How to identify if you are behind a "Transparent Proxy"
Traveling a lot? You may still be one of the unlucky few who not only connects to hotel networks regulary, but doesn't have easy access to a VPN to bypass all the nastyness they introduce. In addition, even some "normal" ISPs do introduce a feature called "transparent proxy" to manage traffic. Transparent proxies are nice in that they are easy to setup up and invisible ("transparent") to the user. However, the browser isn't aware of them, and as a result the transparent proxy even if configured non-malicious can still cause confusion bout the same origin policy browser depend on to isolate web sites from each other.
A transperent proxy works in conjunction with a firewall. The firewall will route traffic to the proxy, but changing the desitination IP address of the packet to the proxy's IP address. The proxy now relies on the "Host" header to identify the target site. As a result, the relationship between IP address and host name that the client established is lost.
There is a pretty simple test to figure out if you are behind a simple transparent proxy: Telnet to a "random" IP address (e.g. 192.0.2.1) on port 80. Then, copy/past a simple HTTP request, that includes the host header (the part you type is shown in bold font:
Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute
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