Proxy Chains and VM's.

Anonymity gets harder every passing day. If you're in the security industry you know the importance of OpSec or just someone wanting to protect your privacy, keep reading.

first, lets start with Proxy Chains. The technique of Proxy Chaining is the act of using multiple proxy servers in a chain to hide the original IP address of the user. basically, you're linking/configuring proxy servers in a chain one after another to mask your location or ip address. For the most part, this does slow down your connection as you link or create another link in the chain. Please note, if you use proxy chaining for malicious purposes you won't be able to hide your actions from a nation state.

Here's a list of Proxy servers:

Proxy Server List - List of Free Public Proxy Servers (Updated March 2023) (proxynova.com)

Here are some ways to configure proxy chains in Linux and Windows.

Linux:

Firstly, proxy chains work on socks4, socks5, HTTP, & HTTPS. Next, I won't go over spinning up a VM but its usually just VMware or VirtualBox with a Linux distro like Kali, Parrot, or other. I use a VM and isolate it to protect my host system and use a VPN through the VM too.

After the VM install, etc...

  1. bring up your terminal, you'll need root access.

  2. [service tor status]

  3. [sudo apt-get install tor]

  4. [nano /etc/proxychains.conf]

  5. there are three types of proxy chains. Dynamic, strict, random. You want to choose dynamic.

    1. remove "dynamic" from the comment.

    2. remove "proxy DBS" from the comment.

    3. remove Proxy DNS requests - no leak for DNS data".

  6. Write "socks5 127.0.0.1 9050" at the end of the proxy list.

  7. save and exit