Access Control Lists

by mike on November 9, 2008 2 comments in Proxy Server The importance of access controls cannot be overstated. It is important to have a good understanding of how to control who uses squid. When access controls are created you will use two components. The first is the acl which defines, clients, IP Addresses, hostnames, origin port numbers and request methods. Once these are created they are combined with rules for the acls. The acls are created using a basic structure. acl name type value Here is an example which shows the name as net, the type is src which is the source and the vlaue is the network address. acl net src 192.168.7.0/24 ACL Types There are about 25 acl types which can be used. src, dst, myip Several types use ip addresses as a value. The following three examples are all acceptable to squid. Squid will try to calculate the subnet if it is not included, however, it is a good practice to add the correct subnet when the acl is written. acl net src 192.168.7.0/24 acl net src 192.168.7.0/255.255.255.0 acl net src 192.168.7.0 Hostnames may be used in the acls but this is not a god idea and squid will convert hostnames on startup but will not make DNS lookups after that so if the address of the host changes it will be incorrect. src The src is the source or where the request is coming from. acl myworkstation src 192.168.7.56 Here the source is the specific ip address of 192.168.7.56. dst dst is where the request is directed at. One of the problems of using dst is that it must make a

host lookup before it can process the request and this may take too long. Better to use dstdomain. myip This type is useful only when squid will use several ip addresses. It is used to indicate which ip address for squid to use. This may be very useful for setting up squid so that it will listen on two separate networks with different ip addresses. srcdomian, dstdomain, cache_host_domain These types use domain names. Be careful with domain names because of the difference between domain names and subdomains. If the acl begins with a . then it is used as a wildcard and it will match all domains and subdomians. If it is without the ., then it will be considered an exact match. acl example1 srcdomain example.com acl example2 srcdomain .example.com In the examples above the acl example1 will not match mail.example.com nor www.example.com because it must be an exact match. However, mail.example.com, www.example.com and example.com all will match the second acl. The differences between dst and dstdomain. The dst type only checks the domain one time, so that if it changes you will not have the correct information. However, when using dstdomain, squid will check it every time it is accessed, which is a safer situation. srcdomain The srcdomain will force squid to do a reverse DNS lookup to verify the IP Address. If a domain is not configured correctly, then it will not be able to complete the reverse lookup and fail. This is the biggest drawback to using srcdomain. ident, proxy_auth These two types use usernames. srcdom_regex, dstdom_regex, url_regex, urlpath_regex, browser, referer_regex, ident_regex, proxy_auth_regex, req_mime_type, rep_mime_type ^http:// The regular expression matches any URL that begins with http://. \.jpg$ The regular expression matches any file extension that ends in .jpg. the \ is added because . is also a wildcard.

acl net url_regex ^http://www Squid is case sensitive by default. In order to make it case insensitive use the -i option. acl net url_regex -i ^http://www port, myport The port number is a number that is used by a service on a server or workstation to communicate with another service. acl net port 22 acl net port 20-21 port Ports are an area to be careful with. The best configuration will deny all ports and only allow those determined to be safe. The configuration below allows only ports 21,80.443,1209 and unregistered ports. Port 21 is used for ftp, port 80 for web services, port 443 for encrypted sites and port 1209 is a special port used for a web based learning site. Unregistered ports are ports that are used to connect to services on the Internet and are generally accepted as safe when they are outgoing ports. acl SSL_ports port 443 acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 1209 # plato acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports http_access deny !Safe_ports myport Myport is used when a squid server may receive different types of requests for specific services. For example if the squid server was accepting connections as a proxy for users and also accepting connections as a HTTP accelerator. acl accelerator myport 80 acl proxy myport 3128 acl net src 192.168.7.0/24

Ubuntu 10.04 Squid Proxy

by mike on April 9, 2010 8 comments in Proxy Server Squid is a caching proxy server that can provide enhanced performance for HTTP,HTTPS and FTP. Squid will cache commonly accessed sites so that it can improve performance by 10-20% for Internet connections. Squid is compliant to the Harvest Cache architecture and uses the Inter-Cache Protocol (ICP) to transfer data between peer and /parent/child servers. Squid can accelerate traffic from the inside network to the Internet or it can be employed to act as a front-end accelerator for a Web server, increasing access to the web pages on the server. Here is what Squid can do: 1.Accelerate Internet Connections for Internal Network 2.Protect the Internal Network When Surfing the Internet 3.Create Detailed Information About User Activity on the Internet 4.Prevent Inappropriate Activity by Users on the Internet 5.Enforce Use by Authorized Users Only 6.Filter Sensitive Material 7.Accelerate Web Server Pages Live Ubuntu Courses or Online Ubuntu Courses are available. Squid acts both as a proxy, working in behalf of a user, and as a cache. When squid works as a proxy and a user makes a request for a web site, squid retrieves the web page and then provides it to the user. The user, in reality never reaches the Internet as the proxy server retrieves and caches all the sites the user makes requests for. Install and Start Squid Ubuntu now installs squid 2.7 as the default which is focused on high-performance with features aimed at high traffic volume. This is in contrast to the other option squid 3.0 which has a greater focus on web filtering. Be sure that any modifications you make are viewed as version specific. sudo apt-get install squid Start / Stop / Restart Because squid is now integrated with upstart the best way to control squid is using these commands: start squid stop squid restart squid

