![What it isnât
⢠Not a security testing tool. Use Burp Suite.
⢠Not a distributed testing tool. Use MZBench.
⢠Not a scenario based testing. Use MZBench
⢠Though RegExes like â{re [a-z]+}â can be
used to add some variety to message data.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fae9d716-30f5-4b13-84f6-555e1c7969e0-160825051828/85/2016-tcpkali-websocket-14-320.jpg)
2016-tcpkali-websocket
- 1. WebSocket introspection and stress testing with TCPKali by Lev Walkin <lwalkin@mz.com> @levwalkin
- 2. WebSocket ⢠Persistent, bi-directional message layer on top of TCP ⢠Compact binary framing (2-14 bytes overhead) ⢠Extensible (compression, custom protocols negotiation) ⢠Rather simple in its basic form, but TCP-only tooling does not work since WS starts with HTTP req/resp. ⢠Native in modern browsers, Secure wss:// is rather compatible with old proxies and network devices.
- 3. MZ (Machine Zone) ⢠Game of War and Mobile Strike ⢠New RTplatform⢠⢠MZâs real time platform is a competitive asset ⢠(Donât let embedded systems engineers appropriate the âreal-timeâ term)
- 4. MZ Challenges ⢠Support hundreds of millions events per second to hundreds of millions of global users and devices ⢠Large scale TCP-only load testing and introspection tools do not play well with WebSockets ⢠Answer: tcpkali (fast, single-node, CLI)⨠and MZBench (thorough, distributed, Web UI) ⢠MZBench talk by Vibhav Garg:⨠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ravA5emK9UE
- 5. TCPKali ⢠TCP and WebSocket ⢠Large scale persistence ⢠Extremely fast ⢠Developer-friendly ⢠https://github.com/ machinezone/tcpkali ⢠brew install tcpkali
- 6. Large Scale Systems Developer Challenges ⢠Stress-testing breaks things. ⢠Many clients break things. ⢠Slow clients break things. ⢠Some WebSocket framing options break things. ⢠Need detailed visibility into whatâs going on.
- 7. Stress-testing ⢠Idea: repeat message many times ⢠tcpkali --ws 127.1:8080 -m âMyDataâ ⢠tcpkali --ws 127.1:8080 -d # dump ⢠tcpkali --ws 127.1:8080 -m âMyDataâ -d -r100 ⢠tcpkali -l 8080 127.1:8080 -m z # self-test
- 8. Breaking Node.JS ⢠brew install tcpkali ⢠brew install npm && npm install websocket ⢠Grab code from http://cjihrig.com/blog/websockets-in- node-js-0-8-6-for-windows-7/ remove âecho-protocolâ. ⢠node websocket-server.sh ⢠tcpkali --ws -mz 127.1:8080 ⢠Observe `top -ocpu`âŚ
- 9. Many clients ⢠Idea: establish many mostly idle connections ⢠tcpkali 127.1:8080 --websocket --message-rate 0.1⨠--message â{ws.ping}â --duration 1h⨠--connections 1m ⢠tcpkali --ws -r0.1 -m â{ws.ping}â -T1h --c1m 127.1:8080 ⢠Requires ~=1m/64k interface aliases on a host. ⢠tcpkali automatically picks up all interface aliases. ⢠tcpkali will suggest tuning kernel options!
- 10. Slow clients ⢠Idea: establish bandwidth limits ⢠tcpkali --ws 127.1:8080 -m âmessageâ⨠--channel-bandwidth-downstream 14.4kbps ⢠Some thing in the opposite direction:⨠--channel-bandwidth-upstream 42mbps
- 11. WebSocket Framing ⢠Idea: easy construction of non-trivial framing ⢠⌠-m âhere: {ws.binary </etc/passwd>}â ⢠⌠-m â{ws.continuation âunexpected frameâ}â ⢠⌠-1 â{ws.text âMaryâ âŚ}â -m â{ws.cont âhadâ}â ⢠(the last one may trigger inďŹnite memory consumption on a peer prior to receiving a message by application due to frame reassembly)
- 12. Developer Visibility ⢠`-d` dumps some random connectionâs TCP-level I/O, for casual observation ⢠--dump-all-in, --dump-all-out, --dump-one-in --dump- one-out will help to get more or less data. ⢠--latency-connect, --latency-ďŹrst-byte, --latency- marker for protocol and application level SLA checks ⢠--statsd exports many internal metrics to graph progress (via e.g. DataDog)
- 14. What it isnât ⢠Not a security testing tool. Use Burp Suite. ⢠Not a distributed testing tool. Use MZBench. ⢠Not a scenario based testing. Use MZBench ⢠Though RegExes like â{re [a-z]+}â can be used to add some variety to message data.
- 15. Source and Documentation ⢠Requires bison and ďŹex (brew install, yum install, âŚ) ⢠git clone https://github.com/machinezone/tcpkali && cd tcpkali && autoreconf -iv && ./conďŹgure && sudo make install ⢠tcpkali -h # most useful options ⢠tcpkali --help # full list of command line options ⢠man tcpkali # more thorough help