Proxy servers have been news in recent times, both as a result of the elections in Iran and one case of legal course in which Microsoft is suing providers of click fraud. I thought I will take you through proxy servers are, how they can be used for good or evil, and what all the fuss.

First, here is a little history. When you bring your web browser, it asks how you want to connect to the Internet. Most of us have PCs household does not use any proxy, and go on the raw Internet without any fuss or bother. But companies that want to reduce their use of bandwidth, improve performance and security, and have control over what their users do use them all the time.

Each of the first browser controls and see if the Web page requested is in the proxy cache, or memory, and if so, it saves a few milliseconds or more to grab the page directly, without going through the Internet at all. Thus proxies are often combined with caching servers to offer the best combination of features and management.

In regard user browsing, all this happens without any notice, other pages seem to load faster on your PC. About the setting only the server's IP address, which is placed within the browser settings or network settings. And proxies are available for more than protocols Internet, although that is its most popular use case.

That's the good side of the representatives. What about the side of evil? Proxies are supposed to a company's internal users, but if a hacker can find out the IP address of an internal proxy, can access large amount of network resources. This was a common MO for the hacker Adrian Lamo, among others, and you can still find companies that have shut down their guardians with adequate security. It is also possible for proxies to operate in a user PC without your knowledge, which is a common form of botnets are created.

There are powers that are used to make your anonymous browsing history, which can be used both for good and evil, depending on the information they are trying to hide.

Now to the news. Microsoft filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday against three people allegedly defraud Internet advertisers to have automated programs imitate users clicks. Find activities tracking fraudulent actions to two proxies. And once you block particular IP addresses of the attorneys, the fraudsters would only modify a continual game of cat and mouse. The fraud in question is important, and estimates that ClickForensics faked 14% of total ad clicks.

When the Iranian government wanted to block access to Internet, many individuals around the world were commissioned to create the open source Squid proxy (squid-cache.org) and other tools in their own networks to get around these blocks. Then advertising (via Twitter) the IP address of your PC Squid so that everyone can connect to the Internet open, instead of being blocked. Of course, as the government learns these addresses are added to your block list, so there is another cat and mouse game.

(small self-promotion here) The news is timely, indeed. I'm leaving next week to work with Blue Coat in the production of another of my videos screencast review of the product in its line of proxy caching and server WebInformant.tv site. Let me know if you'd like to make one of these for your product, are a unique way to promote and explain a product.

David Strom is a noted speaker, author, podcaster and consultant who has written two books and thousands of magazine articles for dozens of IT publications such as Computerworld, eWeek, Baseline Magazine, Information Week and Information Security magazine. His blog can be found at http://strominator.com, and he can be reached at david@strom.com.

Squid Proxy – CCPB version

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