Darksat IT Security Forums

How a Proxy Server Works - Chaining Proxy Servers.

Outlined below are the easiest ways to use the proxies you find here or the ones you find yourself.

A proxy server acts as a gateway between you and the Internet. With a proxy server enabled on your Web browser, your request for a web page (or a download) goes first to the proxy server, where it checks if someone had previously accessed that page (or download). If it finds one, then it will just give it to you from the proxy server -- that makes loading a page or downloading something significantly faster. If the proxy server doesn't detect an already existing page or download, it will go out to the Internet, get the page or download, and give it to you. Since it is the proxy server that actually connects to the site you are viewing or downloading from, it is the IP of the proxy that is left in the remote server's logs, and not the IP that you are currently using.

Many proxy servers keep logs of the IP's that have connected to them, however, if you use a proxy physically located in a country that is not especially friendly with the one in which you reside, it can make it difficult for someone to obtain the logs, even with a subpoena. You can increase the level of difficulty by "chaining" proxies, or having one proxy connect to another proxy. To maximize the difficulty of tracing the originating IP, each proxy should be located in a different country.

The best countries to use are generally Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Russia and Czech Republic.

To use a proxy server with Internet Explorer.

1. Open up Internet Explorer.

2. Go to the View menu and select Internet Options.

3. A window will appear with several tabs along the top. Click on the
Connection tab.

4. Click settings, then Use proxy server for this connection add the address and port and press ok.

To use a proxy server with Netscape Communicator.

1. Open up Communicator.

2. Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences.

3. A window will now appear, with your options listed on the left-hand
side. Double-click on the word Advanced.

4. When you click on Advanced, three options will appear: Cache,
Proxies, and SmartUpdate. Click on Proxies.

5. You'll now see some options with radio buttons beside them. Click on the radio button beside "Manual proxy configuration" to select it.

One SIMPLE way to "chain" proxies is to enter the information for one proxy directly into your browser's proxy configuration setup. Then connect to a web anonymizer which is also a proxy, and from there, to the site you want to view. Anyone trying to trace your actual IP would now have to subpoena the logs from TWO proxy servers. You could chain in a third proxy server by entering it into the address bar of your browser, in conjunction with the URL of the web anonymizer. The URL that you type should look something like this:

http://proxyB:port/http://proxyC:port/http://www.whereyougo.com/

This would, in effect, connect you to proxy A, the one specified in your browser configuration, then to proxy B, then to proxy C, and finally, to the web anonymizer, from where you would enter the URL of the site you want to visit, using FOUR proxy servers chained together.

This does not work with all proxies, and finding publicly accessible proxy servers is becoming more difficult.

These are without using SocksCAP.

More Tips for Chaining Proxies

First of all grab SocksCAP from here:

http://www.socks.nec.com/cgi-bin/download.pl

This is a tool that allows you to grab all outgoing traffic. (Meaning you can make anything use a proxy)

1. In the  setting, enter  this  as  socks server  : 127.0.0.1  port  8000.

2. Click  on  'socks  version  5'.  click  'resolve  all  names  remotely'.     Uncheck 'supported authentication'.

3. In  the main  window, choose new  and then browse  to create a  shortcut for the internet client you want to give socks support.

4. Repeat this step for every program you want.

Then grab SocksChain here:

http://www.ufasoft.com/socks/

1. In the service  menu, click on new. enter 'Chain'  as name and '8000' as  port to accept connections on.

2. Click on  new and fill  in the ips of  the fastest  wingates you  found,     but this time, use port 1080 for this (and not the port 23).

3. Using the  '<' and '>',  you can add and  remove socks.  be sure to test all socks  one by  one  before  adding  them  all to  the list  in once, because if  one of  them is  bad, you  chain will not work  and you will not be able to locate the bad socks in the chain.

4. If all  of them  seem to  work, you  use the  '<' key  to add  them  all mind  speed  problems. 4  or less  is fine.  i think  10 or  13 is  the limit put by TCP/IP).

Scanning for Proxies

There is a list of commonly used proxy tools here:

http://www.proxys4all.com/tools.shtml

The best known proxy scanner being Proxy Hunter available here:

http://www.jtpfxp.net/downloads.htm

An article on how to configure Proxy Hunter here:

http://www.pgzone.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=10

Wingate scanner works better through SocksCAP (mentioned above) as something PH can crash when being used through SocksCAP. The point of scanning through a proxy is that it's less likely you'll get in trouble for scanning.

Get Wingate Scanner Here:

http://packetstormsecurity.nl/wingate-scanner/wGateScan_4_0b.zip

You can also get ProxyChecker here:

http://www.checkproxy.com/download.html

This will scan and also tell you if the proxy is transparent or not and calculate the speed of the proxy.

And Dipstick here:

http://klever.net/kin/static/dipstick.exe

Which is used for testing the relative speeds of mirrors, but also can be used for checking proxies.

Just fire off Dipstick.  Rightclick  in  the small green rectangular and choose  Show  main  window. To  import a list of wingates, just click on Advanced, choose Import List and select your file. You  can also  manually ping a  simple host  by clicking on Manual Ping. Use those wingates with the smallest average time.

Use Opera rather than IE as IE has a tendency to reveal your IP *anyway*. http://www.opera.com/

For anonymising yourself on forums  8O or web-sites in general, use Opera, turn everything off and use a wingate.

If you like chain the proxies and even better use SocksCAP and SockChain for everything.

I don't like the warning on proxy hunter ;D