Selective proxy by DNS using Squid and BIND

Question

I am wondering on the feasibility of this setup.

I want to selectively proxy some DNS entries. For example, I want most DNS queries to resolve normally, but I want example.com to go through my proxy server. Furthermore, my proxy server is not in my office (it's in my data center).

The solution I have imagined comes in two parts:

First, use BIND as a caching DNS server, and overwrite or force example.com to point to my proxy server. I assume this can be done? I am not very experienced with BIND configuration.

Second, use Squid to proxy all requests received that target example.com to the REAL example.com IP. I want to proxy http requests and other protocols that hit the right ports. So for example, I would also want to proxy ssh if it is done through port 80 for example. Can Squid work as this sort of proxy, or can it only work as an http proxy?

So for example the end result would look something like this. For the initial DNS query:

+----+ >--dns query example.com---> +-----------+
| PC |                              | my-server |
+----+ <----return my-server IP---< +-----------+

Then the the PC is "fooled" into thinking that example.com points to my server, instead of the real example.com. So this happens:

+----+ >--http://example.com--> +-----------+ >----> +------------------+ 
| PC |                          | my-server |        | REAL example.com |
+----+ <----return content----< +-----------+ <----< +------------------+ 

Is this setup feasible? What configuration directives should I investigate to do the hard part?

Answer 1

Your first, DNS approach seems to be the best of two. To configure this, you should configure your bind as an authoritative server for zone example.com. A piece of BIND config should look nearly so:

zone "example.com" in{
    type master;
    file "pri.example.com";
};

pri.example.com in this example should contain address records for all subdomains of example.com, you want to redirect. Of course, IP address in these records should point to your proxy server.

I'm not absolutely shure, but you may need to configure your squid in "transparent" mode. There are many examples over Internet.

Squid is HTTP, HTTPS, FTP proxy server. But HTTPS is handled with CONNECT http method used. This is why you may use programs like Corkscrew or Proxytunnel These programs utilize CONNECT method for tunneling. There is a problem with CONNECT timeouts - it is described on ProxyTunnel page. The other approach to handling different protocols is redirecting data with iptables. In this case, handling is done on the 3-rd and 4-th OSI levels (address and transport protocols) and level 7 (application layer) isn't touched.

Hope, my answer will direct you to the right decision.