ssh tunneling?

[Azinulbizar]

I recently read a howto for information regarding setting up an SSH tunnel and I'm just wondering if I've done it correctly. Everything seems to be working, but since I'm not using an off-site ssh proxy is it actually doing anything?

Here's what I did:

1. Set up cygwin on my xp machine.
2. ssh -ND 7070 me@localhost
3. set up firefox to use the socks proxy on localhost
4 forwarded the port 22 on my router

Is this supposed to encrypt traffic through my browser or do I need an off-site server to go through?

Also, is it possible to use this for Tor? I read about the exit-node exploit and am wondering if it would be possible to configure Tor to use SSH in this manner to ensure that my sensitive information is not snooped.

Thanks,
Milo

[Cellus]

This actually hasn't really done anything. SSH Tunneling is primarily used for remote (not local) connections. You would use SSH Tunneling for things like remote access to another computer from outside the trusted network (eg. connect to your home computer via a laptop in a hotel).

Tor is primarily used for obfuscation, but it isn't perfect. It is possible, and the devs of Tor warn of this, to have a malicious exit-node which can capture/manipulate/do whatever to traffic going through it. However that isn't to say that all exit nodes in Tor are malicious (some aren't).

Just what exactly are you trying to secure? SSH, Tor, and so forth are all different methods for securing different things for different purposes.

[Azinulbizar]

I wanted to use some form of end-to-end encryption that would allow me to use Tor for web browsing but not have my packet contents readable at the exit-node. That way it's secure AND fairly anonymous.

I thought maybe by running my connection through my own ssh first might help.