Setup your own Proxy Server in 5 Minutes for Free

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A simple Google search and you'll find dozens of really good PHP scripts on the Internet to help you create proxy servers in minutes for free. The only limitation with PHP based proxies is that you require a web server to host the proxy scripts and second, you also need a domain name to act as an address for your proxy site.

If you don't own a domain or server space, you can still create a personal proxy server for free and that too without requiring any technical knowledge.

Create a Free Proxy Server with Google App Engine

Here's one such proxy site that you can build for your friends in China or even for your personal use (say for accessing blocked sites from office). This is created using Google App Engine and, contrary to what you assume, the process is quite simple.

Step 1: Go to appengine.google.com and sign-in using your Google Account.

Step 2: Click the "Create an Application" button. Since this is your first time, Google will send a verification code via SMS to your mobile phone number. Type the code and you're all set to create apps with Google App Engine.

Step 3: Choose a sub-domain* that will host your proxy server. Make sure the domain is available, agree to the Google Terms and click save. The sub-domain is also your App ID that will uniquely identify your proxy application.

For this example, we'll use labnol-proxy-server as the App ID though you are free to choose any other unique name.

Step 4: OK, now that we have reserved the ID, it's time to create and upload the proxy server application to Google App Engine. Go to python.org, download the 2.6.4 MSI Installer and install Python.

   
  

Step 5: Once Python is installed, go to code.google.com, download the Google App Engine SDK for Python and install it.

Step 6: Download this zip file and extract it to some folder on your desktop. The zip file, for the curious, contains a couple of text files (written in HTML and Python) that you can read with notepad.

Step 7: Start the Google App Engine Launcher program from the desktop and set the right values under Edit –> Preferences (see screenshot above).

Step 8. Click File –> Add Existing Application under the Google App Launcher program and browse to the directory that you created in Step 6. Click the Edit button and replace "YOUR_APP_ID" with the ID (sub-domain) that you reserved in Step 3.

  

Step 9: Click Deploy and your online proxy server is now ready for use. You canexperience it live and if any of the steps don't make sense, please refer to the followingvideo screencast (available in 720p HD).

You can edit the main.html file to change the appearance of your proxy server and you can even add Analytics and AdSense code to your proxy server in case it gets popular on the web. The application is currently open to all users but you can add a layer of authentication so that only users who are logged-in into their Google Accounts can use your web proxy server.

If you have made any changes to your HTML files, you can upload the latest version to Google App Engine either by clicking the "Deploy" button again or use the following command - appcfg.py update 

Credits: The proxy server uses code from Mirrorr, an open-source web caching project by Brett Slatkin. Thanks Pratham for your help!

Update: To answer some of your questions:

• This proxy works with Flash videos (like YouTube and ABC News) though not with Hulu.
• If you are getting the "quota exceed" error, try this mirror site. Update: This has been removed since the App Engine TOS does not allow you to split your app across multiple accounts to make use of the free quotas. So technically, the mirror of the proxy is in violation of the TOS.
• As some of you have suggestions, domain with the word "proxy" or "proxies" are banned at workplaces so you may include them in your proxy address.
• Though there exist proxy servers for accessing secure sites, this is a basic proxy server that won't work with sites that require logins (eg, Gmail or Hotmail).

FILE USED TO HACK RSA

Finnish security company F-Secure found the file that was used to Hack RSA. Hackers planted a backdoor and eventually were able to gain access to SecurID information that enabled them to go back to their original targets and successfully break into there. Back in April itself they knew that the attack was launched with a targeted email to EMC employees (EMC owns RSA), and that the email contained an attachment called “2011 Recruitment plan.xls”. The targets were, for example, IT administrator with special network privileges. The attachment used a zero-day exploit targeting a vulnerability in Adobe Flash to drop another malicious file—a backdoor—onto the recipient’s desktop computer.

Timo Hirvonen is an analyst in F-secure labs and he was convinced that he could find this file. Timo wrote a data analysis tool that analysed samples for flash objects. He knew the XLS file in question used a Flash object to take over the system. The new tool located several relevant samples. However, one of them was not an Excel file. It was an Outlook message file (MSG). When Timo opened it up, he knew he was onto something. The message file turned out to be the original email that was sent to RSA on 3rd of March, complete with the attachment 2011 Recruitment plan.xls

Five months later, they finally had the file. It turns out somebody (most likely an EMC/RSA employee) had uploaded the email and attachment to the Virustotal online scanning service on 19th of March.

The attackers spoofed the e-mail to make it appear to come from a “web master” at Beyond.com, a job-seeking and recruiting site. It had the subject “2011 Recruitment plan” and one line of content:
“I forward this file to you for review. Please open and view it”.
The message was sent to one EMC employee and cc’d to three others.

F-Secure produced a brief video showing what happened if the recipient clicked on the attachment. An Excel spreadsheet opened, which was completely blank except for an “X” that appeared in the first box of the spreadsheet. The “X” was the only visible sign that there was an embedded Flash exploit in the spreadsheet. The Flash object is executed by Excel. Flash object then uses the CVE-2011-0609vulnerability to execute code and to drop a Poison Ivy backdoor to the system. The exploit code then closes Excel and the infection is over.

After this, Poison Ivy connects back to it’s server at good.mincesur.com. The domain mincesur.com has been used in similar espionage attacks over an extended period of time. Thus giving the attackers remote access to the infected computer at EMC. From there, they were able to reach the systems and data they were ultimately after.

Source: F-Secure