Are you blocked from accessing your favorite content? Or perhaps you're curious about the data that your personal devices are sending out to the internet? Or are you looking for a better way to browse the internet privately? Well, in this video, I'll show you how you can do that by creating your own proxy.
Well, a proxy server is simply an intermediary or a middleman that processes outgoing requests to its destination, thereby acting as a client on your behalf. There are many different protocols and proxy services that we can use. However, in this example, we're going to be going through the two most common ones: an HTTP proxy and a socket secure proxy. Let's go ahead and see how they work.
Proxy servers are quite easy to understand. In this example, let's say you have a client laptop, a proxy server. In a normal scenario, your laptop will make an HTTPS request to the website, and it will respond back. Now, when you make that request, you're actually sending a bit of metadata from your computer to the website. And in this metadata, you expose certain information, such as IP address.
Now that we understand HTTP proxies, let's go ahead and take a look at a SOCKS proxy. SOCKS proxies are very similar to HTTP proxies with a few differences. Let's use the... So the way it differs first is we start off by using an SSH application that lives on our client computer.
And that about covers it for HTTP proxies and SOCKS proxies. Now to recap, some of the benefits of proxies are increased anonymity, access to different types of content, a way to analyze web traffic, and parental blocks. For this demonstration, I'm going to be using an Ubuntu server with a free and open-source HTTP proxy called Squid. And for the SOCKS proxy, I'll be using an OpenSSH server. Let's go ahead and configure our proxies.
In this demonstration, I'm going to show you how you can create your own HTTP proxy using a free and open-source tool called Squid. Then after that, I'm going to show you how you can use this same server to run a SOCKS proxy. I'll be using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server to run this example.
Now that I've connected to my proxy server, we're going to run the first command here. We'll click yes, and then it'll look like that installed successfully. And we're almost ready to go, but first, we need to make one configuration change in the configuration file.
Now let's add a little bit more security to this. First, we're going to add some authentication using basic authentication. Let's go ahead and open up this configuration.
Now I've done that, I'm going to just restart the proxy server once more for these changes to take effect. Looks like that finished restarting. So now let's go to Postman once more, and we're going to add some back to our settings proxy.
Q: What is a proxy server?
A: A proxy server is an intermediary or a middleman that processes outgoing requests to its destination, thereby acting as a client on your behalf.
Q: What are the two most common types of proxies mentioned in the content?
A: The two most common types of proxies mentioned are an HTTP proxy and a SOCKS proxy.
Q: How does an HTTP proxy work?
A: An HTTP proxy works by the client making a request to the proxy server, which then forwards the request to the website. This can help to increase anonymity and hide certain information such as IP address.
Q: How does a SOCKS proxy differ from an HTTP proxy?
A: A SOCKS proxy is similar to an HTTP proxy but differs in that it starts off using an SSH application on the client computer.
Q: What are some benefits of using proxies?
A: Benefits of using proxies include increased anonymity, access to different types of content, ability to analyze web traffic, and implementation of parental blocks.
Q: What is Squid and OpenSSH server used for in creating proxies?
A: Squid is a free and open-source HTTP proxy used to create an HTTP proxy, while OpenSSH server is used to create a SOCKS proxy.
Q: How can authentication be added to a proxy server for security?
A: Authentication can be added to a proxy server by using basic authentication methods to enhance security.
Q: How can proxy security be enhanced further?
A: Proxy security can be enhanced further by making configuration changes and restarting the proxy server.
