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Could you explain the acronym? -- Error 00:55, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Quote from http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/386/18/4.html: SOCKS: Wannabe Acronym SOCKS is not actually an acronym, despite the fact that the word has no obvious meaning and is spelled using all capital letters. You will see other terms based on the name SOCKS, such as “SOCKified,” which is used to identify an application written to use the SOCKS protocol.
I would let you in on the secret, but I don’t know what SOCKS means myself. I suppose it’s related to the term “Winsock.” Hrvoje p 23:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I imagine it is a play on the TCP stack that almost every operating system implements called Berkley Sockets. According to the RFC, the first version of this protocol was developed in the field and not in academia so I imagine the original author borrowed the name to associate it with the TCP socket stack.
Does using SOCKS require modification of the client or the server? -- Error 00:55, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If a network app supports SOCKS, you can give it a socks server address much like you would give a web browser a http proxy address.
If it doesn't support SOCKS you have to use use a program called sockscap to launch the application. It acts like a wrapper and changes TCP/IP requests by the application to requests to the SOCKS server. 62.77.162.129 08:45, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"According to the OSI model it is an intermediate layer between the application layer and the transport layer." This doesnt seem right. In the OSI model the application and transport layers are not adjacent. Change this to TCP/IP model??
After looking around online, it seems to exist in the transport layer, on top of TCP.
Nylon is not a client. It's a server. Jdstroy 18:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Quote from http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/386/18/4.html: SOCKS is an OSI session-layer protocol designed to allow access to an external network using TCP-based client/server applications from the internal network. Hrvoje p 23:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not so sure, but isn't the IP address and port number in the example in host byte order? They should be in nbo as stated. I tested it and gave 62.77.162.129 to inet_aton(), then I printed the struct in_addr.s_addr value to stdout in hexdecimal presentation, and it came out like this: 0x63076642 which leeds me to believe that it is host byte order.
My ISP has blocked ports 1080, hundreds of Socks5 use this port. Is there anyway for me to bypass this? Please advise. Thanks.
Does "exterior server" have some special meaning, different from "external server"? Nurg 22:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
sorry but I dont like the SOCKS page much. It does not explain the protocol well or give a decent examples. Way to technical for a beginner.
I have requested a review of article's external link lists here and here. Please do not remove cleanup-spam tag from the Software section until more people respond on a matter. The section is in clear violation with WP:EL guidelines and at the very least it requires an independent review. Alex Pankratov 23:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
This article is full of jargon and extreme technical detail that make the page difficult to understand for all but the most knowledgeable of network administrators or internet protocol programmers. For example, it is missing a simple analogy or example that explains the use of a SOCKS proxy, as well as simple details that explain the difference between a SOCKS proxy and other similar proxy protocols.
At the current time, I visited the page attempting to ascertain the difference between using an http proxy and a SOCKS proxy, but this page was not helpful in that pursuit. I suspect most people visiting this page will have a similar question. And I am a more technically-minded and computer saavy user than most. Rritterson ( talk) 05:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
SOCKS uses a handshake protocol to inform the proxy software about the connection that the client is trying to make and may be used for any form of TCP or UDP socket connection, whereas a HTTP proxy analyses the HTTP headers sent through it in order to deduce the address of the server and therefore may only be used for HTTP traffic.
This is completely wrong. What about HTTPS proxies?
I don't understand what this article is about. It lists a few technical specifications - which is cool for hackers I guess - and some general technical information, but I don't get an idea about exactly WHAT it is SOCKS can be used for. For HTTP there's no problem, as I know that it's used to access mostly static web-pages, that is pages that are published and readily accessible to most people. The current version of this article (at the time of writing) appears as unclear about the use of SOCKS. -- Kebman ( talk) 08:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
I see no reason why we can't find sources of usage to be used as examples to assist non-technical users understand what SOCKS are for and how they are used. How are SOCKS used?
You can help too. -- Hm2k ( talk) 14:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I suggest the article be renamed as it seems to be becoming a spam target due to it's ambiguous title of "SOCKS" which is clearly being confused with Socks. I will boldly move it to SOCKS (Protocol) which should solve this. SOCKS will redirect here, but may be changed to Socks if that is deemed appropriate. -- Hm2k ( talk) 19:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus, Page not moved Ronhjones (Talk) 01:30, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
SOCKS → SOCKS (protocol) — To help prevent the article being a target of abuse and for disambiguation to avoid confusion with Socks. Hm2k ( talk) 10:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Port 1080 is not a well-known port, it is a Registered port - please change... [2] - Ze0h4x —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ze0h4x ( talk • contribs) 15:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Want to add dante ( [3] ) in the software section. Rwstandridge ( talk) 19:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
There are quite much scenarios where transparent proxy servers where interesting, especially in combination with iptables. A example is the use of redsocks ( https://github.com/darkk/redsocks/) which includes the usage of UDP. There is no other programm that uses UDP and Socks as a transparent proxy. Maybe we can add the link of redsocks to the softwaresection. Xarkas ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC).
