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Using Charles Proxy to Debug

Android SSL Tra c
Hack Upstate
Jun 20, 2017 · 5 min read

The following is from Odd Networks, Erik Straub

I’ve been a longtime user of Charles for checking requests and responses from the web
applications I write.

Charles as described on its site:

Charles is an HTTP proxy / HTTP monitor / Reverse Proxy that enables a developer to view
all of the HTTP and SSL / HTTPS traffic between their machine and the Internet. This
includes requests, responses and the HTTP headers (which contain the cookies and caching
information).

Lately, however, I’ve been doing a lot more work on Android apps than I have on server-
side applications. I figured it would be similarly helpful to debug some of the requests
we were making from our apps without logging out to Logcat and cluttering our app
code.

The requests I wanted to check happened to be protected by SSL, so in addition to

adding the proxy information to my device’s networking configuration, I also needed to
install Charles’ root certificate. It turns out that this is possible, but requires a bit of
work. Luckily I have now done this enough times to feel good about writing it up.

First off, this setup will not work on an emulator without an additional step (see
below). I admittedly haven’t needed to do any proxy debugging without a test device,
though.

Also, as of this post, we are targeting Android SDK version 25 in our applications, but
this specific setup should work with all versions. If not, feel free to correct me so that I
can update this post.

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Setting Up Your Project

If your test device is running Android 7.0 or newer, there are a few extra steps to ensure
that you are able to trust the Charles CA Certificate. To ensure Android trusts the
certificate, you’ll need to specify a Network Security Configuration for your
application. There are a few different ways of adding your certificate to the
application’s trusted configuration, but I found that the easiest was not to include
Charles’ certificate within my application code, but to simply trust the user-installed CA
certificates (like previous versions of Android used to do).

Specifying the android:networkSecurityConfig property within your

AndroidManifest.xml file:

<application android:allowBackup=”true” android:icon=”@mipmap/ic_launcher”

android:label=”@string/app_name”
android:roundIcon=”@mipmap/ic_launcher_round” android:supportsRtl=”true”
android:theme=”@style/AppTheme”
android:networkSecurityConfig=”@xml/network_security_config”>

view rawAndroidManifest.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Specifying the res/xml/network_security_config.xml file:

<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”utf-8"?><network-security-config> <debug-

overrides> <trust-anchors> <! — Trust user added CAs while debuggable only →
<certificates src=”user” /> </trust-anchors> </debug-overrides></network-
security-config>

view rawnetwork_security_config.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Setting Up Charles
Open up Charles on your Mac and then open Proxy > Proxy Settings from the toolbar.
You’ll need to make note of the HTTP Proxy Port that is specified.

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Then open up Proxy > SSL Proxying Settings from the toolbar and add the
appropriate Locations (host/port) for the requests you wish to debug. I usually just add
a wildcard route like *.myapidomain.com but specific domains like whatever-

app.herokuapp.com work fine as well.

Setting Up Your Android device

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Also make sure Charles is open and that the Mac is on the same wifi network as the
Android device you’ll be setting up.

Go to your device’s settings and wifi configuration.

Press and hold on the network you’re going to use and select Modify network from the
alert modal.

Then check Advanced Options and scroll until you see Proxy .

Tap the Proxy dropdown and select Manual .

For the Proxy hostname input your Mac’s IP address that you noted above.

Then for the Proxy port use the HTTP Proxy Port that you noted from Charles’ Proxy
Settings from above.

Tap Save .

After saving, you may notice a pop-up on your mac like this:
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You should now click Allow to let your Android device connect to Charles via the proxy
it has set up.

If you don’t see this prompt, you can ensure that your device can use the proxy from
within Charles by going to Proxy > Access Control Settings and adding your Android
device’s IP address on the wifi network.

One more step!

Now on your Android device, open up the browser and go to the following URL
chls.pro/ssl . You can also see these instructions from within the Charles app - go to

Help > SSL Proxying > Install Charles Root Certificate on a Mobile Device or

Remote Browser .

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The browser should download the cert and once finished, tap to open the file. Then
Android should prompt you to install the file.

After you’ve named the certificate and tapped “OK”, you will either be prompted to
input your device’s pin/password or prompted to set up your device’s pin/password.
Once that process is complete, you should be ready to debug some requests.

Note Until you remove the manual proxy from this device’s wifi configuration,
whenever you use this network again you will need to have Charles open and running
on the same IP address. You can always set the network configuration back to “Proxy:
None” once you’re done debugging.

Using An Emulator
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In the Android emulator run configuration add an Additional Emulator Command Line
Option: -http-proxy http://LOCAL_IP:8888

Where LOCAL_IP is the IP address of your computer, not 127.0.0.1 as that is the IP address
of the emulated phone.

EDIT: Thanks to Brandon Davis for pointing out that the full command would be

emulator -avd EMULATOR_NAME -http-proxy IP_ADDRESS:PORT

In addition, Android Studio 3.0 will now allow managing proxy settings for your emulator
images. Read all about the new features here and if you can’t wait for a stable release, 3.0 is
currently available in the dev channel.

Debugging requests
Now that you’re set up, you should see Charles recording traffic from your device. As
long as you’re configured properly, you should see those SSL request details from the
domains you specified in Charles’ SSL Proxying Settings.

Feel free to discuss your results and let me know if I missed anything obvious.

Android Proxy Ssl Https Android Emulator

About Help Legal

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