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I'm behind a firewall which only allow ports 80 and 443 out.

I have an Ubuntu server at home which got an SSH server running on 443 and it works fine. Therefore I can tunnel my traffic behind this firewall through SSH.

However, I want to make an VPN connection between the computer behind the firewall and the server via SSH, to make ALL internet connections go through the tunnel without being needed to configure a proxy on every application I need to tunnel.

The computer behind the firewall uses Windows XP.

Is this possible?

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  • You do realize, don't you, that if you work at a place that restricts outgoing traffic and they discover you subverting the policy this way they're going to terminate you with cause without stopping to ask why you're doing it, right? Aug 26, 2010 at 11:46
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    I'm aware of this and I believe that it's cool. Thanks for the warning anyways!
    – henrik
    Aug 26, 2010 at 15:19

2 Answers 2

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Yes, piece of cake!

Your WindowsXP box would need to become the default route for all your other computers. I do this often using a similar technique to tunnel traffic through an HTTP proxy firewall.

Couple things you need to do:

  1. On your ubuntu server, locate the sshd.conf file and enable, if not already GatewayPorts yes

  2. Install Putty on your WinXP computer and configure a connection from WinXP to your Ubuntu server and under the Tunnels section, create some tunnel entries making sure to check the box "Local ports accept connections from other hosts", then use some random unprivledged ports. You should have a list like so:

L5000 1.2.3.4:443 where 5000 is the local port you listen on and 1.2.3.4 is your ubuntu server.

  1. Now you need to enable Routing and Remote Access service under the services (right click My Computer, manage & navigate to services section). Once enabled, need to edit the following RegKey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Services > Tcpip > Parameters and look for something like “IPEnableRouter”. Double click on it and turn the value from 0 to 1 and reboot your computer.

  2. After the reboot, pop open a command prompt and type some commands:

    netsh routing ip nat install netsh routing ip nat add interface "if-public" full (where if-public is the interface used to connect to ubuntu server) netsh routing ip nat add interface "if-private" private

It should be obvious that your WinXP machine cannot be using DHCP; you'll need static IP assignments here.

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  • not sure why, but this dam sight keeps re-numbering my steps, they should be reading 1,2,3,4; not 1,2,1,2....
    – Kilo
    Aug 26, 2010 at 12:09
  • Awesome, thanks! Gonna try it tomorrow and accept as answer if it works :)
    – henrik
    Aug 26, 2010 at 15:16
  • Damn, I'm forced to use DHCP and can't use static IP address. Any solutions to this?
    – henrik
    Aug 27, 2010 at 8:16
  • well, plugin the IP given to you by your DHCP server. Just know that if your IP changes, you'll need to adjust accordingly. If you leave your machine on then your IP should renew and stick unless your DHCP provider purposely forces new IPs upon you.
    – Kilo
    Nov 20, 2010 at 0:45
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This might not exactly answer the question, but you can also create a dynamic ssh tunnel in the Connecction -> SSH -> Tunnels config screen on PuTTY. This creates a SOCKS proxy on the port you specify which if you alter the windows internet connection settings to use then any app that obeys those will use the proxy.

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