What Are Proxychains?
Before we discuss proxychains, let’s quickly discuss what a proxy is.
What Is a Proxy?
A proxy is an intermediate server that acts as a gateway between you and the internet.
Let’s take an example of visiting google.com. Instead of sending packets directly to Google’s server, you first send them to the proxy, which then forwards them to Google. When Google replies, it sends the packets to the proxy, and the proxy forwards them back to you.
In this way, the Google server thinks the conversation is happening between it and the proxy server, hiding your communication and IP address.
This not only hides your IP address, allowing you to remain anonymous, but it can also serve other purposes, such as avoiding geo-restrictions.
Remember that the proxy server acts as a middleman. The destination server sees the proxy’s information instead of yours, providing you with privacy and security.
So, What Are Proxychains?
Proxychains build upon the proxy example above. Instead of using only one proxy server, proxychains chain several servers, hence the term.
So your traffic would go from your machine to the first proxy server, and then you’d proxy yourself into a second server, and so on, until you reach your final destination, wherever that may be.
These proxychains are an excellent way to remain anonymous online as they route your internet traffic through multiple proxy servers, making it difficult to trace back to your original IP address.
Benefits include integration with Tor, SOCKS, and HTTP proxies, which allow for increased flexibility and security when browsing the Internet.
Additionally, proxychains can be easily configured to work with applications like Nmap, SQLMap, etc.