HITCH(8)

NAME
Hitch - high performance TLS proxy

SYNOPSIS

hitch [OPTIONS] [PEM]

DESCRIPTION

Hitch is a network proxy that terminates TLS/SSL connections and forwards the unencrypted traffic to some backend. It's designed to handle 10s of thousands of connections efficiently on multicore machines.

Hitch has very few features -- it's designed to be paired with an intelligent backend like Varnish Cache. It maintains a strict 1:1 connection pattern with this backend handler so that the backend can dictate throttling behavior, maximum connection behavior, availability of service, etc.

The only required argument is a path to a PEM file that contains the certificate (or a chain of certificates) and private key. It should also contain DH parameter if you wish to use Diffie-Hellman cipher suites.

COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

--config=FILE
    Load configuration from specified file. See hitch.conf(5) for details.

--tls
    All TLS versions, no SSLv3 (deprecated). See config file setting tls-protos.

--ssl
    enable SSLv3 (deprecated). See config file setting tls-protos.

-c

--ciphers=SUITE
    Sets allowed ciphers (Default: "")

-e

--ssl-engine=NAME
    Sets OpenSSL engine (Default: "")

-O

--prefer-server-ciphers
    Prefer server list order

--client
    Enable client proxy mode

-b  --backend=[HOST]:PORT Backend [connect] (default is "[127.0.0.1]:8000")

-f  --frontend=[HOST]:PORT[+CERT] Frontend [bind] (default is "[*]:8443") (Note: brackets are mandatory in endpoint specifiers.)

-n

--workers=NUM
    Number of worker processes (Default: 1)

-B

--backlog=NUM
    Set listen backlog size (Default: 100)

-k

--keepalive=SECS
    TCP keepalive on client socket (Default: 3600)

-R

--backendrefresh=SECS
    Periodic backend IP lookup, 0 to disable (Default: 0)

-r

--chroot=DIR
    Sets chroot directory (Default: "")

-u

--user=USER
    Set uid/gid after binding the socket (Default: "")

-g

--group=GROUP
    Set gid after binding the socket (Default: "")

-q

--quiet
    Be quiet; emit only error messages

-s

--syslog
    Send log message to syslog in addition to stderr/stdout

--syslog-facility=FACILITY
    Syslog facility to use (Default: "daemon")

--daemon
    Fork into background and become a daemon; this also sets the --quiet option (Default: off)

--write-ip
    Write 1 octet with the IP family followed by the IP address in 4 (IPv4) or 16 (IPv6) octets little-endian to backend before the actual data (Default: off)

--write-proxy-v1
    Write HaProxy's PROXY v1 (IPv4 or IPv6) protocol line before actual data (Default: off)

--write-proxy-v2
    Write HaProxy's PROXY v2 binary (IPv4 or IPv6) protocol line before actual data (Default: off)

--write-proxy
    Equivalent to --write-proxy-v2. For PROXY version 1 use --write-proxy-v1 explicitly

--proxy-proxy
    Proxy HaProxy's PROXY (IPv4 or IPv6) protocol line before actual data (PROXY v1 only) (Default: off)

--alpn-protos=LIST
    Sets the protocols for ALPN/NPN negotiation, given by a comma separated list. If this is not set explicitly, ALPN/NPN will not be used. Requires OpenSSL 1.0.1 for NPN and OpenSSL 1.0.2 for ALPN.

--sni-nomatch-abort
    Abort handshake when client submits an unrecognized SNI server name (Default: off)

--ocsp-dir=DIR
    Set OCSP staple cache directory This enables automated retrieval and stapling of OCSP responses (Default: "")

-t

--test
    Test configuration and exit

-p

--pidfile=FILE
    PID file

-V

--version
    Print program version and exit

-h

--help
    This help message

HISTORY

Hitch was originally called stud and was written by Jamie Turner at Bump.com.