Navigate

EOAS Help Desk

  • Register

  • or
  • Login
    Need a password reminder?
or
New Ticket
  • Create a ticket

    Create ticket using a form

  • Submit Community Topics

    Community Topics and suggestions submitted by customers like you

  • Start a chat session

  • Knowledgebase Read help articles
  • News News & updates
  • Community Custom suggestions
  • Downloads Browse our downloads
  • New Ticket We are here to help
  • Portal
  • Knowledgebase
  • Mac OSX
  • How to SSH tunnel a connection using MacOS
Subscribe Download PDF

How to SSH tunnel a connection using MacOS

Burner EOAS
2017-12-18
0 Comments
in Mac OSX

Overview

Tunneling over SSH provides a means where a local computer can open one or more connections over a secure encrypted channel to a remote computer system located somewhere else and from the remote computer a connection can be opened to another location. This process can be used to secure network traffic, bypass restrictions placed on a local network firewall, or establish a secure path into a private network that sits behind a firewall.

These instructions are specific to MacOS. In this knowledge base article, the remote server is a Linux system running Ubuntu Linux, however the same steps should work for a variety of *nix based systems.

An SSH tunnel must be specified at the localhost based on a particular protocol. In general, the best solution is to identify the application you want to tunnel, and use corresponding ports that exist above the priviledged ports range (https://www.w3.org/Daemon/User/Installation/PrivilegedPorts.html).

The example below is specific to the Chrome and Safari web browser. Additional settings and clients can be requested by submitting a new ticket or positing comments to this article.

WARNING

  • SSH tunnelling is not a soluton that provides a fast connection. Network congestion and the process of encrypting and decrypting the connection (usually in software), will slow down the access speed.
  • Some instructions, such as those specific to Safari, will remain in effect until disabled, i.e., the SSH tunnel will remain in effect until you undo the settings for the SSH tunnel.

Launch an SSH tunnel

To begin, you must initiate an SSH tunnel. Open the MacOS Terminal and connect to your remote server via SSH with the following flags:

ssh -D 8080 -N username@remotecomputer.eoas.ubc.ca

This will open port 8080 on your local system so any traffic to 8080 will be securely tunneled through to server remote computer at remotecomputer.eoas.ubc.ca.

Configure the Chrome web browser

The Chrome web browser from Google can leverage the local proxy as a socks5 proxy. To open a secure web browser, use the following command:

chrome --proxy-server="socks5://127.0.0.1:8080" --host-resolver-rules="MAP * 0.0.0.0 , EXCLUDE localhost"

The new Chrome browser will direct browsing traffice through the encrypted tunnel to the remote computer system where it will access the Internet.

Configure the Safari web browser

Go to System Preferences » Network » Advanced » Proxies, and update your settings to reflect the settings in the screenshot below.

Configuring SOCKS Proxy in OS X Leopard

Rate the quality of this page

This page was helpful :) :( This page was not helpful

46 of 91 people found this page helpful

Comments (0)

Add a comment

Quick Jump
  • EOAS Help Desk
  • Knowledgebase
  • News
  • Downloads
  • Community
  • New Ticket
Top
Helpdesk software provided by Deskpro