clue / socks-react
Async SOCKS proxy connector client and server implementation, tunnel any TCP/IP-based protocol through a SOCKS5 or SOCKS4(a) proxy server, built on top of ReactPHP.
Fund package maintenance!
clue
clue.engineering/support
Installs: 996 377
Dependents: 58
Suggesters: 0
Security: 0
Stars: 118
Watchers: 12
Forks: 26
Open Issues: 2
Requires
- php: >=5.3
- react/promise: ^3 || ^2.1 || ^1.2
- react/socket: ^1.12
Requires (Dev)
- clue/block-react: ^1.5
- clue/connection-manager-extra: ^1.3
- phpunit/phpunit: ^9.3 || ^5.7 || ^4.8.35
- react/event-loop: ^1.2
- react/http: ^1.6
README
Async SOCKS proxy connector client and server implementation, tunnel any TCP/IP-based protocol through a SOCKS5 or SOCKS4(a) proxy server, built on top of ReactPHP.
The SOCKS proxy protocol family (SOCKS5, SOCKS4 and SOCKS4a) is commonly used to
tunnel HTTP(S) traffic through an intermediary ("proxy"), to conceal the origin
address (anonymity) or to circumvent address blocking (geoblocking). While many
(public) SOCKS proxy servers often limit this to HTTP(S) port 80
and 443
only, this can technically be used to tunnel any TCP/IP-based protocol (HTTP,
SMTP, IMAP etc.).
This library provides a simple API to create these tunneled connections for you.
Because it implements ReactPHP's standard
ConnectorInterface
,
it can simply be used in place of a normal connector.
This makes it fairly simple to add SOCKS proxy support to pretty much any
existing higher-level protocol implementation.
Besides the client side, it also provides a simple SOCKS server implementation
which allows you to build your own SOCKS proxy servers with custom business logic.
- Async execution of connections - Send any number of SOCKS requests in parallel and process their responses as soon as results come in. The Promise-based design provides a sane interface to working with out of order responses and possible connection errors.
- Standard interfaces -
Allows easy integration with existing higher-level components by implementing
ReactPHP's standard
ConnectorInterface
. - Lightweight, SOLID design - Provides a thin abstraction that is just good enough and does not get in your way. Builds on top of well-tested components and well-established concepts instead of reinventing the wheel.
- Good test coverage - Comes with an automated tests suite and is regularly tested against actual proxy servers in the wild.
Table of contents
Support us
We invest a lot of time developing, maintaining and updating our awesome open-source projects. You can help us sustain this high-quality of our work by becoming a sponsor on GitHub. Sponsors get numerous benefits in return, see our sponsoring page for details.
Let's take these projects to the next level together! 🚀
Quickstart example
Once installed, you can use the following code to send a secure HTTPS request to google.com through a local SOCKS proxy server:
<?php require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php'; $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => false )); $browser = new React\Http\Browser($connector); $browser->get('https://google.com/')->then(function (Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface $response) { var_dump($response->getHeaders(), (string) $response->getBody()); }, function (Exception $e) { echo 'Error: ' . $e->getMessage() . PHP_EOL; });
If you're not already running any other SOCKS proxy server,
you can use the following code to create a SOCKS
proxy server listening for connections on 127.0.0.1:1080
:
<?php require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php'; // start a new SOCKS proxy server $socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(); // listen on 127.0.0.1:1080 $socket = new React\Socket\SocketServer('127.0.0.1:1080'); $socks->listen($socket);
See also the examples.
Usage
Client
The Client
is responsible for communication with your SOCKS server instance.
Its constructor simply accepts a SOCKS proxy URI with the SOCKS proxy server address:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080');
You can omit the port if you're using the default SOCKS port 1080:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1');
If you need custom connector settings (DNS resolution, TLS parameters, timeouts,
proxy servers etc.), you can explicitly pass a custom instance of the
ConnectorInterface
:
$connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'dns' => '127.0.0.1', 'tcp' => array( 'bindto' => '192.168.10.1:0' ) )); $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('my-socks-server.local:1080', $connector);
This is one of the two main classes in this package.