{{
edit semi-protected}}
Change 'citation needed' near article end for programs to socksify.
Example 'socksify' programs include:
IP tables & transocks: http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/how-to-force-flash-or-any-program-to-use-a-socks-proxy-using-transocks-and-iptables-in-linux/ tsocks: http://tsocks.sourceforge.net/
and many others that can easily be found via googling 'socksify'
PhilLello ( talk) 03:07, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
I wrote a SOCKS5 proxy with password authentication, so I can share a proxy with my friends (afaict there are no simple SOCKS5 implementations). Anyway, it turns out none of the major browsers actually support SOCKS5 authentication. Someone should add that info. 155.198.65.73 ( talk) 15:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
All software listed in this article must meet the Notability and Verability guidelines, please also consider writing the article first, before adding any additional software. Thanks. -- Hm2k ( talk) 09:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
The Software section is incomplete and is not categorized. It should contain at least two categories: SOCKS Servers and Socksifiers like in the German and French versions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr565 ( talk • contribs) 21:55, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
If a specification compliant SOCKS server, e.g. Dante, running on millions of Linux computers worlwide doesn't have a page at Wikipedia, should it be deleted while non-standard Wingate which does have a page at Wikipedia remains?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.178.123.201 ( talk) 20:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Is Polipo not a caching HTTP proxy and a SOCKS client, rather than a SOCKS server?
The article refers to "layer 5" of the OSI model. That's bullshit -- OSI is a competing network stack, not an educational ideal. SOCKS works in the application layer of the TCP/IP model; it does not provide network services to TCP/IP networks on a different network implementation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.78.18.170 ( talk) 10:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm no expert so didn't come up with a better example. However,
The example we have now is just "One can use SOCKS proxy to get through the firewall if he/she isn't authorized". It's indeed an application of SOCKS protocol but a security hole,rootkit..etc entails the same thing. A better approach should explain "What is SOCKS" and "why/when we use SOCKS instead of the others" 203.186.27.101 ( talk) 16:20, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
As evidenced by the earliest references, like the Koblas' USENIX paper here, the protocol was always called simply Socks or SOCKS, and to my best knowledge it was never explicitly stated by anyone to mean anything more. As sock is an extremely common clipping of the word
socket commonly used in software (in names of variables, in
Berkeley sockets API in constants like SOCK_STREAM
, or types like struct sockaddr
, etc), this is what people always associated it with and that part seems self-explanatory. Although Socks was originally defined in context of security systems as a way of traversing a firewall, I can see no evidence of the name being an abbreviation of any kind beyond that. Note also that the server was called sockd in the paper (without s) suggesting that the s part wasn't that important for whatever the author had in mind, so earlier explanation of it standing for sockets sounds more likely than security. The idea that it could actually stand for something silly like socket secure first appeared on Wikipedia in early 2012 without any source (
Special:Diff/469231213) and was left until 2018 (
Special:Diff/846123106). In the mean time it was copied into other Wikipedias (
ru:Special:Diff/41598250,
uk:Special:Diff/8810620,
lv:Special:Diff/1587925,
nl:Special:Diff/38209027). It's probably a result of interpretation of the final -s by analogy to the later convention of using service names like https, ftps, telnets, etc. Unfortunately Wikipedia is a great place to spread things like that. For example, in 2009 someone added ridiculous backronym in
Special:Diff/267165309 (replacing earlier reference to sockets) and it can now be found in many places all over the Internet including the French Wikipedia. Likewise I believe the recently added (
Special:Diff/1013878565) reference for socket secure is actually a result of Wikipedia citeogenesis (although it doesn't quote any sources itself and is dated 2019). I also find the weird capitalization of "SOCKs5" (all caps except for the small s) used in that reference particularly suspicious. –MwGamera (
talk)
07:29, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
This article has a long-standing issue with miss-representing security properties of SOCKS. Please add only info backed by reliable sources. At some point it suggested that users can use SOCKS to bypass network portals (so bypass authorization and paywalls). Recently I removed info criticizing SOCKS for lack of data concealment and for being susceptible to "censorship". Neither is appropriate info because SOCKS does not set out to do either. So ability to circumvent network restrictions by SOCKS is a mistake on network administrator's part and inability to bypass competent firewall is not a valid criticism because SOCKS is not menat to do that. Anton.bersh ( talk) 12:51, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
SOCKS article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Could you explain the acronym? -- Error 00:55, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Quote from http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/386/18/4.html: SOCKS: Wannabe Acronym SOCKS is not actually an acronym, despite the fact that the word has no obvious meaning and is spelled using all capital letters. You will see other terms based on the name SOCKS, such as “SOCKified,” which is used to identify an application written to use the SOCKS protocol.
