Squid is a popular proxy and caching server application. It primarily serves as a forward proxy, but can also be used as a reverse proxy. Squid provides many features and is often used on enterprise-level networks.

• Paros Proxy Tutorial
• Wireshark

This tutorial will show you how to setup a simple HTTP proxy with authentication using Squid. Steps listed in this tutorial were tested on Ubuntu 15.04 and 15.10.

Jul 17, 2011 - I'm not sure if this is in the right categories but anyway. I am trying to get paros proxy running for a security class that i am taking.

WARNING: You must be very careful when creating proxies. Hackers frequently scan the public internet for open proxies use them for malicious activities. Most hosting companies will suspend your instances if you receive too many complaints, so ensure that you use sufficient authentication, such as a strong password.

This tutorial assumes that you are using a freshly created VPS with no installed packages.

Installation

First, ensure that the apt-get package library is up-to-date by running the command below. This will ensure that the latest packages have been installed.

Once this has completed, it is time to install the squid application and htpasswd. Run the following command using sudo to install both packages.

Paros Proxy Tutorial

Distro, Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). Section, Universe. Version, 3.2.13-6. Description, proxy for evaluating the security of web applications. Http_access deny all: This line won’t let anybody to access the HTTP proxy server, that’s why you need to change it to http_access allow all to start using your Squid proxy server. Visible_hostname: This directive is used to set the specific hostname to a squid server. You can give any hostname to squid.

After the Squid install completes, I suggest that you create a copy of the original config file created during the install as it is a helpful reference and allows you to rollback any changes.

Next, create the files needed by Squid to store the credentials of the proxy accounts.

Configuration

Open the squid config file for editing using a text editor, such as nano.

Add the following lines to the file so that authenticated users can connect to the proxy.

In addition, to hide the IP of the person connecting to the proxy from being shown in HTTP headers, add the following lines under the ones above.

Your Squid config file should now look something like this:

Save and close the file.

Wireshark

To create users on your proxy, execute the following command, replacing youruser with your desired user name. It will request the password twice.

You may create additional users in the same manner.

Restart the Squid service.

Using your proxy

Now that Squid is setup, you can use it as a forwarding proxy. Configure the 'internet settings' of your web browser to use your proxy, including the user name and password that you generated earlier. To verify that the proxy is working, visit an IP address detection site, like this one.

Upon success, you will notice a Vultr IP address being reported. Here is a screenshot from my demo server: