PHP Proxy Anyone?

technobard · 08-23-2004, 08:23 AM

My employer has clamped down on access to external webmail making it impossible for me to read private email. For the last 2 years, I avoided the problem by using HTTPS. For some reason, they hadn't filtered on that. Anyway, I was thinking of running a proxy on my home server and using that to access my email. Does anyone have any first hand experience with this? Proxy services out on the web are of course blocked.

sde · 08-23-2004, 08:35 AM

my employer does the same thing. i use www.radmin.com to remote into my home computer running windows. it allows you to run on any port you want. then it is like i'm on my home computer so i can run my email client.

if you're on linux, i know vnc does the same thing, but i'm not sure you can change the port it runs on.

but to answer your post, i don't know anything about a php proxy =)

let me know if you find a solution.

Admin · 08-23-2004, 09:33 AM

you can setup a simple proxy server using squid. http://www.squid-cache.org/

--EDIT--
fixed URL.

technobard · 08-23-2004, 12:14 PM

Thanks, guys. Unfortunately neither solution will work for me. My employer does some sort of content filtering as well as port filtering. I'm not table to use VNC-like stuff, VPN, or anything else that would be useful.

Admin, I don't think squid will work because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to see the service through the firewall. I also have to go through the company proxy server to get out of the firewall. My desktop is configured so I can't change the proxy in any event.

There is a product called PHProxy that is basically a PHP page. You fill in the form with the URL you want to connect to and the server process makes the connection, rewrites any embedded URL link info, and then presents the page to you. I know vaguely how it works, I've just never used it. I'm dying to get home and try it out. I was just hoping someone else had tried it.

idx · 08-23-2004, 06:40 PM

I haven't tried PHProxy, but it looks to use the same concept as PHPWebProxy. I've setup the latter at home to view sites/etc that work has blocked. (https to home -> proxy to page )

So far it works `ok` - seems to bomb out on anything more than a simple page. Perhaps PHProxy will work better. (seems like it has recent development) Let me know how it works for you.

(work basically shuts everything off except for http/ftp/ssh via novell bordermanager with content filtering. I can get a proxied ssh connection through, but I haven't tried X portforwarding.)

As a word of warning, I'd really look over the source a few times to ensure they aren't sending bits related to your connection back to another server. (ie: form values -> user/pass /etc.)

It would be pretty cool if PHProxy supports cookies too.

-r

idx · 08-23-2004, 07:34 PM

Just checked out PHProxy - looks pretty cool. Code has good structure and seems pretty straight forward. From a quick once-over it doesn't seem to be doing anything obviously bad.

-r

technobard · 08-23-2004, 08:02 PM

Thanks, idx. I tried it and unfortunately it doesn't seem to work correctly with the email sites I use. The login page comes up clean, but when I fill in the form and attempt the login, it errors out. Oh, well. I guess I can always run a mailserver.

idx · 08-24-2004, 04:20 AM

Quote:

I guess I can always run a mailserver.

yeah, that's what I ended up doing.

-r

technobard · 08-24-2004, 05:32 AM

Yes! I tried CGIProxy instead and while I couldn't get it to work with my web hosting company, it did work on a home server through DSL. I may do the mailserver anyway at some later date, but for now I can get to my email again!

technobard · 09-02-2004, 07:58 AM

Just a quick update for anyone interested. I decided to install SquirrelMail with the intent of running an IMAP server. Then it dawned on me that the IMAP server could be remote. So I configured SquirrelMail (web frontend) to point to my email provider. The install was simple and quick; and because the secure IMAP connection is handled by the PHP process, I don't have a firewall problem. This makes me feel more comfortable than using the proxy.

idx · 09-02-2004, 08:27 PM

..of course the traffic from your webserver to ISP is probably unencrypted (regular imap, correct?), but that's good to hear.

-r

technobard · 09-03-2004, 06:22 AM

No, it's using secure imap (tls). So I'm encrypted end to end.