I would let you in on the secret, but I don’t know what SOCKS means myself. I suppose it’s related to the term “Winsock.” Hrvoje p 23:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I imagine it is a play on the TCP stack that almost every operating system implements called Berkley Sockets. According to the RFC, the first version of this protocol was developed in the field and not in academia so I imagine the original author borrowed the name to associate it with the TCP socket stack.
Does using SOCKS require modification of the client or the server? -- Error 00:55, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If a network app supports SOCKS, you can give it a socks server address much like you would give a web browser a http proxy address.
If it doesn't support SOCKS you have to use use a program called sockscap to launch the application. It acts like a wrapper and changes TCP/IP requests by the application to requests to the SOCKS server. 62.77.162.129 08:45, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"According to the OSI model it is an intermediate layer between the application layer and the transport layer." This doesnt seem right. In the OSI model the application and transport layers are not adjacent. Change this to TCP/IP model??
After looking around online, it seems to exist in the transport layer, on top of TCP.
Nylon is not a client. It's a server. Jdstroy 18:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Quote from http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/386/18/4.html: SOCKS is an OSI session-layer protocol designed to allow access to an external network using TCP-based client/server applications from the internal network. Hrvoje p 23:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not so sure, but isn't the IP address and port number in the example in host byte order? They should be in nbo as stated. I tested it and gave 62.77.162.129 to inet_aton(), then I printed the struct in_addr.s_addr value to stdout in hexdecimal presentation, and it came out like this: 0x63076642 which leeds me to believe that it is host byte order.
My ISP has blocked ports 1080, hundreds of Socks5 use this port. Is there anyway for me to bypass this? Please advise. Thanks.
Does "exterior server" have some special meaning, different from "external server"? Nurg 22:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
sorry but I dont like the SOCKS page much. It does not explain the protocol well or give a decent examples. Way to technical for a beginner.
I have requested a review of article's external link lists here and here. Please do not remove cleanup-spam tag from the Software section until more people respond on a matter. The section is in clear violation with WP:EL guidelines and at the very least it requires an independent review. Alex Pankratov 23:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
This article is full of jargon and extreme technical detail that make the page difficult to understand for all but the most knowledgeable of network administrators or internet protocol programmers. For example, it is missing a simple analogy or example that explains the use of a SOCKS proxy, as well as simple details that explain the difference between a SOCKS proxy and other similar proxy protocols.
At the current time, I visited the page attempting to ascertain the difference between using an http proxy and a SOCKS proxy, but this page was not helpful in that pursuit. I suspect most people visiting this page will have a similar question. And I am a more technically-minded and computer saavy user than most. Rritterson ( talk) 05:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
SOCKS uses a handshake protocol to inform the proxy software about the connection that the client is trying to make and may be used for any form of TCP or UDP socket connection, whereas a HTTP proxy analyses the HTTP headers sent through it in order to deduce the address of the server and therefore may only be used for HTTP traffic.
This is completely wrong. What about HTTPS proxies?
I don't understand what this article is about. It lists a few technical specifications - which is cool for hackers I guess - and some general technical information, but I don't get an idea about exactly WHAT it is SOCKS can be used for. For HTTP there's no problem, as I know that it's used to access mostly static web-pages, that is pages that are published and readily accessible to most people. The current version of this article (at the time of writing) appears as unclear about the use of SOCKS. -- Kebman ( talk) 08:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
I see no reason why we can't find sources of usage to be used as examples to assist non-technical users understand what SOCKS are for and how they are used. How are SOCKS used?
You can help too. -- Hm2k ( talk) 14:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I suggest the article be renamed as it seems to be becoming a spam target due to it's ambiguous title of "SOCKS" which is clearly being confused with Socks. I will boldly move it to SOCKS (Protocol) which should solve this. SOCKS will redirect here, but may be changed to Socks if that is deemed appropriate. -- Hm2k ( talk) 19:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus, Page not moved Ronhjones (Talk) 01:30, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
SOCKS → SOCKS (protocol) — To help prevent the article being a target of abuse and for disambiguation to avoid confusion with Socks. Hm2k ( talk) 10:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Port 1080 is not a well-known port, it is a Registered port - please change... [2] - Ze0h4x —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ze0h4x ( talk • contribs) 15:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Want to add dante ( [3] ) in the software section. Rwstandridge ( talk) 19:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
There are quite much scenarios where transparent proxy servers where interesting, especially in combination with iptables. A example is the use of redsocks ( https://github.com/darkk/redsocks/) which includes the usage of UDP. There is no other programm that uses UDP and Socks as a transparent proxy. Maybe we can add the link of redsocks to the softwaresection. Xarkas ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC).
