SOCKS and SOCKS Proxies
The SOCKS proxy is working as of release 0.7.1. SOCKS 4/4a/5 are supported. Enable SOCKS by creating a SOCKS client tunnel in i2ptunnel. Both shared-clients and non-shared are supported. There is no SOCKS outproxy so it is of limited use.
As it says on the FAQ :
Many applications leak sensitive information that could identify you on the
Internet. I2P only filters connection data, but if the program you intend to
run sends this information as content, I2P has no way to protect your anonymity.
For example, some mail applications will send the IP address of the machine
they are running on to a mail server. There is no way for I2P to filter this,
thus using I2P to 'socksify' existing applications is possible, but extremely
dangerous.
And quoting from a 2005 email:
... there is a reason why human and others have both built and abandoned the
SOCKS proxies. Forwarding arbitrary traffic is just plain unsafe, and it
behooves us as developers of anonymity and security software to have the safety
of our end users foremost in our minds.
Hoping that we can simply strap an arbitrary client on top of I2P without auditing both its behavior and its exposed protocols for security and anonymity is naive. Pretty much every application and protocol violates anonymity, unless it was designed for it specifically, and even then, most of those do too. That’s the reality. End users are better served with systems designed for anonymity and security. Modifying existing systems to work in anonymous environments is no small feat, orders of magnitude more work than simply using the existing I2P APIs.
The SOCKS proxy supports standard address book names, but not Base64 destinations. Base32 hashes should work as of release 0.7. It supports outgoing connections only, i.e. an I2PTunnel Client. UDP support is stubbed out but not working yet. Outproxy selection by port number is stubbed out.
See Also
- The notes for Meeting 81 (March 16, 2004) and Meeting 82 (March 23, 2004).
- Onioncat
If You Do Get Something Working
Please let us know. And please provide substantial warnings about the risks of socks proxies.