Paprika

version: 1.0.0

Paprika is a specialized, programmatic local Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) proxy engineered to prevent client-side profiling, tracking, and anti-bot fingerprinting. By synchronizing Layer 4 (TCP/TLS) handshakes, Layer 7 (HTTP/2) settings framing, and Client Runtime (JavaScript V8/Gecko/WebKit Engine) configurations, Paprika mitigates advanced device-fingerprinting vectors used by modern anti-bot systems (e.g., Akamai, Cloudflare, PerimeterX).

Unlike standard forward proxies that merely modify the User-Agent string, Paprika intercepts, reconstructs, and patches incoming traffic bi-directionally to ensure absolute cryptographic and semantic cohesion.

Deployment & Installation Architecture

Paprika is available in both GitHub and Codeberg and as a pip package.

System Prerequisites

Before initializing Paprika, your host environment must have OpenSSL installed and accessible via the system PATH. Paprika’s automated zero-dependency certificate manager shells out to the OpenSSL binary to generate the 2048-bit Root CA and self-signed certificates for local HTTPS MITM decryption.

• Windows: winget install OpenSSL.OpenSSL (or via Git for Windows)
• macOS: brew install openssl
• Linux: sudo apt install openssl

Installation via pip

For production or standard daemonized usage, install the pre-compiled package directly via pip:

pip install paprika-proxy

Installation

Via GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/paprika.git
cd paprika
pip install -r requirements.txt

Via Codeberg:

git clone https://codeberg.org/yourusername/paprika.git
cd paprika
pip install -r requirements.txt

(Dependencies primarily include curl_cffi for Layer-4 impersonation and proxy.py for the localized routing server).

Usage

Paprika operates under two distinct execution topologies: Fetch Mode (a single-shot, headless request execution) and Proxy Mode (a persistent, multi-threaded MITM interceptor).

If executed without arguments, Paprika drops into an interactive REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) shell (paprika-cli>) for session-persistent command execution.

1. Fetch Mode (Single-Shot Emulation)

Fetch mode is designed for CI/CD pipelines, quick endpoint validation, or localized scraping where spinning up a full proxy daemon is unnecessary. It routes a single request through the curl_cffi engine and prints the raw response.

Syntax:

paprika --mode fetch --url <TARGET_URL> [--method <METHOD>] [--browser <PROFILE>]

Example: Fetch a highly protected JSON endpoint while strictly impersonating Firefox 135 on Windows:

paprika --mode fetch -u "https://api.protected-site.com/v1/data" -m GET --browser firefox135

2. Proxy Mode (MITM Intercept Daemon)

Proxy mode binds a local listener that intercepts all outgoing browser or script traffic. It dynamically rewrites Layer 7 headers, injects the JS prototype hooks into HTML responses, and seamlessly handles TLS decryption/re-encryption.

Note: Upon boot, Paprika will automatically attempt to rewrite your host OS proxy settings (Windows Registry, macOS networksetup, or Linux gsettings) to route traffic through itself, restoring them upon a graceful exit.

Syntax:

paprika --mode proxy [--port <PORT>] [--browser <PROFILE>] [--ca-key-file <PATH> ...]

Example: Spin up the localized MITM proxy on port 8899, enforcing the Apple Silicon Safari 18.4 fingerprint constraint matrix:

paprika --mode proxy --port 8899 --browser safari184

Command Line Arguments

Author: nulsie License: GNU GPL v3