International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) ISSN: 2278-0181 Vol. 2 Issue 12, December - 2013 The Security Considerations with Squid Proxy Server for Windows Mr.E.Srinivasa Rao 1, Mr.B.Srinu 2 1M.Tech (SE) of IT Department, Gayathri Vidya Parishad College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam. 2Asst.Professor of IT Department, Gayathri Vidya Parishad College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam. Abstract INTRODUCTION Securing and controlling workstation access to the Squid is a Unix-based proxy server that caches web has never been an easy task for security Internet content closer to a requestor than its professionals. Firewalls and access control list on original point of origin. Squid supports caching of routers alone may not bring an acceptable level of many different kinds of Web objects, including security for your organization. Even if their those accessed through HTTP and FTP. Caching primary role is to reduce network traffic and frequently requested Web pages, media files and improve performance, HTTP proxy servers (also other content accelerates response time and called cache servers) are likely to be installed as reduces bandwidth congestion. A Squid proxy an additional security layer and as a web surfing server is generally installed on a separate server monitoring system. Having secure proxy servers is than the Web server with the original files. Squid critical because many users depend on it for their works by tracking object use over the network. work. Several proxy server products are available Squid will initially act as an intermediary, simply nowadays. Since commercial products are very IJERTpassing the client's request on to the server and expensive, alternative products such as openIJERT saving a copy of the requested object. If the same source software are often considered. The most client or multiple clients request the same object popular and widely used proxy server in this before it expires from Squid's cache, Squid can category is indisputably Squid. This paper will then immediately serve it, accelerating the cover various security aspects and download and saving bandwidth. recommendations to improve Squid’s overall security during its installation time. Software Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have used Squid configuration parameters and an overview of proxy servers since the early 1990s to provide logging and content filtering software will also be faster download speeds and reduce latency, approached. especially for delivering rich media and streaming video. Website operators frequently will put a Squid proxy server as a content accelerator, caching frequently viewed content and easing Keywords: squid log analyzer, Internet service loads on Web servers. Content delivery networks protocols, GUI, Proxy servers. [2] and media companies employ Squid proxy servers and deploy them throughout their Networks to improve the experience of viewers requesting programming, particularly for load balancing and handling traffic spikes for popular content. Squid is provided as free, open source software and can be used under the GNU General Public License (GPL) of the Free Software IJERTV2IS120435 www.ijert.org 710 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) ISSN: 2278-0181 Vol. 2 Issue 12, December - 2013 Foundation. Squid was originally designed to run caching work in the mid-90s. It has grown to on Unix-based systems but can also be run on include extra features such as powerful access Windows machines. Squid was originally an control, authorization, logging, content outgrowth from the Harvest Project, an ARPA- distribution/replication, traffic management and funded open source information gathering and shaping and more. It has many, many work- storage tool. "Squid" was the code name used to around, new and old, to deal with incomplete and differentiate the project when development in the incorrect HTTP implementations. new direction was initially begun. For ISPs: Save on bandwidth, improve user Squid offers a rich access control, authorization experience and logging environment to develop web proxy and content serving applications. Squid is based Squid allows Internet Providers to save on their on the Harvest Cache Daemon developed in the bandwidth through content caching. Cached early 1990's. It was one of two forks from the content means data is served locally and users will code base after the Harvest project ran to see this through faster download speeds with completion. The Squid project was funded by an frequently-used content. A well-tuned proxy NSF grant (NCR-9796082) which covered server (even without caching!) can improve user research into caching technologies. The ir cache speeds purely by optimizing TCP flows. It’s easy funding ran out a few years later and the Squid to tune servers to deal with the wide variety of project continued through volunteer donations and latencies found on the internet - something that the occasional commercial investment. Squid is desktop environments just aren't tuned for. Squid currently being developed by a handful of allows ISPs to avoid needing to spend large individuals donating their time and effort to amounts of money on upgrading core equipment building current and next generation content and transit links to cope with ever-demanding caching and delivery technologies. An ever- content growth. growing number of companies use Squid to save on their internet web traffic, improve performance, deliver faster browsing to their end- IJERT clients and provide static, dynamic and streamingIJERT For Websites: Scaling application without content to millions of internet users worldwide. massive investment in hardware and development time Many corporate companies embedded Squid in their home or office firewall devices; others use Squid is one of the oldest content accelerators, Squid in large-scale web proxy installations to used by thousands of websites around the world to speed up broadband and dialup internet access. ease the load on their servers. Frequently-seen Squid is being increasingly used in content content is cached by Squid and served to the end- delivery architectures to deliver static and client with only a fraction of the application server streaming video/audio to internet users worldwide. load needed normally. Setting up an accelerator in The developers of the HTTP protocol identified front of an existing website is almost always a early on that there was going to be exponential quick and simple task with immediate benefits. growth in content and, concerned with distribution mechanisms, added powerful caching primitives. For Content Delivery Providers: distributing These primitives allow content developers and content worldwide distributors to hint to servers and end-user applications how content should be validated, Squid makes it easy for content distributors and revalidated and cached. This had the effect of streaming media developers to distribute content dramatically reducing the amount of bandwidth worldwide. CDN providers can buy cheap PC required to serve content and improved user hardware running Squid and deploy in strategic response times. Squid is one of the projects which locations around the internet to serve enormous grew out of the initial content distribution and amounts of data cheaply and efficiently. A large IJERTV2IS120435 www.ijert.org 711 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) ISSN: 2278-0181 Vol. 2 Issue 12, December - 2013 number of companies have deployed servers share an Internet connection. Because it is also a running Squid in the past in exactly this manner. proxy (i.e. it behaves like a client on behalf of the real client), it can provide some anonymity and security [1]. However, it also can introduce Web Caching significant privacy concerns as it can log a lot of data including URLs requested, the exact date and Web caching is when the server stores web pages time, the name and version of the requester's web and images that have been accessed by clients for browser and operating system, and the referrer. future Internet requests. If a user accesses a web site like cnn.com those pages are saved, or cached A client program (e.g. browser) either has to so that when the next user accesses cnn.com the specify explicitly the proxy server it wants to use pages are delivered from the cache not from (typical for ISP customers), or it could be using a ccn.com. Of course, the Squid server verifies that proxy without any extra configuration: the pages have not changed since it stored those “transparent caching”, in which case all outgoing pages initially. When viewing logs you will see HTTP requests are intercepted by Squid and all several terms that need to be understood so you responses are cached. The latter is typically a know what is happening on the Squid box. The corporate set-up (all clients are on the same LAN) term cache hit is used when the page that was and often introduces the privacy concerns requested actually came from the cache. The mentioned above. Squid has some features that cache hit ratio is the percentage of requests has can help anonymize connections, such as been filled from cache. The byte hit ration disabling or changing specific header fields in a indicates the volume of data that was filled from client's HTTP requests. the cache. A cache miss means that the request could not be filled from the cache but had to be System Analysis filled with an actual connection to the web page. The term uncatchable refers to data that could not Problem Description: be cached, either because the instructions from the web server accessed tells Squid not to cache the IJERTProblem statement is one of the basic and data or because the settings in Squid itself are setIJERT important phases of project phase. When the basic not to cache the specific data format that was problem is determined, it is documented and the requested. For example Squid may be set not to symptomatic problem is analyzed, then the current cache large file formats like a QuickTime movie.