Proxy Server

Utilize SSH to make an HTTP Proxy

SOCKS is built in to OpenSSH, and so it’s a trivial thing to establish a local SOCKS HTTP proxy with the -D flag. For instance:

$ ssh -D 7070 myuser@remote_ssh_server

will open the port 7070 on your local machine for a SOCKS proxy and then all your HTTP proxy traffic can be defined to go through the SSH tunnel and out distant_ssh_server on the other end. Your HTTP proxy server is directly set up.

Next, set up your web browser to utilize the proxy server. Most web browser* include proxy support. For Firefox three, pass to Edit?Preferences?Advanced?Network?Settings, and set that you want to use a Manual HTTP Proxy, localhost, port 7070 and SOCKS v5 (although OpenSSH tolerates both variations 4 and 5).

Right away your browser is using a safe tunnel to your remote SSH server.