intercept object from a serialized string. To work together with Storable the STORABLE_thaw function is defined to call unserialize.

AUTHOR

Steffen Ullrich