Skip to main content

Here Be Web Proxies

  • Conference paper
Passive and Active Measurement (PAM 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCCN,volume 8362))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

HTTP proxies serve numerous roles, from performance enhancement to access control to network censorship, but often operate stealthily without explicitly indicating their presence to the communicating endpoints. In this paper we present an analysis of the evidence of proxying manifest in executions of the ICSI Netalyzr spanning 646,000 distinct IP addresses (“clients”). To identify proxies we employ a range of detectors at the transport and application layer, and report in detail on the extent to which they allow us to fingerprint and map proxies to their likely intended uses. We also analyze 17,000 clients that include a novel proxy location technique based on traceroutes of the responses to TCP connection establishment requests, which provides additional clues regarding the purpose of the identified web proxies. Overall, we see 14% of Netalyzr-analyzed clients with results that suggest the presence of web proxies.

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under grants CNS-0831535, CNS- 1213157, and CNS-1223717, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, Cyber Security Division (DHS S&T/CSD) Broad Agency Announce- ment 11-02, and SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific via contract number N66001-12-C-0128, with additional support from Amazon, Google and Comcast.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Aase, N., Crandall, J., Diaz, A., Knockel, J., Molinero, J.O., Saia, J., Wallach, D., Zhu, T.: Whiskey, Weed, and Wukan on the World Wide Web: On Measuring Censors’ Resources and Motivations. In: Proc. USENIX FOCI, Bellevue, WA, USA (August 2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Auger, R.: Easy method for detecting caching proxies (February 2011), http://www.cgisecurity.com/2011/02/easy-method-for-detecting-caching-proxies.html

  3. CmdrTaco. Mediacom using DPI to Hijack Searches, 404 errors, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/27/137210/mediacom-using-dpi-to-hijack-searches-404-errors

  4. DiCioccio, L., Teixeira, R., May, M., Kreibich, C.: Probe and Pray: Using UPnP for Home Network Measurements. In: Taft, N., Ricciato, F. (eds.) PAM 2012. LNCS, vol. 7192, pp. 96–105. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. EICAR Anti-Malware Test File, http://www.eicar.org/86-0-Intended-use.html

  6. Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., Berners-Lee, T.: Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP/1.1. RFC 2616, IETF (June 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Fox, A., Goldberg, I., Gribble, S.D., Lee, D.C., Polito, A., Brewer, E.A.: Experience With Top Gun Wingman, A Proxy-Based Graphical Web Browser for the USR PalmPilot. In: Proc. Middleware (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Fox, A., Gribble, S.D., Brewer, E.A., Amir, E.: Adapting to Network and Client Variability via On-Demand Dynamic Distillation. In: Proc. ASPLOS-VII (October 1996)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Giobbi, R.: CERT Vulnerability Note VU 435052: Intercepting proxy servers may incorrectly rely on HTTP headers to make connections (February 2009)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Huang, L.S., Chen, E.Y., Barth, A., Rescorla, E., Jackson, C.: Talking to yourself for fun and profit. In: Proceedings of the Web 2.0 Security & Privacy (W2SP) Workshop (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Kreibich, C., Weaver, N., Nechaev, B., Paxson, V.: Netalyzr: Illuminating The Edge Network. In: Proc. ACM IMC, Melbourne, Australia (November 2010)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Citizen Lab. Planet Blue Coat: Mapping Global Censorship and Surveillance Tools, https://citizenlab.org/2013/01/planet-blue-coat-mapping-global-censorship-and-surveillance-tools/

  13. Reis, C., Gribble, S.D., Kohno, T., Weaver, N.C.: Detecting In-Flight Page Changes with Web Tripwires. In: Proc. USENIX NSDI (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Sfakianakis, A., Athanasopoulos, E., Ioannidis, S.: Inferring Mechanics of Web Censorship Around the World. In: CensMon: A Web Censorship Monitor (August 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Somerville, M.: Mobile operators altering (and breaking) web content, http://www.mysociety.org/2011/08/11/mobile--operators--breaking--content/

  16. Verkamp, J., Gupta, M.: Inferring Mechanics of Web Censorship Around the World. In: Proc. USENIX FOCI, Bellevue, WA, USA (August 2012)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Weaver, N., Kreibich, C., Paxson, V.: Redirecting DNS for Ads and Profit. In: Proc. USENIX FOCI, San Francisco, CA, USA (August 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Wikipedia. Proxy server (June 2012), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http_proxy#Detection

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Weaver, N., Kreibich, C., Dam, M., Paxson, V. (2014). Here Be Web Proxies. In: Faloutsos, M., Kuzmanovic, A. (eds) Passive and Active Measurement. PAM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8362. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04918-2_18

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04918-2_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04917-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04918-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics