HowTo: SSH Tunnel Firefox

[wormser]

A ssh tunnel for Firefox to a remote computer is good security measure. Especially when connecting via an untrusted network like a wifi hotspot or other public networks. The tunnel encrypts and sends the data to your remote machine then it is sent over the web to your destination. This tutorial assumes you have an account on a remote machine you can ssh into. This is a pretty easy set up.

The command to connect

ssh -D 9999 -C me@ipaddress.com

The -D switch - Specifies a local “dynamic” application-level port forwarding. We are also adding the -C switch for compression.

Next we need to put the settings into Firefox.

Firefox> Edit> Preferences> Advanced tab> Network tab> Settings button.

Select Manual proxy configuration
SOCKS Host: localhost Port: 9999
SOCKS v5
No Proxy for: localhost, 127.0.0.1
Screenshot below.

Note: Sometimes localhost can cause a problem. If your settings are right and it still is not working replace localhost with 127.0.0.1.


Using the ssh SOCKS5 proxy all of your info is passed through the tunnel except DNS requests. DNS requests are requests that look up names like google.com and turn them into IP addresses. If you want your DNS requests to go through the SOCKS5 proxy (yes you want this feature -- trust me if you are going through all the trouble to create this encrypted tunnel), you need to do the following.

1. Open up firefox
2. Type about:config on the location bar
3. Filter for the following: network.proxy.socks_remote_dns
4. Set the value to True (Right Click on the value in the column)
5. Restart Firefox

Now all DNS requests will go through the SOCKS5 proxy rather than the local network.

Thanks to Kevdog for the DNS section.

[wieman01]

Nice one. Thank you. I will certainly use it.

[kevdog]

Not a bad tutorial, but if you could expand it to include the server setup (for beginners) it would be very helpful. Also probably would be preferrable to run ssh over a different port, however that's just a concern of mine.

[wieman01]

You have a point, Kevdog, public providers might block certain ports.

[vik.vaughn]

Is there was a way to do this without having putty open and running? (Windows)

[spotdart]

is there a way to test if the tunnel is working?

[kevdog]

Vik

In windows you need to establish the ssh connection to the server. I know there are several ways of doing this -- however putty is one of the most popular clients. There are others however. I'm not certain but I dont think the foxy proxy plugin for firefox has the ability to first log into the ssh server and then establish the proxy. You may want to check into this. None the less, you need a client to make a connection first

spotdart

The best way I know to verify you are connected to the proxy is while uisng the proxy, at your browser use:

http://showmyip.com

What should be shown here is the IP address of the proxy server rather than your physical IP address. Try visiting the site with and without the proxy and the IP address should be different.

[vik.vaughn]

I just checked out foxyproxy, it doesn't have the ability to automatically login to SSH, but it is a very robust proxy tool. I'll definitely be using that from now on.

I'm going to shoot an email to the foxy proxy folks and request that they add SSH functionality since it seems like a very popular way to securely proxy.

[kevdog]

vik

I think that sounds like a great idea -- I think that would be a welcome addition to that useful proxy add-on.

[kevdog]

Hey just wanted to add some info to your SOCKS5 proxy tunnel setup.

Using the ssh SOCKS5 proxy all of your info is passed through the tunnel except DNS requests. DNS requests are requests that look up names like google.com and turn them into IP addresses. If you want your DNS requests to go through the SOCKS5 proxy (yes you want this feature -- trust me if you are going through all the trouble to create this encrypted tunnel), you need to do the following.

1. Open up firefox
2. Type about:config on the location bar
3. Filter for the following: network.proxy.socks_remote_dns
4. Set the value to True (Right Click on the value in the column)
5. Restart Firefox

Now all DNS requests will go through the SOCKS5 proxy rather than the local network.