Run free Google web proxy server

In our college someone or the other is always in a search for the ultimate Cyberoam 'bypasser'- something which is undetectable and can run all kinds of services. For all those unaware of Cyberoam, it is a network security product which (at the simplest level) can block websites and applications deemed harmful by the administration. Our administration has blocked most of the sites including rapidshare, torrent sites and many other. Obviously this can get annoying and frustrating especially when useful sites also get blocked. So far I have tried using simple web based proxy servers on the net(like hidemyass.com etc) as well as advanced VPN services like SecurityKiss and PingFu, but they have not lasted very long. The admin probably finds out by noting high network activity caused by such tunneling solutions and blocks the corresponding ip address and port rendering these services useless. Infact I have shared a few tricks/software to tunnel through Cyberoam and like network security products on this blog as well. I have provided links to those articles at the bottom.

Today I present to you yet another such software package with which you can hope to fool such firewalls. You might be surprised to know that Google provides applications which allow you to deploy proxy servers for (obviously) free! Ever heard of Google Apps Engine? It is a part of their cloud services where you can run your web applications on their infrastructure. Projects such as Mirrorrr have been developed which allow you to create a proxy server and deploy it on Google's servers. Surely no firewall in the world will block traffic to Google's trusted servers?!

Installation:

The first thing you need to do is to sign up with appengine.google.com and create an "application". The application identifier is basically the subdomain name that will host your proxy server.

Next you need to download python (preferably version 2.6). The link fo python 2.6.4: python 2.6.4 . Now download google apps engine sdk for python from code.google.com. Download the following zip file ( Google Apps Proxy Google Apps proxy ) which contains python scripts and a simple web page. The python scripts have been taken from project mirrorrr (http://code.google.com/p/mirrorrr/). This is a google apps engine application which mirrors the content of the supplied URL.

Deploying the application on the google server:

First edit the app.yaml file and edit the application field with the name of your application. Then, run the google apps engine program and click on edit-> preferences and fill in the fields. Click on File-> Add existing application. Browse to the 'proxy server settings' folder and click on OK.

Select the application and click on Deploy. You should see a python.exe cmd prompt appearing and another small console screen indicating the progress. Hopefully you will get a message that the application was successfully deployed.

Finally browse to http(s)://www.[application identifier].appspot.com. BTW Https also works! You can now freely access any site.

Obviously you cannot run any other blocked services such as a torrent client. Also not all web elements are supported and therefore some pages might not function properly. This might not be the ultimate solution to fool Cyberoam but is certainly a simple one and should not be detected by the admins quickly.

Important Links:

1. Download Google Apps Proxy files
2. Wiki on Google Apps engine
3. Google Apps homepage
4. http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-proxy-server/12890/
5. Homepage of Cyberoam
6. Using PingFU to access blocked services
7. Hacking PingFU for unlimited access
8. Using VPN software to access blocked services