Because it implements ReactPHP's standard
ConnectorInterface
,
it can simply be used in place of a normal connector.
Accordingly, it provides only a single public method, the
connect()
method.
The connect(string $uri): PromiseInterface<ConnectionInterface, Exception>
method can be used to establish a streaming connection.
It returns a Promise which either
fulfills with a ConnectionInterface
on success or rejects with an Exception
on error.
This makes it fairly simple to add SOCKS proxy support to pretty much any higher-level component:
- $acme = new AcmeApi($connector); + $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080', $connector); + $acme = new AcmeApi($proxy);
Plain TCP connections
SOCKS proxies are most frequently used to issue HTTP(S) requests to your destination.
However, this is actually performed on a higher protocol layer and this
connector is actually inherently a general-purpose plain TCP/IP connector.
As documented above, you can simply invoke its connect()
method to establish
a streaming plain TCP/IP connection and use any higher level protocol like so:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $proxy->connect('tcp://www.google.com:80')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { echo 'connected to www.google.com:80'; $connection->write("GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); $connection->on('data', function ($chunk) { echo $chunk; }); });
You can either use the Client
directly or you may want to wrap this connector
in ReactPHP's Connector
:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => false )); $connector->connect('tcp://www.google.com:80')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { echo 'connected to www.google.com:80'; $connection->write("GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); $connection->on('data', function ($chunk) { echo $chunk; }); });
See also the first example.
The tcp://
scheme can also be omitted.
Passing any other scheme will reject the promise.
Pending connection attempts can be cancelled by cancelling its pending promise like so:
$promise = $connector->connect($uri); $promise->cancel();
Calling cancel()
on a pending promise will cancel the underlying TCP/IP
connection to the SOCKS server and/or the SOCKS protocol negotiation and reject
the resulting promise.
Secure TLS connections
This class can also be used if you want to establish a secure TLS connection
(formerly known as SSL) between you and your destination, such as when using
secure HTTPS to your destination site. You can simply wrap this connector in
ReactPHP's Connector
:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => false )); $connector->connect('tls://www.google.com:443')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { // proceed with just the plain text data // everything is encrypted/decrypted automatically echo 'connected to SSL encrypted www.google.com'; $connection->write("GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); $connection->on('data', function ($chunk) { echo $chunk; }); });
See also the second example.
Pending connection attempts can be cancelled by canceling its pending promise as usual.
Note how secure TLS connections are in fact entirely handled outside of this SOCKS client implementation.
You can optionally pass additional SSL context options to the constructor like this:
$connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'tls' => array( 'verify_peer' => false, 'verify_peer_name' => false ), 'dns' => false ));
HTTP requests
This library also allows you to send HTTP requests through a SOCKS proxy server.
In order to send HTTP requests, you first have to add a dependency for ReactPHP's async HTTP client. This allows you to send both plain HTTP and TLS-encrypted HTTPS requests like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => false )); $browser = new React\Http\Browser($connector); $browser->get('https://example.com/')->then(function (Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface $response) { var_dump($response->getHeaders(), (string) $response->getBody()); }, function (Exception $e) { echo 'Error: ' . $e->getMessage() . PHP_EOL; });
See also ReactPHP's HTTP client and any of the examples for more details.
Protocol version
This library supports the SOCKS5 and SOCKS4(a) protocol versions. It focuses on the most commonly used core feature of connecting to a destination host through the SOCKS proxy server. In this mode, a SOCKS proxy server acts as a generic proxy allowing higher level application protocols to work through it.
By default, the Client
communicates via SOCKS5 with the SOCKS server.
This is done because SOCKS5 is the latest version from the SOCKS protocol family
and generally has best support across other vendors.
You can also omit the default socks://
URI scheme. Similarly, the socks5://
URI scheme acts as an alias for the default socks://
URI scheme.
// all three forms are equivalent $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks://127.0.0.1:1080'); $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks5://127.0.0.1:1080');
If want to explicitly set the protocol version to SOCKS4(a), you can use the URI
scheme socks4://
as part of the SOCKS URI:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks4://127.0.0.1:1080');
DNS resolution
By default, the Client
does not perform any DNS resolution at all and simply
forwards any hostname you're trying to connect to to the SOCKS server.
The remote SOCKS server is thus responsible for looking up any hostnames via DNS
(this default mode is thus called remote DNS resolution).
As seen above, this mode is supported by the SOCKS5 and SOCKS4a protocols, but
not the original SOCKS4 protocol, as the protocol lacks a way to communicate hostnames.
On the other hand, all SOCKS protocol versions support sending destination IP addresses to the SOCKS server. In this mode you either have to stick to using IPs only (which is ofen unfeasable) or perform any DNS lookups locally and only transmit the resolved destination IPs (this mode is thus called local DNS resolution).
The default remote DNS resolution is useful if your local Client
either can
not resolve target hostnames because it has no direct access to the internet or
if it should not resolve target hostnames because its outgoing DNS traffic might
be intercepted (in particular when using the
Tor network).
As noted above, the Client
defaults to using remote DNS resolution.
However, wrapping the Client
in ReactPHP's
Connector
actually
performs local DNS resolution unless explicitly defined otherwise.
Given that remote DNS resolution is assumed to be the preferred mode, all
other examples explicitly disable DNS resolution like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => false ));
If you want to explicitly use local DNS resolution (such as when explicitly using SOCKS4), you can use the following code:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); // set up Connector which uses Google's public DNS (8.8.8.8) $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => '8.8.8.8' ));
See also the fourth example.
Pending connection attempts can be cancelled by cancelling its pending promise as usual.
Note how local DNS resolution is in fact entirely handled outside of this SOCKS client implementation.
Authentication
This library supports username/password authentication for SOCKS5 servers as defined in RFC 1929.
On the client side, simply pass your username and password to use for authentication (see below). For each further connection the client will merely send a flag to the server indicating authentication information is available. Only if the server requests authentication during the initial handshake, the actual authentication credentials will be transmitted to the server.
Note that the password is transmitted in cleartext to the SOCKS proxy server, so this methods should not be used on a network where you have to worry about eavesdropping.
You can simply pass the authentication information as part of the SOCKS URI:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('alice:password@127.0.0.1:1080');
Note that both the username and password must be percent-encoded if they contain special characters:
$user = 'he:llo'; $pass = 'p@ss'; $url = rawurlencode($user) . ':' . rawurlencode($pass) . '@127.0.0.1:1080'; $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client($url);
The authentication details will be transmitted in cleartext to the SOCKS proxy server only if it requires username/password authentication. If the authentication details are missing or not accepted by the remote SOCKS proxy server, it is expected to reject each connection attempt with an exception error code of
SOCKET_EACCES
(13).
Authentication is only supported by protocol version 5 (SOCKS5),
so passing authentication to the Client
enforces communication with protocol
version 5 and complains if you have explicitly set anything else:
// throws InvalidArgumentException new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks4://alice:password@127.0.0.1:1080');
Proxy chaining
The Client
is responsible for creating connections to the SOCKS server which
then connects to the target host.
Client -> SocksServer -> TargetHost
Sometimes it may be required to establish outgoing connections via another SOCKS server. For example, this can be useful if you want to conceal your origin address.
Client -> MiddlemanSocksServer -> TargetSocksServer -> TargetHost
The Client
uses any instance of the ConnectorInterface
to establish
outgoing connections.
In order to connect through another SOCKS server, you can simply use another
SOCKS connector from another SOCKS client like this:
// https via the proxy chain "MiddlemanSocksServer -> TargetSocksServer -> TargetHost" // please note how the client uses TargetSocksServer (not MiddlemanSocksServer!), // which in turn then uses MiddlemanSocksServer. // this creates a TCP/IP connection to MiddlemanSocksServer, which then connects // to TargetSocksServer, which then connects to the TargetHost $middle = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $target = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('example.com:1080', $middle); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $target, 'dns' => false )); $connector->connect('tls://www.google.com:443')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { // … });
See also the third example.
Pending connection attempts can be canceled by canceling its pending promise as usual.
Proxy chaining can happen on the server side and/or the client side:
-
If you ask your client to chain through multiple proxies, then each proxy server does not really know anything about chaining at all. This means that this is a client-only property.
-
If you ask your server to chain through another proxy, then your client does not really know anything about chaining at all. This means that this is a server-only property and not part of this class. For example, you can find this in the below
Server
class or somewhat similar when you're using the Tor network.
Connection timeout
By default, the Client
does not implement any timeouts for establishing remote
connections.
Your underlying operating system may impose limits on pending and/or idle TCP/IP
connections, anywhere in a range of a few minutes to several hours.
Many use cases require more control over the timeout and likely values much smaller, usually in the range of a few seconds only.
You can use ReactPHP's Connector
to decorate any given ConnectorInterface
instance.
It provides the same connect()
method, but will automatically reject the
underlying connection attempt if it takes too long:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'tcp' => $proxy, 'dns' => false, 'timeout' => 3.0 )); $connector->connect('tcp://google.com:80')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { // connection succeeded within 3.0 seconds });
See also any of the examples.
Pending connection attempts can be cancelled by cancelling its pending promise as usual.
Note how connection timeout is in fact entirely handled outside of this SOCKS client implementation.
SOCKS over TLS
All SOCKS protocol versions support forwarding TCP/IP based connections and higher level protocols. This implies that you can also use secure TLS connections to transfer sensitive data across SOCKS proxy servers. This means that no eavesdropper nor the proxy server will be able to decrypt your data.
However, the initial SOCKS communication between the client and the proxy is usually via an unencrypted, plain TCP/IP connection. This means that an eavesdropper may be able to see where you connect to and may also be able to see your SOCKS authentication details in cleartext.
As an alternative, you may establish a secure TLS connection to your SOCKS proxy before starting the initial SOCKS communication. This means that no eavesdroppper will be able to see the destination address you want to connect to or your SOCKS authentication details.
You can use the sockss://
URI scheme or use an explicit
SOCKS protocol version like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('sockss://127.0.0.1:1080'); $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks4s://127.0.0.1:1080');
See also example 32.
Similarly, you can also combine this with authentication like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('sockss://alice:password@127.0.0.1:1080');
Note that for most use cases, secure TLS connections should be used instead. SOCKS over TLS is considered advanced usage and is used very rarely in practice. In particular, the SOCKS server has to accept secure TLS connections, see also Server SOCKS over TLS for more details. Also, PHP does not support "double encryption" over a single connection. This means that enabling secure TLS connections over a communication channel that has been opened with SOCKS over TLS may not be supported.
Note that the SOCKS protocol does not support the notion of TLS. The above works reasonably well because TLS is only used for the connection between client and proxy server and the SOCKS protocol data is otherwise identical. This implies that this may also have only limited support for proxy chaining over multiple TLS paths.
Unix domain sockets
All SOCKS protocol versions support forwarding TCP/IP based connections and higher level protocols. In some advanced cases, it may be useful to let your SOCKS server listen on a Unix domain socket (UDS) path instead of a IP:port combination. For example, this allows you to rely on file system permissions instead of having to rely on explicit authentication.
You can use the socks+unix://
URI scheme or use an explicit
SOCKS protocol version like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks+unix:///tmp/proxy.sock'); $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks4+unix:///tmp/proxy.sock');
Similarly, you can also combine this with authentication like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks+unix://alice:password@/tmp/proxy.sock');
Note that Unix domain sockets (UDS) are considered advanced usage and PHP only has limited support for this. In particular, enabling secure TLS may not be supported.
Note that the SOCKS protocol does not support the notion of UDS paths. The above works reasonably well because UDS is only used for the connection between client and proxy server and the path will not actually passed over the protocol. This implies that this does also not support proxy chaining over multiple UDS paths.
