proxychains

Route TCP connections through proxy servers

TLDR

Run a command through the proxy

$ proxychains [command]

Run curl through proxy

$ proxychains curl [url]

Use a specific config file

$ proxychains -f [path/to/config.conf] [command]

Quiet mode (suppress proxy info output)

$ proxychains -q [command]

SSH through proxy

$ proxychains ssh [user]@[host]

Chain proxychains with a browser

$ proxychains firefox

SYNOPSIS

proxychains [-q] [-f configfile] program [args_]

proxychains forces TCP connections made by a given application to go through proxy servers such as SOCKS4, SOCKS5, or HTTP proxies. It hooks network-related libc functions using LD_PRELOAD to redirect traffic transparently without modifying the target application.Useful for anonymization, routing traffic through Tor, and bypassing network restrictions. Supported authentication types are user/pass for SOCKS4/5 and basic for HTTP.The modern maintained version is proxychains-ng (proxychains4) by rofl0r, which is a continuation of the original project.

PARAMETERS

-q

Quiet mode. Do not display proxy connection information.

-f configfile_

Use specified configuration file instead of the default. Without this flag, proxychains searches in order: the path in the PROXYCHAINS_CONF_FILE environment variable, ./proxychains.conf, ~/.proxychains/proxychains.conf, and /etc/proxychains.conf.

CONFIGURATION

$ # /etc/proxychains.conf
strict_chain
proxy_dns

[ProxyList]
socks5 127.0.0.1 9050
http 192.168.1.1 8080

CHAIN TYPES

$ strict_chain  - All proxies in order, fail if any is down
dynamic_chain - Skip dead proxies, at least one must respond
random_chain  - Random proxy order each connection
round_robin   - Cycle through proxies in order

INSTALL

sudo dnf install proxychains-ng

sudo pacman -S proxychains-ng

sudo apk add proxychains-ng

sudo zypper install proxychains-ng

brew install proxychains-ng

nix profile install nixpkgs#proxychains-ng

CAVEATS

Only TCP connections are supported. UDP and ICMP traffic is not proxied. Statically linked programs bypass the LDPRELOAD hook. DNS requests can be proxied by enabling **proxydns** in the configuration file.

HISTORY

proxychains was originally written by haad and later forked as proxychains-ng (proxychains4) by rofl0r with improvements including better stability and additional features.