CGIProxy 2.1 Beta 15 review
DownloadThis CGI script acts as an HTTP or FTP proxy
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This CGI script acts as an HTTP or FTP proxy. Through it, you can retrieve any resource that is accessible from the server it runs on. This is useful when your own access is limited, but you can reach a server that in turn can reach others that you can't.
In addition, the user is kept as anonymous as possible from any servers. Common uses include: anonymous proxies similar to The Anonymizer, other personal uses, VPN-like functionality, and others. It's very simple to install, and very configurable.
When an HTML resource is retrieved, it's modified so that all links in it point back through the same proxy, including images, form submissions, and everything else. Once you're using the proxy, you can browse normally and (almost) forget it's there.
Configurable options include text-only support (to save bandwidth), selective cookie and script removal, simple ad filtering, access restriction by server, custom encoding of target URLs and cookies, and more-- there are about 45 options so far.
CGIProxy can run under mod_perl unchanged. It requires Perl 5.004 or later; Perl 5.6.1 or later may be required in future releases.
Limitations:
Anonymity MAY NOT BE PERFECT!! In particular, there may be some holes where JavaScript can slip through. (If you find these or any other anonymity holes, please tell me!) For best anonymity, turn JavaScript off in your browser.
URLs generated by JavaScript or similar mechanisms won't be re-proxy'ed correctly. JavaScript in general may not work as expected, especially if it accesses the network.
If you browse to many sites with cookies, CGIProxy may drop some, but I haven't seen this happen yet.
To save CPU time, I took some shortcuts with URL-handling. I doubt these will ever affect anything, but tell me if you have problems. (The shortcuts are listed in the source code.)
I didn't follow the spec on HTTP proxies, and there are violations of the protocol. Actually, this whole concept is a violation of the proxy model, so I'm not too worried. If any protocol violations cause you problems, please let me know.
Only HTTP and FTP are supported so far.
What's New in This Release:
"javascript:" URLs are now handled better.
rot-13 encoding of cookies now works correctly.
"about:blank" pages no longer generate a warning page.
The URL field in the start page now gets focus automatically.
A few other bugfixes and workarounds are included.
CGIProxy 2.1 Beta 15 keywords