Ramin Hossaini (blog)

Creating a tunnel and SOCKS proxy with Putty

Why?

• Secure a public WiFi connection
• Bypass country-specific-content websites (e.g sites that only allow users from the U.S)
• Connect to a remotely-secured MySQL database via localhost

It's pretty easy to do in Linux (and I think the command is pretty much the same in MacOS or with cygwin installed):

ssh -L localport:hostname:remoteport username@Server

This is how to do it with Putty

Open Putty and enter in the basics: the Server and port (22):

Next, create the tunnel. Enter the source port (in this example, it's 3306 - a MySQL port) and leave the destination field empty (not always left blank, but it works for most cases)

The tunnel will be open/active as soon as you've logged in. Obviously, you still have to set up your proxy settings in whatever application you're using (for those who don't know, 127.0.0.1 is 'localhost'):

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