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Show HN: GoPee – Simple, Self-Hosted Web Proxy in Go

70 points by madhurjain 12y ago

madhurjain 12y ago
Minimal, Web proxy written in Go. Can be self-hosted on Heroku, Red Hat OpenShift or any VPS / Cloud provider. more details here http://madhurjain.github.io/gopee http://madhurjain.github.io/gopee
- deftnerd 12y ago
  Great start. Your two known deficiencies are pretty big right now: * Doesn't support anything which requires sessions / cookies / logging in, yet * Most AJAX requests don't work since the URLs are not rewritten Don't stop working on it! This is a pretty great project.
  - madhurjain 12y ago
    @deftnerd Thanks for the appreciation! I understand the deficiencies are major ones, but I am gonna continue working on it.
    - nstott 12y ago
      good start, nothing is ever perfect, kudos to you for being open to the deficiencies and being happy fixing them
  - nacs 12y ago
    Other issues: * It's leaking a lot of information (Google Analytics and a few other domains are being connected to directly instead of going through proxy). This is probably the biggest thing to fix. Offering a "strip all scripts" option may help. * Useragent is set to Go's default. Forwarding the user's user-agent or better yet, a stock browser useragent (Firefox or something) may be better
    - madhurjain 12y ago
      @nacs Thanks for your inputs. Will fix asap !
    - ChristianBundy 12y ago
      The default Tor useragent would be perfect for this.
    - zeendo 12y ago
      That first issue isn't really generally fixable, is it? At least, not for a web-based proxy like this. SOME effort could be made to rewrite URLs found inside of Javascript but that might be a terrible idea in practice.
      - nacs 12y ago
        If you're allowing Javascript then it'd be tough but if scripting is stripped it should be doable. For anonymizing, stripping Javascript, Flash/plugin content would be essential I think.
mkr-hn 12y ago
Might not be the best of names.
- madhurjain 12y ago
  @mkr-hn I understand. But, just check the site title if you haven't already. Maybe that would help see it from a different angle ?
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
    The name means it's likely to be blocked by the web filters it's meant to bypass.
  - Stratoscope 12y ago
    To be honest, I've never actually thought about peeing on my ISP. But the single most enjoyable experience I've ever had peeing was at Martin's West in Redwood City. They have an old-fashioned long tray shared urinal like we had in kindergarten, but thankfully I was there early and had the whole thing to myself. And they had just filled the entire tray with crushed ice! If your aim is good, you can make any pattern you want. I tried for the Mandelbrot but only got a few spirals going. But man, was it fun! What did you say your open source project does again?
  - dustinls 12y ago
    My first thoughts were GoPro camera + bathroom. Doesn't change the visual very much, even at another angle. :P
- atian 12y ago
  Has some pronunciation resemblance of "dog fart" in Chinese.
milankragujevic 12y ago
Another issue is that forms don't work.
- madhurjain 12y ago
  doh! Issue logged. Will fix it. Thanks!
  - nacs 12y ago
    As someone that has worked on a similar project before -- I should caution you that allowing POST requests and such can open up a lot more potential for abuse (comment spammers, web-mail spam, etc) so you should add some rate limiting per-visitor-IP/target-domain or something similar before implementing this.
    - madhurjain 12y ago
      right.. thanks for the heads up ! But since it's a self-hosted solution, it would be very easy to just circumvent the rate-limiting and use it for malicious purpose ?
      - nacs 12y ago
        Right, if your goal is privately hosted/accessible instances then it shouldn't be a problem. Just mentioning in case the goal is to offer it as a public service as it is at your main domain.
aosmith 12y ago
I wrote something like this a while back: https://github.com/aosmith/go-proxy https://github.com/aosmith/go-proxy
- nacs 12y ago
  Goals are quite different however. Your project is more of a raw socket forwarder while OP's project attempts to be an anonymizing content proxy.
nfriedly 12y ago
Nice! I wrote something similar in node.js a while back; so far it's gotten me banned from Heroku and nodejitsu :p
- saganus 12y ago
  Why did it got you banned on those services??
  - nfriedly 12y ago
    On Heroku, someone reported my site as being infected with malware that stole peoples Facebook passwords. Heroku took the site offline and notified me. I explained that it was just a web proxy and that there was no malware or stolen passwords. A week or two later they emailed me that I was correct, but they were going to keep my site offline and change their TOS to forbid proxy sites. (As far as I know they never did change their TOS, so GoPee should still be safe.) On Nodejitsu, someone tweeted links to porn that went through my proxy, and they disabled the site thinking that I was using their service to host porn. The CEO told me that they'd turn it back on if I added user accounts and a way to ban users. But at that point, I had a newborn son and was in no mood to put a bunch of development work into making my anonymous proxy not-so-anonymous. So, right now, it's still offline. The source is at https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker if anyone's interested.
lawnchair_larry 12y ago
I get where "Go" comes from, obviously, but I'm confused about "Pee".
- c17r 12y ago
  My guess would be "Pee" = "P" = "Proxy"
- RussianCow 12y ago
  The title of the page is "Go Pee on your ISP".
daviddoran 12y ago
I think a slightly more practical approach would be to make an easily self-hosted web proxy with an accompanying Google Chrome (or other) extension that can rewrite all network requests.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - jdangu 12y ago
    A fully web-based proxy cannot accept connections as if it was an HTTP or SOCKS proxy. It has to use some hacks (typically using URL redirects) to route the traffic to you. Compatibility with JS/ajax-intensive web apps is quite tricky to achieve. Glype [1] is an example of web proxy that provides rewriting and customizable plugins to improve compatibility with complex web apps. Not free software but comes with source code (PHP). [1] http://www.glype.com http://www.glype.com

