Author: Link Bian

Date: October 18, 2009

Currently, we can not access twitter and facebook directly due to GFW (The Great Firewall of China). So how to bypass the GFW effectively? I use SSH tunnelling with a proxy server in USA. You should get such an account first and this is well beyond the scope of this article.

Windows

a) install SSH client , Putty for example

b) configure Putty

        host name --> ***.***.***.***

        enable compression

        SSH tunnel port --> 9876 (just for example)

        save the configuration and then open it

c) input your username and password in cmd line of putty

        Please keep the connection alive if you want to access twitter via SSH tunnel! So, DO NOT close the window of putty!

d) configure the proxy in Firefox

        network --> settings --> manual proxy

        SOCKS Host --> 127.0.0.1

        port --> 9876 (same with that configured in Putty session) then add it

        also, you need select Dynamic radio in tunnel configuration page

e) open your firefox and try to access twitter

        If any issues happened, please type about:config in firefox first, and then modify network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true.

Mac or Linux

a) login to the proxy server

        You can use this command - ssh -D 127.0.0.1:9876 username@proxyserver, then enter your password.

        Also, you can add some additional parameter, for example, -C is used to enable compression, then you will get a satisfying speed.

        If you have another SSH proxy server, your can try that one too~

b) configure your firefox as steps listed in Windows part

Do you think it's a little boring to type password every time? You can use private key and public key to allow automatic login.

From Mac to Windows

a) generate key on your local machine (eg. MacBook Pro)

        ssh-keygen -t rsa

    press "return" directly if shell ask you for a pass phrase, otherwise you will need extra step about ssh-agent

b) create .ssh dir on the remote machine

        ssh username@proxyserver

    You will need enter password here!

        mkdir .ssh

        chmod 700 .ssh

c) copy public key on your local machine to the remote server

    scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@proxyserver:.ssh/id_rsa.pub

d) create authorized_keys if needed and then add pub key in it

    touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

    cat /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

e) On OS X, you must change the permissions of you public key in ~/.ssh to something like 600, otherwise it won’t be accepted as public key because it is too open.

    chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

f) try to access the server via "ssh username@proxyserver" directly, you will not be asked for password again

If you want to use the private key on Windows platform, please go ahead following steps!

g) copy your private key file (id_rsa) to Windows and convert it via Putty Key Generator as follows

    Conversions --> Import Key

    Browse to id_rsa and select it

    Click Save private key as privatekey.ppk for example

h) Configure your Putty

    Connection --> SSH --> Auth --> Browse to privatekey.ppk

    Connection --> Data --> set auto-login username

    Save your configuration and click "open", you will login directly on Windows too. Congratulations!

From Windows to Mac

a) run puttygen.exe to generate public and private keys

b) copy your public key to remote server as step b in From Mac to Windows

c) configure Putty as step h in From Mac to Windows

d) save your configuration and click "open" to access our depot server directly

If you want to use the private key on Mac/Linux platform, please go ahead following steps!

e) back to puttygen.exe, Conversions --> Export OpenSSH key and save it as id_rsa

f) put id_rsa under ~/.ssh/ and you can login directly on your Mac/Linux too.