Using Proxy Chains with Tor for Anonymized Scanning

Using proxy chains with Tor ensures anonymity while scanning websites, protecting users' IP addresses from exposure.

### Anonymizing Traffic with Proxy Chains and Tor: A Step-by-Step Guide
* 🌐 When conducting a TCP scan on a website, it's crucial to understand that your **public IP address is exposed**, which can lead to **identification by the website's owner**.
* 🔒 To protect your identity, using proxy servers can **mask your IP address** by routing scans through these intermediaries, ensuring that **only the proxy's IP is visible** to the target website.
* ⚠ However, relying on a single proxy server can be risky, as it may **log your activity and potentially disclose your identity** if investigated.
* 🔗 The recommended approach is to use multiple proxy servers, a method known as **proxy chaining**, which adds **layers of anonymity** to your scans.
* 🛡 For enhanced security, combining proxy chains with Tor is ideal, as Tor utilizes **multiple proxies** and is **more stable**, making it **difficult to trace your location**.
* ⚙ To set up proxy chains, you need to edit the configuration file, where you can choose different modes like **dynamic or strict chains**, although the default mode suffices when using **Tor**.
* 📜 Ensure that DNS requests are hidden by uncommenting the **proxy DNS option** and set the default configuration to use **Tor's loopback address** with the **onion port**.
* 🚀 After starting the Tor service, you can execute commands prefixed with `proxychains` to **conduct anonymous scans** or **browse the web securely**.

so you are ready to hit this website you launch nmap into a basic TCP scan to learn a few things about it but do you know that this website server also learned a few things about you as every scan you sent had your public IP address

that's why you should be using proxy chains and in this video I'm going to tell you what they are and how to set them up with Tor to anonymize your traffic so let's start okay so before I tell you what proxy chains are you need

to get an understanding of what proxies are so with proxies instead of sending all of our scans to this website from our IP address we can use a proxy server in between which will send our scans for us and so now if the website server does flag our scans to notify the website's

owner you'll see the IP address of the proxy server and not ours now we have to be careful here because what could happen is that this website's owner can tell the police that and then the federals upon investigation can see the IP address of the proxy

server and go yeah the contact the server owners and find out who attacked you and now the proxy server will have logs and upon going through those logs they can tell the police that so what do we do well we have two options the first option is that we can

go ahead and use more than one proxy server so instead of sending all of our scans just through this one proxy server we're gonna send it through multiple proxies and this is what proxy chains are as we are chaining together multiple proxy servers to hide ourselves now you

can find most of these proxy servers online for free, but they are usually not trustworthy and stable if we don't know them. So here comes the second and recommended option, which is using Tor with proxy chains to hide our identity. As Tor is more stable and there are

multiple proxies involved, which makes it hard to track down our location. So let's start and see how we can set up and use proxy chains with Tor. Okay, so the first step is to configure proxy chains according to our needs. And to configure it, load up its configuration file by

typing 'sudo space' the text editor you want to use. I'll be using Nano, and then type in the location of the proxy chains configuration file, which is forward slash Etc forward slash proxychains4.conf. Now, your configuration file might be stored somewhere else, but you can use the locate command if you

want help in finding it. But anyways, hit enter, and you'll see the proxy chains configuration file opened in your text editor like this. Now, there are four main modes we run this in: the first one is dynamic chain, the second one is strict chain, the third one is a round robin

chain, and the fourth one is a random chain. Now, as we will be using proxy chains with Tor, it really doesn't matter what mode we're using as we'll be having only one IP address. But just for your understanding, if you were using more than one proxy servers, the dynamic chain

here would chain each of the proxies in your list in the exact same order you put them in. And if one of them is out of service and not responding, it will simply skip that proxy and move to the next one. Whereas the strict chain will not skip to the next proxy and will end

the connection the random chain will just randomly choose a proxy to use and to enable a mode you can just uncomment it out by removing the hashtag sign here so for example if I want to enable the dynamic chain here I can just uncomment it out like this and then comment out

the strict chain by putting a hashtag sign here and so now the dynamic mode is configured for us to use but as I mentioned earlier as we are going to be using Tor it really doesn't matter which mode we're using so you can just leave it on the default mode if you want next

make sure that this option of proxy DNS is uncommented as it hides DNS requests preventing our location from being revealed through DNS leaks and under the proxy lists heading is where we have the default configuration already set to Tor which is basically our loopback address binded with the

onion port of 9050 now if we were not using Tor this is also where we'll be adding the list of our proxy servers you can see the examples of how to put them right here anyway here what I want you to do is also add a SOCKS5 proxy with the same

address import like this as SOCKS5 has a little bit of improvements now if you're wondering what is the difference between these types of proxies then that is a topic for another video but for now just know that SOCKS5 is better than SOCKS4 and HTTPS is mostly better than

HTTP anyway next just save the file and exit okay so now before we go ahead and start using proxy chains first we need to start the Tor service now if you don't already have Tor installed type in sudo apt install tor to install it but once installed and ready to be used

You can type in `sudo service tour start` to start the tour service and then type in `service tour status` to confirm if it is actually running. And yes, as you can see, it says `active (running)`, which means it is up and running. And now we are good to

use ProxyChains. Okay, so to use ProxyChains, simply type `proxychains` in the terminal like this. And then we basically type in any other command that we want to use with it. For example, if I want to run Firefox, I can simply type in `firefox` right here and then hit enter to run it.

Now let's head over to dnsleaktest.com real quick to verify if our connection with Tor has been successfully established. And yes, as you can see, the connection seems to be up and good to go. As I can verify that I'm not in this

place right now. And there you go. Now you can go ahead and scan that website anonymously by adding `proxychains` before your `nmap` command and hitting enter to redirect all your traffic through Tor. If you have any questions regarding the video, make sure to ask

them in the comments section down below. And I will see you in the next one. Thank you. [Music]

Don't get caught! Hide Yourself w/ Proxychains and TOR

An0n Ali

Introduction to Proxy Chains and Proxies for Anonymizing Network Traffic

Basic TCP scans reveal the user's public IP address to the target website.

Proxy chains are introduced as a solution for anonymizing traffic.

Proxies mask the user's IP address by routing traffic through an intermediary server.

Website owners might still trace the user through proxy server logs.

Using multiple proxy servers (proxy chains) enhances anonymity.

Tor is recommended as a more stable and secure option compared to free online proxies.

Configuring proxychains involves editing the configuration file (e.g., `/etc/proxychains4.conf`).

Explanation of different proxy chains modes (dynamic, strict, round robin, random).

Default configuration is set to Tor using the loopback address and onion port 9050.

Setting up and using ProxyChains with Tor

Installing and starting the Tor service (`sudo apt install tor`, `sudo service tor start`). 

Verifying Tor service status (`service tor status`).

Using ProxyChains by typing `proxychains` before the desired command (e.g., `proxychains firefox`, `proxychains nmap`). 

Verifying anonymous connection using dnsleaktest.com.