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There is one last step. Click the "Preserve Host Header" box. When Firefox generated its request, it sent a Host header with the "https://auth.yale.edu" value. Without Redirector, Firefox does not know about the URL mapping so the Host header is the same as it would send to real production Shibboleth. This turns out to be exactly what we want to get the Unicon CAS-Shibboleth integration to generate the correct Service string without any fudging.

Charles is a larger tool and it has a license fee. Redirector is simpler and is free. Because Redirector operates inside the Browser there are changes in the URL and the Host header that are visible to the Browser, to SAML Tracer, and to the Shibboleth server (at least the Unicon CAS-Shib integration). Because Charles operates outside of the Browser and performs the same function that in production is performed by the F5, when we use Charles then everything is exactly the same as it will be in production. However, the differences created by Redirector are generally not important and do not interfere with any normal Shib testing.

The techniques used by Charles are similar to exploits used by some malware. The difference is that Charles only functions when you explicitly run it and it only decodes traffic for hosts you configure it to proxy. If you accidentally leave it running and do some banking, then since bankofamerica.com is not in any of its configuration lists the SSL encrypted data remains secure and no sensitive information is exposed, even to other windows on your desktop. If you use it to debug CAS, then close it when you are done and don't save files that contain your Netid password.