What is an HTTP Proxy? (Transparent, HTTP and Service Mesh Proxy examples)

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A proxy is a software that intercepts traffic and forward it to the destination on behave of the client. This extra layer provide several advantages such as caching, load balancing, content filtering and much more.. We made a video about proxy vs reverse proxy check it out if you want to learn more about the difference. In this video we will explain the different types of HTTP proxies and the benefits and use cases of using each coming up.
Transparent proxy (gateway)
HTTP insecure proxy
Service Mesh Proxy
Transparent proxy
It is mostly used by the ISPs, clients don’t know they are connected to transparent proxy. The way it works is it looks at TCP/IP layer 4/3 and forward it to the destination, it might do some content filtering based on the IP address or the port so it blocks certain sites. But thats pretty much it. transparent proxy cannot know which pages are you viewing or your what youtube videos are you watching. It can block you from watching youtube all together but it cannot block you from watching lets say a specific youtube channel that is critical of the government ISP is located at.
Transparent proxy doesn’t change the content.
HTTP Proxy (insecure)
This kind of proxy is used alot, especially in service meshes like linkerd. This kind of proxy have to be configured in the client to use it. Each request will always be targeted to the proxy IP address / port. So when want to make a GET request to husseinnasser.com, and you have a proxy configured, when you look at the TCP packet for that request the destination IP and port is those of the proxy. The proxy looks at the GET request and specifically the HOST header and establishes another TCP connection to the actual destination on husseinnasser.com. So this kind of proxy maintains two tcp connections. Client to proxy and proxy to destination. The proxy have access to the content, it can block the website. It can know what exact page you are viewing. It knows everything because HTTP is insecure. Assuming youtube uses just HTTP, if you have a proxy setup it can block a specific channel or even video from being viewed.
1:05 proxy vs reverse proxy • Proxy vs. Reverse Prox...
2:50 TLS • Transport Layer Securi...
This country is now intercepting all HTTPS traffic
www.zdnet.com/article/kazakhs...
Stay Awesome!
Hussein

[@zedzpan]

Great video. Has helped me understand the role and interception capabilities of proxies. Doing the simple demo really brought it to life. Thank you so much.

[@adamcheung1232]

Thanks Hussein for teaching me the art of ignoring mumbo jumbo and focus on the fundamentals!

[@arvi8843]

Thank you. Great explanation!

[@smarttrupti2007]

Really enjoyed this session. Thank you 👌🙏

[@shreyasshastry1]

That was really good...thank you

[@tubbalcain]

Best explained! Love the soup N@zi reverence, haha.

[@PawanKumar-ys6jr]

Hi Hussein, Nice video. Please try to make a video on Front Proxy(Envoy) with make a Service Mesh Connection(Istio) in Minikube because it will very handful for developers in there local machine. Thanks

[@yordanpetrov8345]

Thank you.

[@FordExplorer-rm6ew]

Windows users Do you ever use tcpview? I'm also curious how proxy settings work on Windows.. And how proxys as a service work. These lessons are helping me understand some things thx 👍

[@FordExplorer-rm6ew]

Req object is always so big into itself. Guess I'll have to look at the docs even more. So much reading

[@qj1eo]

I LOVE UUUU !

[@AmeRosexx]

Thank you for this! I am trying to build a frontend that makes requests to an HTTP-only API, but to deploy it, I need it to work on https - could I use this to force it to https?

[@LawZist]

Great video!

[@hnasr]

LawZist thanks!! Glad you liked it what would you like to see next?

[@LawZist]

@@hnasr caching concept of web applications

[@hnasr]

LawZist LawZist thanks! I made a video on one kind of web caching called etag , find here... kzbin.info/www/bejne/ipi9n6Omatx9jbc but sure! Its a good idea to make a general video about all kind of web caching ! Great suggestion

[@techroles1903]

Great video, Could you provide a video to configure transparent proxy with HAProxy on centos-7 or 8

[@hnasr]

nice idea, that would be just a layer 4 proxy which I did in haproxy video

[@ashutoshmishra2328]

Hey Hussein, great video. how does the Transparent proxy works at packet level.? packet will have destination ip and mac address then how it will go to the transparent proxy.?

