Nginx Pathological

An Nginx module that crafts bad HTTP responses.

Installation

Clone the repo and submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/steve-chavez/ngx_pathological

Compile the module:

cd /path/to/nginx-source
./configure --add-module=/path/to/ngx_pathological
make
sudo make install

Usage

Add a local directory for nginx:

mkdir -p nginx/conf

Add nginx config:

echo nginx/conf/nginx.conf <<EOF
daemon off;
pid        ./nginx.pid;

events {}

http {

  access_log /dev/stdout;

  server {
    listen 8080;

    location /pathological {
      pathological;
    }
  }
}
EOF

Start nginx:

$ nginx -p nginx -e stderr

Setting status

By setting an integer on the status query string parameter, you can set a custom status code.

$ curl 'localhost:8080/pathological?status=204' -i
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

Malformed header

By setting a value on the malformed-header query string parameter, you can elicit responses with malformed headers. The allowed values are:

• spaces-in-header-name
• trailing-whitespace
• header-injection
• non-printable-chars
• missing-value
• multiple-colons
• invalid-encoding
• oversized-headers
• duplicate-headers
• invalid-characters

Examples:

$ curl 'localhost:8080/pathological?malformed-header=header-injection' -i

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
HeaderInjection
Injected-Header: This header contains an injection

$ curl 'localhost:8080/pathological?malformed-header=missing-value' -i

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
MissingValue:

Response Delay

By setting an integer on the delay query string parameter, you can delay the response.

$ curl 'localhost:8080/pathological?delay=3' -i

## After 3 seconds...

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Disconnect Request

By setting true on the disconnect query string parameter, you can immediately cause a disconnection.

$ curl "localhost:8080/pathological?disconnect=true"
curl: (52) Empty reply from server

Setting it to false makes the request proceed. A different value will give an error.

Development

Nix is used for providing dependencies.

nix-shell

# to run the tests
make test

# to run a local nginx server on port 8080
make start