Overview

CIFP (Credential-Injecting Forward Proxy) is a multi-tenant SaaS proxy that automatically injects real API credentials into HTTP/S requests — without ever exposing those credentials to the clients making the requests.

You give CIFP your secrets once. Your agents, scripts, and tools connect through the proxy using a simple per-proxy username and password. CIFP swaps in the real credentials before forwarding the request upstream.

What CIFP Solves

Modern AI agents and automated scripts need to call third-party APIs — GitHub, OpenAI, Stripe, Slack — but distributing real API keys to every process creates a sprawling credential management problem. Rotating a single key means touching every deployment. A compromised key means immediate exposure.

CIFP centralises all credentials in an encrypted store on the proxy. Your agents see only proxy credentials — short-lived, revocable, scoped per-proxy. If an agent is compromised, you revoke its proxy credential. The underlying API keys are unaffected.

Two Operating Modes

Every CIFP proxy runs in one of two modes, chosen at creation. Pick the one that matches how you work — you can always create a second proxy in the other mode.

Key Features

• Credential injection — Authorization: Bearer {$GITHUB_PAT} becomes the real token at the proxy layer
• CEL-based firewall — per-request allow/deny/hold rules with full access to method, URL, host, path, headers, and body sample
• Human-in-the-loop (HITL) — hold suspicious requests and surface them in the dashboard for manual approval
• Per-proxy credentials — each proxy has its own username/password pairs; compromise one, revoke one
• IP allowlist — restrict which source IPs can connect to a proxy
• Access logs — every proxied request is logged with action, rule matched, and bytes
• Metrics — built-in metrics endpoint on each proxy for monitoring and observability
• Multi-tenant — each account gets isolated proxies; secrets never cross tenant boundaries
• CIFP DNS resolver (Pro+) — a private DNS resolver that blocks malware, trackers, and custom domains at the DNS layer using curated blocklists and Shannon-entropy DGA detection
• Expiry notifications — receive email and/or SMS alerts at configurable lead times (up to two weeks in advance) before any secret or proxy credential expires

How a Request Flows

# Your agent (no real credentials needed)
curl -x https://myproxy.proxy.cifp.vril.dev:3128 \
     -U alice:proxy-password \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer {\$OPENAI_API_KEY}" \
     https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions \
     -d '{"model":"gpt-4o","messages":[...]}'

#  ↓  CIFP resolves {\$OPENAI_API_KEY} from encrypted store
#  ↓  Evaluates firewall rules (if firewall mode)
#  ↓  Forwards with real Authorization: Bearer sk-proj-...
#  ↓  Returns response to your agent

Architecture

Each CIFP proxy runs on its own dedicated virtual machine with a dedicated IP address. No resources are shared with other tenants. Each proxy consists of:

• Enterprise-grade proxy engine — handles HTTP/HTTPS and TLS interception with battle-tested reliability
• CIFP credential sidecar — manages secret injection, per-credential authentication, and CEL rule evaluation
• Encrypted secret store — AES-256-GCM encrypted database; secrets never leave the machine

Each proxy supports up to 26,872 unique authentication credentials simultaneously on the same dedicated IP — one per port in CIFP's multi-port range. The control plane manages proxy lifecycle and pushes configuration changes to proxies through a secured internal API.