Accessing Blocked Websites - Use your own proxy server at home!
Posted by webstuffscan on December 21st, 2006
It is getting bizzare. Many corporates erroneously blocked Gmail since it got reported as a virus! On top of it, all are busy blocking Orkut and Myspace. I had written a recent piece on accesing banned Websites. Most of the methods mentioned there don’t work in corporate networks since network admins are also getting smart 
One of the methods I mentioned was number 8 - Your own proxy server. This is superior to all other methods due to a couple of reasons. First free public proxies are never safe. Your personal and private information can be compromised in these servers. Also these will get blocked by the proxy software eventually. Another reason is that using your own proxy server gives you complete control. You can encrypt your traffic so that no one knows what is being browsed.
I will look at setting up a Http proxy server on a Windows XP machine. Please note that this article won’t be covering the case when you use proxy server or WiFi at home. I will be writing another post about such scenarios later.
Step 1 - Download and install Perl distribution
Download Windows x86 version of Active Perl from ActiveState site. Install with default configuration except the directory which I recommend to be set to “C:\usr\”.
Step 2 - Download and install Apache server
Download latest Apache server for Windows (2.2.3 as of today) from http://httpd.apache.org/. Install it under any folder with port 80 as the HTTP port . Setting port to 80 is important since most corporates only allow port 80 access. If you get any error in binding to port 80, probably you have something else listening on it.
Step 3 - Configure Apache server
Now we need to configure Apache to enable CGI.
Locate #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi in httpd.conf (located inside apache subfolder conf) and remove the hash(#) in front.
Locate the “you set DocumentRoot to” string in httpd.conf. Under that you will see Option directive. Change it to Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews
Step 4 - Download and install CGIProxy (nph-proxy)
Download CGIProxy (nph-proxy) from http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.cgi.txt. Rename the file to nph-proxy.cgi and copy it to Apache’s document root (htdocs). Now change the first line in nph-proxy.cgi to #!C:\usr\perl\bin\perl.exe
Start Apache from the bin folder (httpd.exe). Now open a browser session and point to http://localhost/nph-proxy.cgi. If everything is ok you should see the following screen.
Find the IP address of your home connection. This can be viewed by typing ipconfig on the command prompt. Now from the office machine access http://IP ADDRESS/. You should see the proxy form which we saw above. Happy orkutting!
Note : This will need more steps if you have a WIFI network at home (port forwarding). I will cover these issues in the next post.
Further Reading
Top 10 ways of accessing banned web sites.
- How to access Myspace or meebo - Help! it is blocked at work / school
- Windows home server in detail
- How to access blocked websites - Top 10
- Accessing blocked yahoo messenger, google talk etc - Meebo!
- Windows Home Server - Now a place for all your backups
January 3rd, 2007 at 10:54 pm
some isps block hosting on port 80
so you should host on port 443 instead
January 25th, 2007 at 12:25 am
thanks
February 20th, 2007 at 4:44 am
how do u set up access control for this proxy server?
February 26th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
I have tried so many times to open an orkut by using different
proxy server,but i have not found any powerful proxy server yet.
So,please help me.How to open the orkut using proxy server.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:38 am
i cant login to orkut page from my home it shows page canot be displayed
March 24th, 2007 at 2:57 am
i canot open the orkut page from my home it shows page canot be displayed
March 24th, 2007 at 2:57 am
i canot open the orkut page from my home it shows acces url is blocked
March 24th, 2007 at 2:59 am
i cant open the site orkut from my home iam in staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the requested URL is not allowed
March 24th, 2007 at 3:01 am
i cant open the site orkut from my home iam staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the requested URL is not allowed
March 24th, 2007 at 3:01 am
i cant open the site orkut from my home iam staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the requested URL is not allowed.plz help me to join okut
March 24th, 2007 at 3:02 am
i cant open the site orkut from my home iam staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the requested URL is not allowed.plz help me to join orkut
March 28th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I believe that Saudi Arabia has been banned from the internet…
April 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
our school blocks sites by category, and one of those happens to be annonymizers. Is there a way i can get an in-direct link to these files?
April 7th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I’m almost there, when I open the page in the last step it says that I don’t have permission to access the page. Any ideas? Thanks
April 19th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
hey,
thnx for the input but this doesnt support HTTPS ie. SSL….and most of the mails are now https only…like yahoo and gmail..can u suggest something tht supports https also…
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Has anyone found a home proxy server similar to this that does support accessing HTTPS sites such as gmail, financial institutions, etc…? What programs/scripting do Megaproxy.com and the-cloak.com utilize?
I have Apache & CGIProxy working fine with an SSL connection, however it does not allow access to HTTPS sites through the proxy, please advise. Thank you for the instructions above and any future help.
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:16 am
plz give me a list of websites for proxies plz or my myspace email is bambotta2x@yahoo.com
April 1st, 2008 at 9:06 am
Seems like the ISP block “Everything” but google.com and yahoo.com. But it will allow anything contain “google.com”. How can I change the server name to something like “server.google.com” or anything contain “google.com”? Thank you.