OBJECTIVES OF THE ARTICLE
The article is aimed to teach individuals how to be anonymous while surfing the internet. Every activity that you do online can be traced back to your computer. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can see all the activities that you do online. Your web browser also tends to keep information about you and your computer which are usually publicly displayed when on the internet.
There are many techniques to which an individual can use to be anonymous while surfing the internet and some of the techniques many include as follows
(a) Use of VPN (Virtual Private Network)
(b) Use of proxy chains
(c) Changing the computer mac address which can be done by either using a tool called macchanger to change the mac address of the computer or spoofing the mac address
(d) Use of TOR or Duck Duck go browsers which don’t keep any sort of information of the user
(e) Use of Nmap proxy chains (proxychains Nmap -sV -ff …), creating decoy and spoofing the mac address usually done when working with internal IP’s
This article will focus on how to set up the proxy chain technique to remain anonymous while browsing the web, the article will provide step by step methods on how to configure proxy chains on your Kali Linux machine.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
In this article, there are many technical terminologies that are going to be used and before using them there is a need to provide a simple brief explanation on what they are so that you could understand what they mean
The following are some of the terminologies which are going to be used in this article:
(i) Proxy Server – is a gateway between the user and the internet. They separate the users from the websites they browse. They provide different purposes which include from security to privacy depending on the needs and the organization policy. (Jeff, 2019)
(ii) Proxy chain – is a tool that forces any TCP connections made by any given application to follow through proxy like TOR or any other SOCKS4, SOCKS5 or HTTP(S) proxy. What proxy chains does is send your connection through several SOCKS/HTTP(S) proxy servers. (Adversus, 2016)
(iii) DNS – it is also called Domain Name Server. People access information on the internet through domain names like google.com. the web browsers interact through the Internet Protocol (IP) address. The DNS translates the domain name to a specific IP address so that the browser could load the internet. (Cloudflare, n.d.)
Below is a graphical representation of how a proxy chain works
CHAPTER 2: CHANGING THE HOSTNAME AND DOWNLOADING TOR
The first step of anonymizing your self is to change the hostname file of the machine, by default the username is usually Kali, you can verify this by typing the command uname -a once verified you
go to the hostname configuration file and change it by typing the following command nano /etc/hostname (nano is a text editor you can use nano or leaf pad or any other text editor you want to use)
once you type in the name you will have to press control(ctrl) + o then press enter then close the text editor by pressing control(ctrl) + x
The next step is to edit the host file which can be done by typing the command nano /etc/hosts
And change the name below localhost to the one that you want
Next you press control(ctrl) + o then press enter then close the text editor by pressing control(ctrl) + x
The next step is to download the TOR by typing the following commands on your terminal apt-get install tor
Once that’s done reboot your machine.
CHAPTER 3: HOW TO SETUP PROXY CHAIN
When you want to start setting up the proxies on the configuration file you need to type the following command to access the configuration file nano /etc/proxychains.conf (nano is a text editor)
Once you press enter you open the configuration file using the text editor. Once the file is open you meet up with the set commands as shown in the below image which has been deactivated by adding the # sign and is activated by removing the # sign.
You will see 3 types of methods which are in the configuration file
(a) Strict chain – this is where by your traffic is routed through proxies in a particular manner, for example, if you have proxies 1,2 and 3 then your connection will strictly follow that order only, if any of the proxies go down you won’t be able to access the internet because the chain would have been broken (press, 2019)
(b) Dynamic chain – the dynamic chain functions like the strict chain but it doesn’t need all the proxies to work. If a proxy won’t work, then it will go to the next proxy. The dynamic chain won’t require all the proxies to be in working condition (press, 2019)
(c) Random chain – each time a request is made to a website, the traffic will be routed through random proxies, you can list your proxies in any order as there is no order to follow (press, 2019)
Step 1: Enabling Dynamic Chain
In our case, we will need to activate the dynamic chain by removing the # sign in front of it and disable the strict chain by adding the # sign in front of it.
Then scroll down using either the mouse wheel or the arrow key up to proxy DNS requests and activate it by removing the # sign in front of it
Step 2: Configure Proxy Server
The next step is to add the proxy IP address under the proxy list, the type of IP’s that are supported here are socks4, socks5, Http and httpssss. You can add as many IP’s as you want.
CHAPTER 4: STARTING THE PROXY CHAIN’S
The next step is to start the tor service which is going to run your proxies, there are 3 commands which can be used here
(a) Service tor status – to check the status of the service if its running or stopped
(b) service tor start – to start the service
(c) Service tor stop – to stop the service
When you start and stop the service no information or error message will be displayed which means that it has successfully been executed, this can be verified by the service tor status command
CHAPTER 5: TESTING THE PROXY CHAIN
The next step is to check whether the proxy chains are working, and this can be accomplished by typing the following commands proxychains firefox www.google.com
Once that is done it will open the Firefox browser, it’s going to take some time to load the google page but let it load till it finishes. Once that done on google search bar you will type search DNS leaks, then select the first option which will say DNS leak test and the below image is what you will see the country and IP address that you are in and for fact that is not the country that the author is in so that proves that the proxy chains are working.
After that, the next thing is to do a standard test by clicking the standard test button and you will be presented by the below image which shows that am on a different country which is Germany and USA
CONCLUSION
A combination of different techniques increases your chances of being anonymous for example you could have a combination of proxy chains, TOR, VPN, mac spoofing and using Nmap with its proxy chains will help you increase your level of anonymity.
Depending on your interests.
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