Passing DNS Queries Through SOCKS in Firefox
This is basically an ammendment to the Private Web Browsing with SSH Tunneling and Putty article from earlier this year. What I wasn’t aware of until today is that even when following the method in that article, your DNS queries were using its regular DNS servers to resolve domain names. What this means is that if you were using the method to by-pass corporate web filters, they may still be able to see what you were up to by reviewing the DNS queries coming from your machine. Obviously, if your purpose of tunneling your traffic was for privacy, this still allows you to be caught.
Luckily this can be fixed. So far, I have only come across the method for the Firefox web browser, when I find methods for other browsers I will post it. If you know of any, please post them in the comments.
After following the directions in the previous post, open up your Firefox web browser, and in the address bar, enter about:config . This will give you a warning about editing these settings may be dangerous, click I’ll be careful, I promise! . Up on the top of the webpage, you’ll see a bar with “Filter: ” and a white text input. In that input, type socks_remote . This should filter the list down to one entry, network.proxy.socks_remote_dns . If the Value field is False, then double click it so it says True.
That’s it, that’s all there is to it. You can now close off that window, and from now on, all your DNS queries will tunnel through your SOCKS proxy as well for added security!
[...] There is now an update to this post that also Passes all DNS Queries Through SOCKS in Firefox. Be sure to read that after you finish this tutorial for added [...]