Route Traffic through a Private Network using Dynamic Port Forwarding and Proxy SwitchyOmega

If you have access to a machine or a gateway that is connected to a private network, you can then route your traffic through that machine and as a result, you have access to the private network. Here, we review a scenario that you can ssh into a machine (a gateway) that is connected to the private network, and then using a chrome extension named Proxy SwitchyOmega, we route a portion of your browser’s traffic through the gateway.

Getting Started

SSH to the gateway

Assuming the address of the gateway is client1.savitestbed.ca and we have credentials to log in. We are going to use port 1200 when we open an ssh connection. For Linux and Windows:

Linux

ssh -D1200 <username>@client1.savitestbed.ca

Windows

In Windows, you need to use Putty to open an SSH connection. I assume you are familiar with Putty and know how to create an ssh connection. In order to configure a dynamic port forwarding, follow the steps below:

Modified image taken from phoenixnap.com

Proxy SwitchyOmega

After a successful log in to the gateway, now you can configure the Proxy SwitchyOmega to route all or a portion of your traffic through the gateway and hence, access the private network. Assume you would like to route traffic destined to 10.0.0.0/8 network. That is all IPs ranging from 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255. Then:

1) From the left menu, modify the existing proxy profile like the image above. Configure Protocol and Server and Port accordingly, then click on Apply changes.

2) Click on New profile and create a Switch Profile.

3) Configure Connection Type, Connection Details and Profile accordingly. Click on the Apply changes then.

4) Select the profile you created in the previous steps (auto ssh) to enable forwarding your traffic with any host within 10.0.0.0/8 through the gateway.

Yey! You can access an internal IP just like when you are connected to a private network!

That’s it!