SSH Proxy Tunnel

General Information

You are somewhere that has a restrictive firewall/web proxy, but allows SSH. This trick allows you to tunnel your web browser's traffic through SSH to a remote system and browse the web as if you were at that remote system.

Checklist

• Distro(s): Any
• Other: You already have a remote SSH server set-up that is accessible from the internet. (At home, hosted, etc)

1) Open a SSH tunnel to the remote system and specify a dynamic application listening port (Example: -D 1337):

ssh -D 1337 user@yourhome.com

2) Edit your browser proxy settings to use the same port SSH is listening on.

Firefox Quantom

• Open Menu (three horizontal lines) → Preferences → General → Network Proxy → Settings…
  • Check “Manual proxy configuration”
  • SOCKS host: localhost
  • Port: 1337
    • Select “SOCKS v4”
  • Remove “localhost” from the “No Proxy for” text box
  • Click OK
• You may also have to set the “network.proxy.socks_remote_dns” value to true (http://about:config)