Dynamic Proxy

Combination of the Port Forwarding feature of SSH and the SOCKS proxy client of Firefox.

This technique allows you to browse the web as you were sitting in your office at UCL. There is no need of X11, you use your local Firefox and this is compatible with Linux, Windows or MacOS X. The link between your computer and UCL is crypted.

You will browse the web with an IP address associated to UCL. Consequently, you will be able to:

• access full text papers of journals with restricted access
• access CP3 web servers behind the CP3 firewall
• add/edit events to the CP3 agenda
• …

You need:

• an SSH client.
  • Installed by default on Linux and MacOS X, through a console or a terminal
  • For Windows: PuTTY
• Firefox

Open a terminal. From your local computer, outside UCL:

ssh -D 7079 <mylogin>@server02.fynu.ucl.ac.be

This will make a SOCKS tunnel between your local computer on the port 7079 to server02 through the SSH connection (port 22). You are free to choose any number >1000 for this local port number.

Let this SSH connection open.
Of course it works with CERN SSH servers.

With PuTTY: How to Dynamic Proxy with PuTTY. Change the local port number according to the value set during Step 2.

In Firefox, open Edit menu or Firefox (MacOS X) menu > Preferences > Advanced > Network > Settings button

As shown on the picture, choose

• Manual proxy configuration
• SOCKS Host: localhost
• Port: 7079 (according to the SSH command above)
• SOCKS v5

• Check if it is working: browse with firefox http://whatsmyip.org/, the IP displayed should start with “130.104.”.

Enjoy!

• Physical Review
• Nuclear Physics B
• Physics Letters B

• login to the CP3 agenda
• …

Once you do not need anymore this service:

• Set back the Firefox Connection settings to “No proxy”, see above, Step 2.
• Close the SSH connection:

exit
hit CTRL-D

This is optional. Just to avoid to remember the command on Step 2.

Edit your local ~/.ssh/config and add

 Host cp3proxy
        Hostname server02.fynu.ucl.ac.be
        User <mylogin>
        DynamicForward 7079

In a terminal, instead of Step 2 command, enter:

 ssh myproxy