How to access Facebook behind firewall using Squid
Posted under » Ubuntu » Linux » LAMP Security updated on 17 April 2023
For sure this is not as simple as it sounds. The easiest way is to use a proxy server.
If you have money and are not are not technically inclined, get a VPN or proxy service. It will cost about US$8 a month. There are free services that offer a work-around but its unsatisfying.
However, if you have admin access to a linux (Ubuntu) server then Squid is the way to go.
You may need to install Squid 1st. Squid is a full-featured web proxy cache server application which provides proxy and cache services for Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and other popular network protocols. Squid can implement caching and proxying of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) requests and caching of Domain Name Server (DNS) lookups, and perform transparent caching. Cache will speed up your downloads. Squid is also an ACL (access control list).
Sometimes it's not safe to change your host file or DNS file on your PC so connecting to a Squid PC with the changed host file is preferable.
So its not just for accessing Facebook. At the workplace, this tunneling is often used to access corporate intranet that resides on their network private IPs.
apt-get install squid //or apt-get install squid squid-common
Common installation is preferred. You can modify the configuration later for allowing more access like via HTTP etc. The config file is at /etc/squid3/squid.conf Best that you make a copy of this standard config in case you mess it up later.
A good idea is to set your Squid server to listen on TCP port 8675 instead of the default TCP port 3128,
Change the http_port directive as such: http_port 8675
To stop and start
/etc/init.d/squid restart service squid stop service squid status service squid stop
You may want to verify the status of the service with.
systemctl status squid
To find out which port squid is running
netstat -plant
Following are the some important squid file locations you should be aware of:
- Squid configuration file: /etc/squid/squid.conf
- Squid Access log: /var/log/squid/access.log
- Squid Cache log: /var/log/squid/cache.log
It is a good idea to change the default port 3128 in the config to another if you have need to use several tunnels.
Since the title is about facebook, the next step is to create a SSH tunnel. If you are using windows, you can use putty. If you are using Ubuntu, then use Gnome SSH Tunnel Manager.
Or using the ssh tunnel command
ssh -D 3128 username@sshd_server
You can kill the connection via looking for the pid.
ps -ax | grep ssh
Putty is a bit tricky so here is an explanation.
- Create a session like SSH and save it
- then go connection > SSH > Tunnels
- Source port : 3128 (if squid default)
- Choose dynamic
- Choose auto
- then press add button. You will see D3128
- save settings
- then connect as usual. disconnect and proxy will not work
Once tunnel is done, you need to know how to use it.
My browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox. You can use a plugin like Foxy proxy or you want to do the manual way.
- then go options > advanced > networks > settings >
- select manual proxy config
- socks host : localhost
- & port : 3128
- select socks 5
In Windows if you use IE, Chrome and Safari, there it is by using the main connection's manager where you can adjust the proxy.
Since this tunelling is via socks, you cannot use
export http_proxy=http://proxy.server.com:3128/
Instead use this
ALL_PROXY=socks://localhost:3128/
That's it, you can now go to facebook. You might also want to check your new IP or http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/.
If you want to open up squid to http, then read this.
