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Manual Testing of Proxies

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Carter Tinney edited this page Mar 9, 2022 · 3 revisions

Setting up manual testing scenarios involving proxies can be surprisingly difficult. This page contains some recommended tools and configurations to help make this easier. These examples assume use of Unix.

HTTP/HTTPS Proxy

Setting up

Setting up an HTTP proxy can most easily be done via Squid. Squid can be installed via:

sudo apt-get install squid

If you wish to user password authentication for your proxy, create a file to store the password

sudo touch /etc/squid/passwords

Then you will need to add a user/password for auth. We can do this with htpasswd.

sudo apt-get install apache2-utils
sudo htpasswd /etc/squid/passwords <username>

The system will then prompt you to enter a new password for this user.

You will now need to edit the configuration file located at /etc/squid/squid.conf

Recommended squid.conf file (using authentication)

auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid3/basic_ncsa_auth /etc/squid/passwords
auth_param basic realm Squid proxy-caching web server
auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours
acl authenticated proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow authenticated
http_access deny all
http_port 3128

Recommended squid.conf file (no auth)

http_access allow all
http_port 3128

Testing

Now simply start the proxy up

sudo service squid start

We can verify that it is running by trying to access the internet with curl. These commands should return your IP

Use this one if using proxy authentication:

curl --proxy http://127.0.0.1:3128 --proxy-user <username> https://www.httpbin.org/ip

Or this one if there is no proxy authentication:

curl --proxy http://127.0.0.1:3128 https://www.httpbin.org/ip

When you are done, you can stop the proxy server with

sudo service squid stop

SOCKS4/SOCKS5 Proxy

Setting up

Setting up a SOCKS4 or SOCKS5 proxy can be done via dante. Dante can be installed with

sudo apt-get install dante-server

Rather than using a new series of users/passwords like the Squid server mentioned above, Dante will use authentication from your Linux operating system, using the username/passwords from your OS to log in to the proxy server. Note that use of authentication is only compatible with SOCKS5.

Once dante is installed, you will need to edit the configuration file. It can be found at /etc/danted.conf

Recommended danted.conf file (SOCKS5 - No Auth)

logoutput: syslog
user.privileged: root
internal: 0.0.0.0 port=1080
external: eth0
socksmethod: none
clientmethod: none

client pass {
	from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
	log: connect disconnect error
}

socks pass {
	from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
	log: connect disconnect error
	proxyprotocol: socks_v5
}

Recommended danted.conf file (SOCKS5 - Auth)

logoutput: syslog
user.privileged: root
internal: 0.0.0.0 port=1080
external: eth0
socksmethod: username
clientmethod: username

client pass {
	from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
	log: connect disconnect error
}

socks pass {
	from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
	log: connect disconnect error
	proxyprotocol: socks_v5
}

Recommended danted.conf file (SOCKS4)

logoutput: syslog
user.privileged: root
internal: 0.0.0.0 port=1080
external: eth0
socksmethod: none
clientmethod: none

client pass {
	from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
	log: connect disconnect error
}

socks pass {
	from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
	log: connect disconnect error
	proxyprotocol: socks_v4
}

Testing

Now simply start the proxy up

sudo service danted start

We can verify that it is running by trying to access the internet with curl. These commands should return your IP

SOCKS5 (With Auth)

curl --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:1080 --proxy-user <username> https://httpbin.org/ip

SOCKS5 (No Auth)

curl --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:1080 https://httpbin.org/ip

SOCKS4

curl ---proxy socks4://127.0.0.1:1080 https://httpbin.org/ip

When you are done, you can stop the proxy server with

sudo service danted stop
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