🧦 SOCKS5 proxies

artistical representation of rama socks5 proxy as llama carying cargo through space while wearing socks
SOCKS is an Internet protocol that exchanges network packets between a client and server through a proxy server. SOCKS5 optionally provides authentication so only authorized users may access a server. Practically, a SOCKS server proxies TCP connections to an arbitrary IP address, and provides a means for UDP packets to be forwarded.

— Wikipedia

There are currently no examples found in the /examples dir on how to create such a proxy using rama. If you are interested in contributing this you can create an issue at https://github.com/plabayo/rama/issues and we'll help you to get this shipped.

Description

%3clientclientproxy (rama)proxy (rama)client->proxy (rama)server Aserver Aproxy (rama)->server Aserver Bserver Bproxy (rama)->server B

You'll notice that the above graph is the exact same one used in the http(s) Proxies chapter. This is no coincidence, as topology wise they are the same.

The key differences are:

  • SOCKS5 proxies do not operate on the application layer, and sit directly on the application layer;
    • This means they have no need to touch for example the http packets at all, unless they want to;
    • It is also one of the reasons that they are typically said to be faster, given the SOCKS protocol, is fairly trivial and cheaply to interpret;
  • These proxies also support UDP traffic, which is not commonly associated with HTTP proxies;

The SOCKS5 protocol is however in plaintext, just like is the case with HTTP Proxy authentication. Depending on your client support you can tunnel it through a TLS connection, which from the Rama proxy perspective you can easily achieve.

Similar to HTTP proxies, a SOCKS5 proxy can only do routing of connections, but can just as easily sniff the application packets and as such be a MITM proxy. It can even go further and actively mold the packets and therefore be more of a Distortion proxy.