Server
The Server
is responsible for accepting incoming communication from SOCKS clients
and forwarding the requested connection to the target host.
It supports the SOCKS5 and SOCKS4(a) protocol versions by default.
You can start listening on an underlying TCP/IP socket server like this:
$socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(); // listen on 127.0.0.1:1080 $socket = new React\Socket\SocketServer('127.0.0.1:1080'); $socks->listen($socket);
This class takes an optional LoopInterface|null $loop
parameter that can be used to
pass the event loop instance to use for this object. You can use a null
value
here in order to use the default loop.
This value SHOULD NOT be given unless you're sure you want to explicitly use a
given event loop instance.
Additionally, the Server
constructor accepts optional parameters to explicitly
configure the connector to use and to require
authentication. For more details, read on...
Server connector
The Server
uses an instance of ReactPHP's
ConnectorInterface
to establish outgoing connections for each incoming connection request.
If you need custom connector settings (DNS resolution, TLS parameters, timeouts,
proxy servers etc.), you can explicitly pass a custom instance of the
ConnectorInterface
:
$connector = new React\Socket\Connector(array( 'dns' => '127.0.0.1', 'tcp' => array( 'bindto' => '192.168.10.1:0' ) )); $socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(null, $connector);
If you want to forward the outgoing connection through another SOCKS proxy, you
may also pass a Client
instance as a connector, see also
server proxy chaining for more details.
Internally, the Server
uses ReactPHP's normal
connect()
method, but
it also passes the original client IP as the ?source={remote}
parameter.
The source
parameter contains the full remote URI, including the protocol
and any authentication details, for example socks://alice:password@1.2.3.4:5678
or socks4://1.2.3.4:5678
for legacy SOCKS4(a).
You can use this parameter for logging purposes or to restrict connection
requests for certain clients by providing a custom implementation of the
ConnectorInterface
.
Server authentication
By default, the Server
does not require any authentication from the clients.
You can enable authentication support so that clients need to pass a valid
username and password before forwarding any connections.
Setting authentication on the Server
enforces each further connected client
to use protocol version 5 (SOCKS5).
If a client tries to use any other protocol version, does not send along
authentication details or if authentication details can not be verified,
the connection will be rejected.
If you only want to accept static authentication details, you can simply pass an
additional assoc array with your authentication details to the Server
like this:
$socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(null, null, array( 'alice' => 'password', 'bob' => 's3cret!1' ));
See also example #12.
If you want more control over authentication, you can pass an authenticator
function that should return a bool
value like this synchronous example:
$socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(null, null, function ($username, $password, $remote) { // $remote is a full URI à la socks://alice:password@192.168.1.1:1234 // or sockss://alice:password@192.168.1.1:1234 for SOCKS over TLS // or may be null when remote is unknown (SOCKS over Unix Domain Sockets) // useful for logging or extracting parts, such as the remote IP $ip = parse_url($remote, PHP_URL_HOST); return ($username === 'root' && $password === 'secret' && $ip === '127.0.0.1'); });
Because your authentication mechanism might take some time to actually check the
provided authentication credentials (like querying a remote database or webservice),
the server also supports a Promise-based
interface. While this might seem more complex at first, it actually provides a
very powerful way of handling a large number of connections concurrently without
ever blocking any connections. You can return a Promise
from the authenticator function that will fulfill with a bool
value like this
async example:
$socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(null, null, function ($username, $password) use ($db) { // pseudo-code: query database for given authentication details return $db->query( 'SELECT 1 FROM users WHERE name = ? AND password = ?', array($username, $password) )->then(function (QueryResult $result) { // ensure we find exactly one match in the database return count($result->resultRows) === 1; }); });
Server proxy chaining
The Server
is responsible for creating connections to the target host.
Client -> SocksServer -> TargetHost
Sometimes it may be required to establish outgoing connections via another SOCKS server. For example, this can be useful if your target SOCKS server requires authentication, but your client does not support sending authentication information (e.g. like most webbrowser).
