Malice

Malice is a Haskell library that provides abstractions and protocol-specific attacks for intercepting and modifying network traffic. It leverages the power of Haskell's type system to define an embedded DSL for describing the actions of Eve and Mallory. In effect, it allows an actor in the middle to write code that is as close to pure evil as possible.

Malice is inspired by Mallory and mitmproxy.

Core Abstractions

Monad Transformers

At the core of Malice lie four monad transformers:

• EndpointT
• VertexT
• EveT
• MalT

EndpointT provides a buffered interface to a stream endpoint (e.g. recv on a socket) suitable for use with Haskell's great parser combinator and serialization libraries such as attoparsec and cereal. It also provides a means of throwing and catching pure protocol-related exceptions.

VertexT extends EndpointT with a stream origination point (e.g. send on a socket). It can serve as an abstraction for Alice (a node for bidirectional communication, such as a client or a server), or for Mallory in one direction (a node that modifies a unidirectional stream). These two uses are depicted below:

           v
           |
           |
  o   OR   o
 / \       |
|   |      |
^   v      v

EveT is just like EndpointT, except it provides buffered interfaces for two stream endpoints. This is an abstraction for a passive man in the middle:

      Bob
       v
       |
       |
       v
  o    o
  ^
  |
  |
  ^
Alice

Give a specific side of the communication that an EveT action sits between (Alice or Bob), an EndpointT action can be hoisted into an EveT action. Here, the o's represent effective EndpointT contexts.

MalT (Mal is short for Mallory) extends EveT with two stream origination points. MalT is to EveT as VertexT is to EndpointT, and MalT is to VertexT as EveT is to EndpointT. Like VertexT, MalT can be viewed in two different ways:

      Bob        Bob
     v   ^       ^  v
     |   |       |  |
      \ /        |  |
  o    o    OR   o  o
 / \             |  |
|   |            |  |
^   v            ^  v
Alice            Alice

Here, the o's represent effective VertexT contexts. Accordingly, given a source side and destination side, a VertexT action can be hoisted into a MalT action.

Monad Classes

These monad transformers come with mtl-compatible monad classes. They work like one would expect. The diagram below depicts how the relationships described above apply to these classes:

MonadEve       ==implies=>  MonadMal

   ^                           ^
   |                           |
 hoistFrom                   hoistFromTo
   |                           |

MonadEndpoint  ==implies=>  MonadVertex

Here are the main operations within each class (keep in mind the hierarchy):

data Side = Alice | Bob

instance Awaitable Parser
instance Awaitable Get
...

instance Yieldable B.ByteString
instance Yieldable L.ByteString
instance Yieldable Builder
...

type instance InnerEndpoint (EveT m) = EndpointT m
type instance InnerEndpoint (MalT m) = EndpointT m
type instance InnerVertex (MalT m) = VertexT m

await :: (MonadEndpoint e m, Awaitable f) => f a -> m a
raise :: MonadEndpoint e m => e -> m a
except :: MonadEndpoint e m => m a -> (e -> m a) -> m a

yield :: (MonadVertex e m, Yieldable a) => a -> m ()

hoistFrom :: MonadEve e m => Side -> (InnerEndpoint m) a -> m a

hoistFromTo :: MonadMal e m => Side -> Side -> (InnerVertex m) a -> m a

All of these relationship make more sense when seen in action. A well-commented demonstration of flipping images over HTTP and HTTPS (without any external HTTP protocol logic) can be found at demo/flip-images/FlipImages.hs. The Demo section below describes how to run the example.

Furthermore, for a nice example for just MonadVertex, see Mal.Middle.Socks5.

Protocol Support

The only protocol-specific attack included right now is a basic SSL-sniff-style key swap that requires your TLS client to trust Malice's certs (which scripts/new-root can generate for you). Thanks to Vincent Hanquez's wonderful tls library, this required only 150 lines of code (found in Mal.Protocol.TLS).

Other protocols will be added as needed. SSH will probably be next.

Routing Traffic Through Malice

Currently, Malice contains a SOCK5 server and a tranparent TCP proxy that uses netfilter.

Demo

./demo contains a simple example program called flip-images, which flips JPEG's and PNG's passing through HTTP and HTTPS. It demonstrates the ease with which one can modify structured streams using Malice, and some basic ways to situate Malice between Alice and Bob.

It's usage is as follows:

flip-images [-t|--transparent] [-p|--port PORT] CERT PRIV

Where CERT is a PEM-encoded CA certificate and PRIV is the corresponding PEM-encoded RSA private key. ./scripts/new-root can generate these for you. You will need to install this certificate as a root in your browser.

By default, flip-images runs as a SOCKS5 server. The -t flag causes it to instead run as a transparent TCP proxy, using netfilter to forward connections along to their intended destinations. With this option, you will need to direct all of Bob's traffic to the proxy port.

This iptables rule is probably the easiest way to test out transparent mode on a single machine (where Malice runs as $uid, which must be different from that of Bob):

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m multiport --dports 80,443 -m owner ! --uid-owner $uid -j REDIRECT --to-port $port

And to restore:

iptables -t nat -L --line-numbers
iptables -t nat -D OUTPUT $n