Nothing In, Nothing Out

Working in the information security field it’s frequently handy to be able
to browse the web in different configurations. Sometimes you want to be able
to see and interact with our traffic we speak with a server, sometimes you
want to hide where we’re coming from on the other end, and other times we
need to bypass a filter that’s keeping us from browsing.

Here are three basic configurations that achieve these objectives. I
personally use
Google Chrome
and the
Proxy Switchy
extension to handle my various proxies.

1. Your Local Intercepting Proxy : Listening on port 8080 you use
   this to browse through Burp for standard visibility and/or HTTP
   modification purposes. Just set Proxy Switchy up with a new connection,
   all protocols, with a destination of localhost:8080. Start up your proxy
   and make sure it’s listening on the same port and you’re ready to go.
   Note: any proxy works for this; I prefer Burp on my desktop of choice,
   which is OS X.

1. Using Tor : You use this option to browse anonymously or to
   appear as another IP address to the site you’re visiting. First, install
   Tor
   , start it, and then create another entry in Proxy Switchy and select
   SOCKS as the proxy type (Version 5) for the port that is listening. You
   can use netstat or lsof -i | grep -i tor to ensure you’ve got the right
   port. Then select that option from Proxy Switchy and browse. Do a Google
   search for ‘ip‘ and notice it’s not your original anymore.

1. An SSH Tunnel : It’s useful to have this set up so that you can
   get around filters that block browsing over common ports. This way, if
   you’re able to SSH out over any port from the current network, you’ll be
   able to use the web as well. To configure this you need to have access
   to an SSH server on the Internet. Then, configure your client to
   dynamically connect to it while listening on a local port. On OS X or
   Linux, ssh -D8081 user@host. In PuTTY, go to the tunnels section and
   create a new tunnel with the port number and the dynamic option set, and
   then another with the same port number, the local option set, and your
   destination host and port, like so: host.com:port. Save your PuTTY
   session, connect to it, then switch to that proxy selection in your
   browser and browse through away. Check your IP again and notice you’re
   coming from your SSH box now1.

I configure these browsing options immediately upon setting up any new
system. Consider adding them to your basic build as well, as they allow you
increased flexibility and functionality in a number of situations.

If you have any similar tips, do
let me know. I’d love to hear about them.

::

Notes

1 Be sure you have permission to bypass access controls before doing this.