[@hnasr]

Great question! a good example of a transparent proxy is the ISP where all packets pass through a router owned its on your path. Y your isp so they can inspect layer 4 packets without needing to look at the content. firewalls are also are another example. Proxies are usually set by the client transparent proxy is where packets pass through it whether you like it or not.. gateway, isp, internet routers etc..

[@KEYTV13]

Would I need to use proxies to hack back into my account that I lost the password on?

[@DarudeDandstorm]

Hi Hussein, Can you make a video of creating a proxy forwarding server?

[@hnasr]

Darude Sandstorm great idea, little complicated but interesting.. check out my existing implementation of proxies such as nginx and haproxy here Load Balancing & Proxies kzbin.info/aero/PLQnljOFTspQVMeBmWI2AhxULWEeo7AaMC

[@pkcc9381]

Using pac(Proxy Auto Configuration) is safe? Is it very old way of doing proxy? Btw in my company they use .pac file for proxy, when I downloaded it & opened I just saw a hugeeee JS function. I am a bit curious about it. Before sending any request outside I guess my machine executes that JS function to redirect to which proxy server, Can I do anything (nothing bad...) between downloading JS and executing it.

[@hnasr]

PK CC PK CC that is a very good point that I completely missed in the video. It is an easy way to deploy a proxy this way your company can set the pac file path once on your machine and change proxy often and add more rules etc without going back to your machine and set the new ip address of the proxy. For example your company want you to use a different proxy (or perhaps no proxy ) when you go through internal ip addreeses and applications but for external traffic they want you to go through a proxy. They can say hey if someone trying to go through facebook direct all traffic to this proxy and that proxy can alert 🚨 the management .. make sense? In a nut shell it allows you set different proxy on your machine based on the JS function you talked about. Thanks! I think that deserves its own video im interested to learn more about this myself. Research time!

[@pkcc9381]

@@hnasr Thank you it makes scene.

[@FordExplorer-rm6ew]

What would be the equivalent of this on Windows? Should WPAD(web proxy auto discovery) be on by default? Does the machine need it to run ? Or is it more secure to turn off WPAD? Mac seems so much more simple at this point

[@FordExplorer-rm6ew]

Also is this safe to use locally or should we delete after? I know "safe" is kind of broad Secure? Secure as long as it isn't in a production application? / to use locally? ^ Sometimes i have hard time making sense of(im kind of new) sorry if question is a little weird

[@hnasr]

Yes it is safe to use locally since its. Your own machine and no one will have access to the proxy since its running on your own machine. If the proxy was running on another public server running the proxy and your machine was set to use that public proxy ill start to ask questions and worry.

[@zahrasadeghibogar]

Hi, good job, do you have any video about HTTPs proxy?:-)

[@hnasr]

Thanks! Yes check this out kzbin.info/www/bejne/p4rRcmV6e6p4gtk

[@umessr8456]

Same thing I wanted to know . Thank you

[@skazzle6782]

If the wrong person gets their hand on this... it could be bad like popular games like roblox would have players using HTTP proxys to spawn themselves robux or sorts of hacks same with minecraft fortnite and other games

[@noahgarcia6514]

Very informative! I read that not all HTTP proxies can enter HTTPs websites. In order to do this, you have to convert the HTTP proxy to a transparent one. What's your take on this? I am curious. I've been getting my proxies from instantproxies.com and I haven't had issues accessing HTTPS websites.

[@hnasr]

HTTP Proxy only forwards HTTP traffic. HTTPS proxy can act in two ways, tunnel mode (HTTP connect METHOD) and TLS termination proxy . The later is very dangerous to use since the proxy can see all your traffic and decrypt it.

[@brunogomes4963]

is anyone having troubles with their localhost?