{{
edit semi-protected}}
Change 'citation needed' near article end for programs to socksify.
Example 'socksify' programs include:
IP tables & transocks: http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/how-to-force-flash-or-any-program-to-use-a-socks-proxy-using-transocks-and-iptables-in-linux/ tsocks: http://tsocks.sourceforge.net/
and many others that can easily be found via googling 'socksify'
PhilLello ( talk) 03:07, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
I wrote a SOCKS5 proxy with password authentication, so I can share a proxy with my friends (afaict there are no simple SOCKS5 implementations). Anyway, it turns out none of the major browsers actually support SOCKS5 authentication. Someone should add that info. 155.198.65.73 ( talk) 15:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
All software listed in this article must meet the Notability and Verability guidelines, please also consider writing the article first, before adding any additional software. Thanks. -- Hm2k ( talk) 09:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
The Software section is incomplete and is not categorized. It should contain at least two categories: SOCKS Servers and Socksifiers like in the German and French versions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr565 ( talk • contribs) 21:55, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
If a specification compliant SOCKS server, e.g. Dante, running on millions of Linux computers worlwide doesn't have a page at Wikipedia, should it be deleted while non-standard Wingate which does have a page at Wikipedia remains?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.178.123.201 ( talk) 20:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Is Polipo not a caching HTTP proxy and a SOCKS client, rather than a SOCKS server?
The article refers to "layer 5" of the OSI model. That's bullshit -- OSI is a competing network stack, not an educational ideal. SOCKS works in the application layer of the TCP/IP model; it does not provide network services to TCP/IP networks on a different network implementation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.78.18.170 ( talk) 10:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm no expert so didn't come up with a better example. However,
The example we have now is just "One can use SOCKS proxy to get through the firewall if he/she isn't authorized". It's indeed an application of SOCKS protocol but a security hole,rootkit..etc entails the same thing. A better approach should explain "What is SOCKS" and "why/when we use SOCKS instead of the others" 203.186.27.101 ( talk) 16:20, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
As evidenced by the earliest references, like the Koblas' USENIX paper here, the protocol was always called simply Socks or SOCKS, and to my best knowledge it was never explicitly stated by anyone to mean anything more. As sock is an extremely common clipping of the word
socket commonly used in software (in names of variables, in
Berkeley sockets API in constants like SOCK_STREAM
, or types like struct sockaddr
, etc), this is what people always associated it with and that part seems self-explanatory. Although Socks was originally defined in context of security systems as a way of traversing a firewall, I can see no evidence of the name being an abbreviation of any kind beyond that. Note also that the server was called sockd in the paper (without s) suggesting that the s part wasn't that important for whatever the author had in mind, so earlier explanation of it standing for sockets sounds more likely than security. The idea that it could actually stand for something silly like socket secure first appeared on Wikipedia in early 2012 without any source (
Special:Diff/469231213) and was left until 2018 (
Special:Diff/846123106). In the mean time it was copied into other Wikipedias (
ru:Special:Diff/41598250,
uk:Special:Diff/8810620,
lv:Special:Diff/1587925,
nl:Special:Diff/38209027). It's probably a result of interpretation of the final -s by analogy to the later convention of using service names like https, ftps, telnets, etc. Unfortunately Wikipedia is a great place to spread things like that. For example, in 2009 someone added ridiculous backronym in
Special:Diff/267165309 (replacing earlier reference to sockets) and it can now be found in many places all over the Internet including the French Wikipedia. Likewise I believe the recently added (
Special:Diff/1013878565) reference for socket secure is actually a result of Wikipedia citeogenesis (although it doesn't quote any sources itself and is dated 2019). I also find the weird capitalization of "SOCKs5" (all caps except for the small s) used in that reference particularly suspicious. –MwGamera (
talk)
07:29, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
This article has a long-standing issue with miss-representing security properties of SOCKS. Please add only info backed by reliable sources. At some point it suggested that users can use SOCKS to bypass network portals (so bypass authorization and paywalls). Recently I removed info criticizing SOCKS for lack of data concealment and for being susceptible to "censorship". Neither is appropriate info because SOCKS does not set out to do either. So ability to circumvent network restrictions by SOCKS is a mistake on network administrator's part and inability to bypass competent firewall is not a valid criticism because SOCKS is not menat to do that. Anton.bersh ( talk) 12:51, 18 June 2021 (UTC)