Welcome to PirateProxy, a Python-based generic HTTP/HTTPS web proxy. This proxy works in a different way than standard HTTP proxies such as Squid and Varnish. Users do not need to configure their browser proxy configurations. Instead, this proxy can be visited like any other website. For example, if this proxy is installed as 'http://proxy.example.org', users can go to that URL with their browser and enter the site they want to proxy. The proxy then requests that site and ensures that users continue to browse through the proxy. The proxy uses URLs such as 'http://proxy.example.org/google.com'.
This proxy supports HTTP and HTTPS and can be used to visit both IPv4 and IPv6 web sites, although it is not possible to surf to IPv6 IP addresses.
The proxy is written in Python, but uses a HTML parser written in C. Possibly it can be made to run on Windows, but so far only Linux and FreeBSD have been tested and are known to work.
Be aware that this is still alpha-quality software which was written in a short time period.
This proxy was written by the Dutch Pirate Party https://piratenpartij.nl/ in response to increasing censorship in the world and in The Netherlands to allow users to access otherwise blocked websites using the proxy.
Although there is other software serving this purpose available, the scalability and performance of these solutions was found to be insufficient and needed features were not available.
PirateProxy depends on a few software packages.
For the Python-based Proxy itself:
- Python (2.7 works)
- The `ipy' module
For the C-based HTML parser and Python wrapper:
- Cython
Install the dependencies first. To be able to build the HTML parser used by the proxy, you will need to have a working C compiler, autoconf, automake and Cython.
First, build and install the streamhtmlparser:
$ cd streamhtmlparser
$ ./configure
$ make
As root:
# make install
And the Python wrapper:
$ cd ../streamhtmlparser/src/py-streamhtmlparser
$ make
As root:
$ make install
Create a user with limited rights to run the proxy as and copy the PirateProxy sub-directory to your prefered location.
NOTE: The HTML parser library and Python wrapper are installed in /usr/local.
On some systems this appears not to work out-of-the-box. A possible fix
is:
# cp /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/* /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
# ldconfig -v
All configuration is done through the proxy.conf configuration file. A default configuration file is supplied.
The most important settings are:
http_listen_port, https_listen_port: The HTTP and HTTPS ports the proxy
will listen on. You can configure the listen ports to be 80 and 443 and let
users access the proxy directly. You can also place a reverse proxy in-front
of the PirateProxy. In that case, the listen ports should be different.
http_port, https_port: These are the ports the proxy is reachable on from
the outside. They may be different from the listen addresses, for example in
case of a reverse proxy in front.
https_certificate: A PEM file that contains the PirateProxy SSL certificate,
if necessary an intermediate CA certificate and the private key.
hostname: The hostname the Pirate Proxy is reachable on.
proxy.example.com IN A 192.0.2.15
*.proxy.example.com IN A 192.0.2.15
block_robots: If you want to ensure that web spiders/crawlers do not try to
crawl the entire internet through your proxy, you can set this setting to
yes.
Under the section [rewrites] you can add custom rewrites for specific
hostnames. The syntax is hostname=newhostname. For instances, if you want to
ensure that http://www.example.org/ does not pass through the proxy,
you could create the following rewrite: www.example.org=www.example.org
You can also rewrite a specific hostname to pass through a different proxy:
www.example.org=www.example.org.proxy2.example.com
As a final configuration step, you will need to edit the index.html file
found in the html directory. Change the example hostname found in that
file to your selected hostname. Of course you can also apply style changes,
put a different logo on the page, etcetera.
To execute the program, run ./Proxy.py -c proxy.conf. For now, the proxy
does not daemonize and you are responsible for writing a start-up script.
You can contribute in two ways: by e-mailing a patchfile or by using Git. Git has our preference because of the faster workflow.
Through patches: Make your changes and create a patchfile with diff and
patch. You can mail this to [email protected].
Through Git(Hub): Are you not familiar with Git, and have you got 15 minutes? Take a look at http://try.github.io for a crash course in basic Git. You can also ask the ICT-team for help, see below for contact information.
(Note: the below instructions assume command line Git - if you prefer, there are also numerous GUI-clients available for every OS.)
- Create an account with GitHub if you do not already have one.
- Fork this repository to your own account.
- Clone your fork:
git clone https://github.com/%yourUsername%/PirateProxy.git. - Optionally (but recommended), create a new breanch to work in:
git checkout %nameOfYourBranch%. - Make your changes in your favourite editor.
- Add the changed files to your next commit:
git add relative/path/to/file. - Commit your changes:
git commit -m "%short summary%"". - Push your changes to your fork:
git push. - Satisfied? Send a pull request to this repository!
Need help? See below for contact information.
This repository has two important branches: master and current-stable.
master is the development branch, pull requests and commits should always be
sent to this branch. current-stable equals the latest stable release.
This software is distributed under the two-clause BSD license.
- Mail: [email protected]
- IRC: ircs://nl.pirateirc.net:994/#ppnl-irc
You can also look at the ICT-subforum at https://forum.piratenpartij.nl