Securing the internet through the detection of anonymous proxy usage

Abstract

Businesses and educational facilities employ network filtering to control what internet sites their users access. This is done to help protect network assets, to protect data from being stolen and to comply with company policies on internet usage. Anonymous proxies can be used to bypass most filtering systems put in place and this can remove the protection that the filtering systems provide. Unless the web proxy being used is being hosted by the end user or someone they know, then the identity of whoever is hosting the proxy is unknown and they are potentially untrustworthy. The proxy website could have been set up to eavesdrop on the data flow between the end user's machine and the internet. Sites like this would normally log information for later inspection and data sent from a business user's machine could contain confidential information about the company or the user. This research aims to identify the characteristics or signatures whenever a user is using a web proxy by developing a Detection System that records packets and analyses them looking for identifying patterns of web proxies. One of the main focuses of the research will be detecting the usage of proxy websites that use SSL encryption.