Proxy hacks – IV. On Demand. Installing a web based proxy (phproxy) at your home. Install something like kproxy.com. Useful for almost all blocked websites.

I am back from a small vacation, from a beach place called GOA. It was just amazing. Today we learn about web based proxies as anonymizer, proxify or kproxy and how to install our own.

So, Here’s today’s *durty* trick.

Due to little-complex nature of tricks shown in previous posts, I was getting too many mails regarding complexities involved. However for simple requirements as blocked websites, you can always get rolling without setting up the SSH tunnel.

All you need is to install Apache with PHP and install a simple web based proxy script. e.g. PHProxy or CGIproxy.

Here’s how it looks (Click to enlarge):

On ubuntu all you need to do is :

sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install php5
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

On windows:

Apache2
PHP5

Next download PHProxy. Just extract these files in the your webroot folder e.g. /var/www/proxy.

Go through the readme files in PHproxy zip folder and customize your web proxy page.

After you are done, just restart your apache server and you are up and running at http://localhost/proxy.

To enable SSL port as well, use this command “sudo a2enmod”.When asked which module to load, give “ssl” and restart Apache. You should also be up at https://localhost/proxy (by default, to change /etc/apache2/ports.conf)

Just open port 80 or 443(recommended) as advised in previous posts and you have a private proxy running at disposal at home. At office just browse to https://abcdef.dyndns.org/proxy to get started.

Only disadvantage here is that , through this you can only browse www, where as in previous tutorial we were able to run messengers and other programs over HTTP proxy.

This is similar to host of other web bases proxy sites as kproxy, proxify.com etc..

You can customize Apache @ /etc/apache2/apache.conf or /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Similarly you can restrict access based upon hosts names, ips or networks using mod_access directives.

This is atleast safer that public web proxies, which would sniff whatever passes through them. If installed at office and used with Proxy hacks -II, you can even expose intranet sites on internet.

iPod tip of the day

Its known that using equalizers uses up more battery. However, it would use *still more juice* if your music is at encoded at higher bitrate. So, its advised to keep EQs off especially on higher bit-rate music 😉