Escaping the Firewall with an Ssh Tunnel
Escaping the firewall with an SSH tunnel
Once upon a time the thought of a firewalled, cordoned, and censored web was enough to send chills up the spine of any internet user. As the years have passed, however, our sentiment has softened. A completely free, decentralized, and unaccountable web might sound ideal, but in actuality it’s a very tall order for any large, centralized institution to successfully manage. As a result, the web itself — the backbone — is still free, but schools, offices, ISPs, and even a few countries have started to filter your connection to it.
Now, most surfers aren’t even aware that their web access is being filtered, but for tuned-in power users and libertarians the effects of filtering, traffic shaping, and censorship are an assault against their most vital human rights. Fortunately, with a free program called PuTTY, a process called SSH tunneling, and SOCKS proxying, almost anyone can escape their local firewall and enjoy the web in its free and original form. As a rather nice added bonus, SSH tunneling also encrypts all of the data that passes through your local network and ISP, ensuring that no one can snoop on your communications.
Skip ahead to the actual walkthrough
PuTTY and SSH
If you haven’t remotely administered a Unix/Linux-like server before, you probably haven’t heard of Secure Shell (SSH). Secure Shell is simply a network protocol that allows for encrypted communication between two computers — usually yours, and a remote server. “Shell” refers to the command-line interface (CLI) that is present on almost every kind of computer, including Mac OS X and Windows. SSH is typically used to securely access a remote computer’s CLI, but it can also be used to copy files — or it can be used as a tunnel between your computer and another computer on the internet.
PuTTY is an SSH client. You can use it to access a remote CLI, or you can use it to set up a tunnel — and that’s what we’re going to do now.
Tunneling
When you type a
Once upon a time the thought of a firewalled, cordoned, and censored web was enough to send chills up the spine of any internet user. As the years have passed, however, our sentiment has softened. A completely free, decentralized, and unaccountable web might sound ideal, but in actuality it’s a very tall order for any large, centralized institution to successfully manage. As a result, the web itself — the backbone — is still free, but schools, offices, ISPs, and even a few countries have started to filter your connection to it.
Now, most surfers aren’t even aware that their web access is being filtered, but for tuned-in power users and libertarians the effects of filtering, traffic shaping, and censorship are an assault against their most vital human rights. Fortunately, with a free program called PuTTY, a process called SSH tunneling, and SOCKS proxying, almost anyone can escape their local firewall and enjoy the web in its free and original form. As a rather nice added bonus, SSH tunneling also encrypts all of the data that passes through your local network and ISP, ensuring that no one can snoop on your communications.
Skip ahead to the actual walkthrough
PuTTY and SSH
If you haven’t remotely administered a Unix/Linux-like server before, you probably haven’t heard of Secure Shell (SSH). Secure Shell is simply a network protocol that allows for encrypted communication between two computers — usually yours, and a remote server. “Shell” refers to the command-line interface (CLI) that is present on almost every kind of computer, including Mac OS X and Windows. SSH is typically used to securely access a remote computer’s CLI, but it can also be used to copy files — or it can be used as a tunnel between your computer and another computer on the internet.
PuTTY is an SSH client. You can use it to access a remote CLI, or you can use it to set up a tunnel — and that’s what we’re going to do now.
Tunneling
When you type a