Socks proxy using SSH

Tunnelling over our Internet link it sounds already exiting, isn’t it?. But how difficult is it? Do we need any complex and sophisticated configuration of hardware and software? Hmm.. it is not necessary even to involve ipsec or ssl stack to create VPN. SOCKS is built in to OpenSSH so it’s trivial to run SOCKS proxy server with ssh client running with option -D. This option configures SSH client to listen on your local Linux box on specified by us tcp port. Then  we will use SOCKS5 proxy configuration built into most of Internet browsers to connect to.

First, SSH to your localhost server with, -D {port_number} option. It creates ssh tunnel between your local machine and remote server your.server.com listening on your local host TCP port_number 1080

ssh -D 1080 username@your.server.com

Then redirect all http traffic to use the tunnel. To do so, open Firefox > Options > Advanced > Network tab > Connection Settings… > Manual procy configuration > SOCKS Host: localhost Port: 1080 > OK

Since now on you are using @your.server.com ip geo location, that you can check at http://whatismyipaddress.com/ . It works with EC2 instances.

Hope you enjoyed.