Important Locations Once you install Squid, you will need to be familiar with these locations that are important for Squid. /etc/squid config directory /etc/squid/squid.conf squid configuration file /usr/share/doc/squid documentation and examples /usr/lib/squid support files /usr/sbin/squid squid daemon /var/log/squid log directory /var/spool/squid cache directory Basic Squid Configuration The complete configuration file is found at /etc/squid/squid.conf. However, since the Squid configuration file has over 4960 lines it is not the easiest to work with. A basic configuration of Squid only needs one modification, if you are using private networks. The hostname is automatically discovered by squid, however if you want to set a specific name you can use visible hostname. visible_hostname myserver The only line that must be set is to create a http_access variable that will allow users on the internal network to access the Internet. The line should look something like this: http_access allow localnet This line needs to be placed in a specific location, included in the example is the line number so it is easier to locate, note that the localhost is configured to work by default. 677 http_access allow localhost 678 http_access allow localnet This is possible because the default settings now include these three private networks. acl localnet src 10.0.0.0/8 acl localnet src 172.16.0.0/12 acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/16 Once you have set this up restart squid with the following command. restart squid squid start/running, process 13551 Here is a tutorial with additional information on Squid ACLs Point your browsers from those internal machines to the squid proxy. Several points to note about the proxy settings. The default port that you will connect to is 3128 and set squid to use all protocols. Once that is set you should have Internet access.

You will need to configure your firewall. Limit access so that clients can only go through port 3128. This will force them to use the proxy which will provide speed, save resources and protect your internal machines.

Here is an example of allowing an entire subnet.

ufw allow proto tp from 192.168.4.0/24 to any port 3128

Tagged as: Proxy Server, squid, ubuntu 10.04

Dansguardian Content Filter

by mike on April 13, 2010 3 comments in Proxy Server Dansguardian is a content filter that is easy to set up and configure with your preferences including the ability to scan http access with clamav. The main concept behind content filtering is that the application will read the text, evaluate images and types of file extensions before the client has access. This has the advantage of stopping unacceptable content before the user has access and preventing harmful file access. sudo apt-get install dansguardian clamav-daemon Once Dansguardian is installed you will have a directory /etc/dansguardian that shows this content. authplugins dansguardian.conf downloadmanagers lists contentscanners dansguardianf1.conf languages The ,main configuration file is dansguardain.conf. This file needs to be modified so that this line is either commented out or removed. #UNCONFIGURED Please remove this line after configuration You do not need to make any other adjustments to this configuration file to get it to work. As you can see below, once you implement Dansguardian you will be using two ports, 3128 so that Dansguardian can talk to Squid and port 8080 so the client can talk to Dansguardian. The illustration shows how this works. The important implication is that you now need to alter the client so it listens on port 8080 not 3128. filterip = # the port that DansGuardian listens to. filterport = 8080 # the ip of the proxy (default is the loopback i.e. this server) proxyip = 127.0.0.1 # the port DansGuardian connects to proxy on proxyport = 3128

You should see that the server is listening on two ports with netstat. netstat -aunt tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3128 tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:8080

0.0.0.0:* 0.0.0.0:*

LISTEN LISTEN

Once you have commented out the necessary line in the dansguardian.conf you must restart squid and Dansguardian. Next, adjust your client to listen on the correct port. Here is the client adjusted to listen on port 8080.

You also have the ability to scan files for virus activity with clamav. Check to see if clamav is available with this command. ps -ef | grep clamav clamav 14054 1 0 07:00 ? clamav 14978 1 0 14:27 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/freshclam -d quiet 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/clamd

Content Management The configuration files in /etc/dansguardian, dansguardain.conf and dansguardianf1.conf are both well commented and provide a lot of options. In the dansguardian.conf you will find these options that are commonly adjusted. You can either block all downloads or follow the lists and select specific file types you will not all ow to be downloaded. blockdownloads = off exceptionextensionlist = /etc/dansguardian/lists/exceptionextensionlist exceptionmimetypelist = /etc/dansguardian/lists/exceptionmimetypelist

bannedextensionlist = /etc/dansguardian/lists/bannedextensionlist bannedmimetypelist = /etc/dansguardian/lists/bannedmimetypelist The content is rated using a numbering system, which you can adjust, and once content is evaluated and goes over the naughtynesslimit the content is denied. So you can adjust the number which is that top limit with this setting, increase the number for greater access. naughtynesslimit = 50 The lists directory contains a list of files that can be adjusted to your requirements. These files include text files that are easy to adjust in terms of ratings for terms, file types, etc. The files are one of three types; banned, exceptions or lists of terms and weights for those terms. These should be easy enough to modify as they are heavily comments.

Tagged as: proxy content management, Proxy Server, squid proxy

Hardware Requirements for Squid

by mike on November 7, 2008 1 comment in Proxy Server The hardware requirements are not as large as you would think. The most important aspect to consider is the RAM that is available for Squid. RAM is important because each object in the cache requires a small amount of memory. Generally, 32 MB of RAM are required for every GB of disk space. If you run out of memory there will be a significant reduction in speed. The other major consideration for Squid is disks. The faster the disk read and write the faster Squid will operate. Usually it is a good idea to consider SCSI for disks on a proxy server just because of speed. The other advantage that SCSI has is that it can access 7 different drives allowing for multiple reads and writes without a slowdown in access. If you are using ATA drives and have multiple drives on one channel you will find the system has to wait as it can only access one drive at a time. However, SATA drives or even some ATA drives are increasing in speeds and are much cheaper. There are a number of variables that impact the speed of Squid and the hardware that is required. One variable is object size. The larger the object, the more memory is required per object so this may increase memory requirements. The second variable is the number of users that are on the system concurrently. This is a large variable in that the difference between 5 users and 105 users is considerable. The point is, plan for growth and estimate high for concurrent users so you do not need to come back later and upgrade.