Client -> MiddlemanSocksServer -> TargetSocksServer -> TargetHost
The Server
uses any instance of the ConnectorInterface
to establish outgoing
connections.
In order to connect through another SOCKS server, you can simply use the
Client
SOCKS connector from above.
You can create a SOCKS Client
instance like this:
// set next SOCKS server example.com:1080 as target $proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('alice:password@example.com:1080'); // start a new server which forwards all connections to the other SOCKS server $socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(null, $proxy); // listen on 127.0.0.1:1080 $socket = new React\Socket\SocketServer('127.0.0.1:1080'); $socks->listen($socket);
See also example #21.
Proxy chaining can happen on the server side and/or the client side:
-
If you ask your client to chain through multiple proxies, then each proxy server does not really know anything about chaining at all. This means that this is a client-only property and not part of this class. For example, you can find this in the above
Client
class. -
If you ask your server to chain through another proxy, then your client does not really know anything about chaining at all. This means that this is a server-only property and can be implemented as above.
Server SOCKS over TLS
Both SOCKS5 and SOCKS4(a) protocol versions support forwarding TCP/IP based connections and higher level protocols. This implies that you can also use secure TLS connections to transfer sensitive data across SOCKS proxy servers. This means that no eavesdropper nor the proxy server will be able to decrypt your data.
However, the initial SOCKS communication between the client and the proxy is usually via an unencrypted, plain TCP/IP connection. This means that an eavesdropper may be able to see where the client connects to and may also be able to see the SOCKS authentication details in cleartext.
As an alternative, you may listen for SOCKS over TLS connections so that the client has to establish a secure TLS connection to your SOCKS proxy before starting the initial SOCKS communication. This means that no eavesdroppper will be able to see the destination address the client wants to connect to or their SOCKS authentication details.
You can simply start your listening socket on the tls://
URI scheme like this:
$socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(); // listen on tls://127.0.0.1:1080 with the given server certificate $socket = new React\Socket\SocketServer('tls://127.0.0.1:1080', array( 'tls' => array( 'local_cert' => __DIR__ . '/localhost.pem', ) )); $socks->listen($socket);
See also example 31.
Note that for most use cases, secure TLS connections should be used instead. SOCKS over TLS is considered advanced usage and is used very rarely in practice.
Note that the SOCKS protocol does not support the notion of TLS. The above works reasonably well because TLS is only used for the connection between client and proxy server and the SOCKS protocol data is otherwise identical. This implies that this does also not support proxy chaining over multiple TLS paths.
Server Unix domain sockets
Both SOCKS5 and SOCKS4(a) protocol versions support forwarding TCP/IP based connections and higher level protocols. In some advanced cases, it may be useful to let your SOCKS server listen on a Unix domain socket (UDS) path instead of a IP:port combination. For example, this allows you to rely on file system permissions instead of having to rely on explicit authentication.
You can simply start your listening socket on the unix://
URI scheme like this:
$socks = new Clue\React\Socks\Server(); // listen on /tmp/proxy.sock $socket = new React\Socket\SocketServer('unix:///tmp/proxy.sock'); $socks->listen($socket);
Note that Unix domain sockets (UDS) are considered advanced usage and that the SOCKS protocol does not support the notion of UDS paths. The above works reasonably well because UDS is only used for the connection between client and proxy server and the path will not actually passed over the protocol. This implies that this does also not support proxy chaining over multiple UDS paths.
Servers
Using a PHP SOCKS server
- If you're looking for an end-user SOCKS server daemon, you may want to use LeProxy or clue/psocksd.
- If you're looking for a SOCKS server implementation, consider using
the above
Server
class.
Using SSH as a SOCKS server
If you already have an SSH server set up, you can easily use it as a SOCKS
tunnel end point. On your client, simply start your SSH client and use
the -D <port>
option to start a local SOCKS server (quoting the man page:
a local "dynamic" application-level port forwarding
).
