Sometimes when you are at work you may find yourself needing to download a file but can’t due to your corporate firewall or proxy server filters. Many companies block virtually every file type you would probably need to download to do your job. They probably block just about every site to! Most companies block or filter these sites at the proxy level as they can block certain keywords or URL patterns. It is however possible to bypass this all together if you have access to a Linux box.

SSH tunneling allows you to bypass this all together, and lets you surf virtually any website you wish. This doesn’t mean, however, that you are necessarily “allowed” to do so. Using SSH tunneling will also encrypt all the websites you are connecting to, so your company will not be able to tell what you are looking at or what sites and files you my be accessing. There are just a couple steps in allowing you to surf through SSH Tunneling, and you’ll also need a Linux server somewhere with an Internet connection.

I personally have a Linux box at home on my cable connection, so basically I am surfing through my home connection.
1. First, you’ll need a Linux box on an Internet connection outside the network you want to surf from.
2. Next, you will need to download putty. Just Google it and download the putty client.
3. Configure putty for SSH tunneling as seen below.

4. Connect to your Linux box and login.
5. Setup your web browser to connect through the putty SOCKS server.

6. Test it out, try to go to www.geekmoz.com or something.