cats VS mitmproxy

Out of this frustration I've built: https://github.com/Endava/cats. It's for APIs, but mostly addressing exactly this case: don't use strings for everything, if you choose to use it though, make sure you add patterns for checking if things are valid, make sure you think about all the corner cases and all the weird characters that can brake you app, and so on.

If the API has an OpenAPI spec available, you can use: https://github.com/Endava/cats

This is why we need better tools which will give benefits for the added complexity. If you need to create both the feature files AND the code, it's just complexity with little benefits. But frameworks like https://github.com/karatelabs/karate or https://github.com/Endava/cats are hiding this complexity and remove the code layer entirely. Which, in my view, this is where you need to be in 2023, particularly for API testing.

I've built a tool specifically to test if these kind of characters will reach API backends: https://github.com/Endava/cats. My idea was that APIs should explicitly reject or sanitise input containing such characters.

Cats by Endava

This statement gives a false sense of security. You can use a transparent proxy, like mitmproxy, to view HTTPS traffic - https://mitmproxy.org/. https://reedmideke.github.io/networking/2021/01/04/mitmproxy-openwrt.html

You'll need to install mitmproxy and set it up on your computer and iOS. I won't go into too much detail here on how to do this, but there are plenty of guides available. This is a pretty good one: https://nadav.ca/2021/02/26/inspecting-an-iphone-s-https-traffic/

TIL this goes back to 2006, how cool! We nowadays have a much simpler version as a mitmproxy example: https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/blob/main/examples/ad.... Although it obviously does not work as well anymore with everything being HTTPS nowadays (unless you trust the cert of course). :)

Perhaps you could have your device use a proxy that can do the HTTPS unwrap for you? https://mitmproxy.org/ maybe?

A great way to test the effectiveness of a pinning implementation is by simulating an MITM attack. Tools like Mitmproxy or Wireshack allow us to create a test environment to monitor, intercept, and proxy network requests for a test host.