You can start a local SOCKS server by creating a loopback connection to your local system if you already run an SSH daemon:
ssh -D 1080 localhost
Alternatively, you can start a local SOCKS server tunneling through a given remote host that runs an SSH daemon:
ssh -D 1080 example.com
Now you can simply use this SSH SOCKS server like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:1080'); $proxy->connect('tcp://www.google.com:80')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { $connection->write("GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); $connection->on('data', function ($chunk) { echo $chunk; }); });
Note that the above will allow all users on the local system to connect over your SOCKS server without authentication which may or may not be what you need. As an alternative, recent OpenSSH client versions also support Unix domain sockets (UDS) paths so that you can rely on Unix file system permissions instead:
ssh -D/tmp/proxy.sock example.com
Now you can simply use this SSH SOCKS server like this:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('socks+unix:///tmp/proxy.sock'); $proxy->connect('tcp://www.google.com:80')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { $connection->write("GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); $connection->on('data', function ($chunk) { echo $chunk; }); });
As an alternative to requiring this manual setup, you may also want to look into using clue/reactphp-ssh-proxy which automatically creates this SSH tunnel for you. It provides an implementation of the same
ConnectorInterface
so that supporting either proxy protocol should be fairly trivial.
Using the Tor (anonymity network) to tunnel SOCKS connections
The Tor anonymity network client software is designed to encrypt your traffic and route it over a network of several nodes to conceal its origin. It presents a SOCKS5 and SOCKS4(a) interface on TCP port 9050 by default which allows you to tunnel any traffic through the anonymity network:
$proxy = new Clue\React\Socks\Client('127.0.0.1:9050'); $proxy->connect('tcp://www.google.com:80')->then(function (React\Socket\ConnectionInterface $connection) { $connection->write("GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"); $connection->on('data', function ($chunk) { echo $chunk; }); });
In most common scenarios you probably want to stick to default
remote DNS resolution and don't want your client to resolve the target hostnames,
because you would leak DNS information to anybody observing your local traffic.
Also, Tor provides hidden services through an .onion
pseudo top-level domain
which have to be resolved by Tor.
Install
The recommended way to install this library is through Composer. New to Composer?
This project follows SemVer. This will install the latest supported version:
composer require clue/socks-react:^1.4
See also the CHANGELOG for details about version upgrades.
This project aims to run on any platform and thus does not require any PHP extensions and supports running on legacy PHP 5.3 through current PHP 8+ and HHVM. It's highly recommended to use the latest supported PHP version for this project.
Tests
To run the test suite, you first need to clone this repo and then install all dependencies through Composer:
composer install
To run the test suite, go to the project root and run:
vendor/bin/phpunit
The test suite contains a number of tests that rely on a working internet connection, alternatively you can also run it like this:
vendor/bin/phpunit --exclude-group internet
License
This project is released under the permissive MIT license.
Did you know that I offer custom development services and issuing invoices for sponsorships of releases and for contributions? Contact me (@clue) for details.
More
- If you want to learn more about how the
ConnectorInterface
and its usual implementations look like, refer to the documentation of the underlying react/socket component. - If you want to learn more about processing streams of data, refer to the documentation of the underlying react/stream component.
- As an alternative to a SOCKS5 / SOCKS4(a) proxy, you may also want to look into
using an HTTP CONNECT proxy instead.
You may want to use clue/reactphp-http-proxy
which also provides an implementation of the same
ConnectorInterface
so that supporting either proxy protocol should be fairly trivial. - As an alternative to a SOCKS5 / SOCKS4(a) proxy, you may also want to look into
using an SSH proxy (SSH tunnel) instead.
You may want to use clue/reactphp-ssh-proxy
which also provides an implementation of the same
ConnectorInterface
so that supporting either proxy protocol should be fairly trivial. - If you're dealing with public proxies, you'll likely have to work with mixed quality and unreliable proxies. You may want to look into using clue/reactphp-connection-manager-extra which allows retrying unreliable ones, implying connection timeouts, concurrently working with multiple connectors and more.
- If you're looking for an end-user SOCKS server daemon, you may want to use LeProxy or clue/psocksd.