SSH tunneling and SOCKS

Ssh protocol is used to stablish connections to remote machines in a secure way. Using it and socks is possible to avoid restrictions of a proxy and get free Internet connection.

To get full Internet access without proxys limits is needed to connect to and intermidied server using ssh.
Connection is encrypted, so proxy can’t track our movements because information travels throw an encryted tunnel.

What do we need?

To be able to create a tunnel is needed:

- Ssh client (such as putty)

- Ssh server (it’s easy with Debian: apt-get install openssh-server)

(Of course both, client and server, must be connected to an Internet connection)

Creating the ssh tunnel

Tunneling with Unix, Linux and Mac OS X

Open a new shell session:

ricard$ ssh -p 22 -DN 9999 userName@ssh-server-adress

We type our password and we’ve got a tunnel running.

Notice:Port 22 is set by default, so “-p 22″ is not needed unless your server listens connections in anther port.

N parameter will avoid shell start, we only start the tunnel. Port 9999 is the local port we use to get into the tunnel.

Tunneling in windows

First of all download putty

client.

Then execute it:

Set servers hostname or ip and port(by default is set to 22), choose connection type SSH.

Check “Don’t start a shell or command at all”, protocol version 2 and set Blowfish encryption cipher after — warn below here –.

Set local port we use to access to tunnel (ex: 9999) and select “Dynamic”. Then press “Add” and must appear D9999 in the list.

Once everything is configured, go back to the first screen(“Session”) and save configuration settings putting a name and then press save. Finally we press into Open, set you username and password and that’s all. It’s easy, isn’t it?

Setting up your broswer to use tunnels

Firefox

Go to firefox preferences:

Advanced -> network -> parameters

Set localhost and port 9999 just like the screeshot.

Optionaly you can add local adress you don’t want to pass throw tunnel such localhost, 127.0.0.1 and your netowork address.

Apple Safari

This will make our computer to use tunnel for all connections.

If we want to omit some adress we must set them just like in firefox configuration.

Internet Explorer 7

Go to Internet Options

Set socks adress localhost and port 9999. It’s just like the same as previous one’s.

If you want to configure for example e-mule or any p2p client to go throw a ssh tunnel SOCKS just set localhost and port 9999 in proxy configuration window.