70 points by madhurjain 12y ago

Minimal, Web proxy written in Go. Can be self-hosted on Heroku, Red Hat OpenShift or any VPS / Cloud provider. more details here http://madhurjain.github.io/gopee http://madhurjain.github.io/gopee

deftnerd 12y ago
Great start. Your two known deficiencies are pretty big right now: * Doesn't support anything which requires sessions / cookies / logging in, yet * Most AJAX requests don't work since the URLs are not rewritten Don't stop working on it! This is a pretty great project.
- madhurjain 12y ago
  @deftnerd Thanks for the appreciation! I understand the deficiencies are major ones, but I am gonna continue working on it.
  - nstott 12y ago
    good start, nothing is ever perfect, kudos to you for being open to the deficiencies and being happy fixing them
- nacs 12y ago
  Other issues: * It's leaking a lot of information (Google Analytics and a few other domains are being connected to directly instead of going through proxy). This is probably the biggest thing to fix. Offering a "strip all scripts" option may help. * Useragent is set to Go's default. Forwarding the user's user-agent or better yet, a stock browser useragent (Firefox or something) may be better
  - madhurjain 12y ago
    @nacs Thanks for your inputs. Will fix asap !
  - ChristianBundy 12y ago
    The default Tor useragent would be perfect for this.
  - zeendo 12y ago
    That first issue isn't really generally fixable, is it? At least, not for a web-based proxy like this. SOME effort could be made to rewrite URLs found inside of Javascript but that might be a terrible idea in practice.
    - nacs 12y ago
      If you're allowing Javascript then it'd be tough but if scripting is stripped it should be doable. For anonymizing, stripping Javascript, Flash/plugin content would be essential I think.

mkr-hn 12y ago

Might not be the best of names.

madhurjain 12y ago
@mkr-hn I understand. But, just check the site title if you haven't already. Maybe that would help see it from a different angle ?
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  The name means it's likely to be blocked by the web filters it's meant to bypass.
- Stratoscope 12y ago
  To be honest, I've never actually thought about peeing on my ISP. But the single most enjoyable experience I've ever had peeing was at Martin's West in Redwood City. They have an old-fashioned long tray shared urinal like we had in kindergarten, but thankfully I was there early and had the whole thing to myself. And they had just filled the entire tray with crushed ice! If your aim is good, you can make any pattern you want. I tried for the Mandelbrot but only got a few spirals going. But man, was it fun! What did you say your open source project does again?
- dustinls 12y ago
  My first thoughts were GoPro camera + bathroom. Doesn't change the visual very much, even at another angle. :P
atian 12y ago
Has some pronunciation resemblance of "dog fart" in Chinese.

milankragujevic 12y ago

Another issue is that forms don't work.

madhurjain 12y ago
doh! Issue logged. Will fix it. Thanks!
- nacs 12y ago
  As someone that has worked on a similar project before -- I should caution you that allowing POST requests and such can open up a lot more potential for abuse (comment spammers, web-mail spam, etc) so you should add some rate limiting per-visitor-IP/target-domain or something similar before implementing this.
  - madhurjain 12y ago
    right.. thanks for the heads up ! But since it's a self-hosted solution, it would be very easy to just circumvent the rate-limiting and use it for malicious purpose ?
    - nacs 12y ago
      Right, if your goal is privately hosted/accessible instances then it shouldn't be a problem. Just mentioning in case the goal is to offer it as a public service as it is at your main domain.

aosmith 12y ago

I wrote something like this a while back: https://github.com/aosmith/go-proxy https://github.com/aosmith/go-proxy

nacs 12y ago
Goals are quite different however. Your project is more of a raw socket forwarder while OP's project attempts to be an anonymizing content proxy.

nfriedly 12y ago

Nice! I wrote something similar in node.js a while back; so far it's gotten me banned from Heroku and nodejitsu :p

saganus 12y ago
Why did it got you banned on those services??
- nfriedly 12y ago
  On Heroku, someone reported my site as being infected with malware that stole peoples Facebook passwords. Heroku took the site offline and notified me. I explained that it was just a web proxy and that there was no malware or stolen passwords. A week or two later they emailed me that I was correct, but they were going to keep my site offline and change their TOS to forbid proxy sites. (As far as I know they never did change their TOS, so GoPee should still be safe.) On Nodejitsu, someone tweeted links to porn that went through my proxy, and they disabled the site thinking that I was using their service to host porn. The CEO told me that they'd turn it back on if I added user accounts and a way to ban users. But at that point, I had a newborn son and was in no mood to put a bunch of development work into making my anonymous proxy not-so-anonymous. So, right now, it's still offline. The source is at https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker if anyone's interested.

lawnchair_larry 12y ago

I get where "Go" comes from, obviously, but I'm confused about "Pee".

c17r 12y ago
My guess would be "Pee" = "P" = "Proxy"
RussianCow 12y ago
The title of the page is "Go Pee on your ISP".

daviddoran 12y ago

I think a slightly more practical approach would be to make an easily self-hosted web proxy with an accompanying Google Chrome (or other) extension that can rewrite all network requests.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- jdangu 12y ago
  A fully web-based proxy cannot accept connections as if it was an HTTP or SOCKS proxy. It has to use some hacks (typically using URL redirects) to route the traffic to you. Compatibility with JS/ajax-intensive web apps is quite tricky to achieve. Glype [1] is an example of web proxy that provides rewriting and customizable plugins to improve compatibility with complex web apps. Not free software but comes with source code (PHP). [1] http://www.glype.com http://www.glype.com