Proxychains.exe - Proxychains for Windows README

README | 简体中文文档

Proxychains.exe is a proxifier for Win32(Windows) or Cygwin/Msys2 programs. It hijacks most of the Win32 or Cygwin programs' TCP connection, making them through one or more SOCKS5 proxy(ies).

Proxychains.exe hooks network-related Ws2_32.dll Winsock functions in dynamically linked programs via injecting a DLL and redirects the connections through SOCKS5 proxy(ies).

Proxychains.exe is a port or rewrite of proxychains4 or proxychains-ng to Win32 and Cygwin. It also uses uthash for some data structures and minhook for API hooking.

Proxychains.exe is tested on Windows 11, Windows 10 x64 1909 (18363.418), Windows 7 x64 SP1, Windows XP x86 SP3 and Cygwin 64-bit 3.1.2. Target OS should have Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 installed.

WARNING: ANONYMITY IS NOT GUARANTEED!

WARNING: this program works only on dynamically linked programs.

Architecture Compatibility: The x64 build of proxychains.exe can automatically detect and inject into both x64 and x86 (32-bit) processes on 64-bit Windows systems. For Cygwin programs, use the Cygwin build. For best compatibility, use the x64 build which includes support for both architectures.

WARNING: this program is based on hacks and is at its early development stage. Any unexpected situation may happen during usage. The called program may crash, not work, produce unwanted results etc. Be careful when working with this tool.

WARNING: this program can be used to circumvent censorship. doing so can be VERY DANGEROUS in certain countries. ALWAYS MAKE SURE THAT PROXYCHAINS.EXE WORKS AS EXPECTED BEFORE USING IT FOR ANYTHING SERIOUS. This involves both the program and the proxy that you're going to use. For example, you can connect to some "what is my ip" service like ifconfig.me to make sure that it's not using your real ip.

ONLY USE PROXYCHAINS.EXE IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. THE AUTHORS AND MAINTAINERS OF PROXYCHAINS DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY ABUSE OR MISUSE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND THE RESULTING CONSEQUENCES.

Download

Pre-built Binaries

Download the pre-built unified binary package:

• Automatic builds: Available as artifacts from GitHub Actions

  • Click on the latest successful workflow run
  • Download proxychains-windows-unified from the Artifacts section
  • This package includes the x64 executable and both x86/x64 DLLs

• Official releases: Check the Release Page for stable versions

The unified package contains everything you need:

• proxychains.exe (x64) - Single executable for all scenarios
• Both proxychains_hook_x64.dll and proxychains_hook_x86.dll
• Configuration file and documentation

Build

If you want to buid proxychains.exe yourself...

First you need to clone this repository and run git submodule update --init --recursive in it to retrieve all submodules.

Win32 Build

Open proxychains.exe.sln with a recent version Visual Studio (tested with Visual Studio 2019) with platform toolset v141_xp on a 64-bit Windows.

Select the configuration (Debug/Release) and the platform (x86/x64).

Build the whole solution and you will see DLL file and executable file generated under win32_output/.

Cygwin/Msys2 Build

Install Cygwin/Msys2 and various build tool packages (gcc, w32api-headers, w32api-runtime etc). Run bash, switch to cygwin_build / msys_build directory and run make.

Install

Unified Binary (Recommended)

For Win32 builds, use the x64 version of proxychains.exe along with both the x64 and x86 hook DLLs (proxychains_hook_x64.dll and proxychains_hook_x86.dll). This single executable will automatically detect the target process architecture and inject the appropriate DLL.

Copy the following files to a directory in your PATH:

• proxychains.exe (x64 build)
• proxychains_hook_x64.dll
• proxychains_hook_x86.dll
• MinHook.x64.dll (if using dynamic MinHook)
• MinHook.x86.dll (if using dynamic MinHook)

The x64 build will handle both 64-bit and 32-bit target processes automatically.

Cygwin/MSYS2 Build

For Cygwin/MSYS2, copy [cyg/msys-]proxychains*.exe and [cyg/msys-]proxychains_hook*.dll to a directory in your PATH.

Configuration File

Last you need to create the needed configuration file in correct place. See "Configuration".

Configuration

Proxychains.exe looks for configuration in the following order:

On Win32

• file listed in environment variable PROXYCHAINS_CONF_FILE or provided as a -f argument
• %USERPROFILE%\.proxychains\proxychains.conf
• (CSIDL_APPDATA)\Proxychains\proxychains.conf (On modern Windows versions, a typical path is C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\ Proxychains\proxychains.conf)
• (CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA)\Proxychains\proxychains.conf (On modern Windows versions, a typical path is C:\ProgramData\Proxychains\ proxychains.conf)

On Cygwin

• file listed in environment variable PROXYCHAINS_CONF_FILE or provided as a -f argument
• $HOME/.proxychains/proxychains.conf
• (SYSCONFDIR)/proxychains.conf
• /etc/proxychains.conf

For options, see proxychains.conf.

Usage Example

proxychains ssh some-server

proxychains "Some Path\firefox.exe"

proxychains /bin/curl https://ifconfig.me

Run proxychains -h for more command line argument options.

Key Features and Improvements

Cross-Architecture Support (New in this version!)

The x64 build now automatically detects the target process architecture and injects the appropriate DLL:

• x64 proxychains.exe can inject into both 64-bit and 32-bit processes
• Automatic architecture detection using IsWow64Process()
• No need for separate x86 and x64 executables
• Smart DLL path selection based on target process

Windows 11 Compatibility

This version has been updated for full Windows 11 compatibility:

• Works with Windows 11's enhanced security features
• Tested on Windows 11 systems
• Uses modern Windows APIs for system detection

Existing Features

• Multiple proxy chaining with SOCKS5, SOCKS4/SOCKS4a, and HTTP CONNECT proxies
• Four chain modes: strict, dynamic (skip dead), random, and round-robin
• Proxy health checking with automatic failover (dynamic chain)
• Fake IP based remote DNS resolution
• IPv4 and IPv6 support
• Configurable timeout values
• Rule-based proxy selection (IP range, domain keyword/suffix/full, port)
• Custom hosts file support with environment variable expansion
• Proxy authentication: SOCKS5 username/password, SOCKS4 userid, HTTP Basic
• Configurable chain length and random seed for reproducible testing

How It Works

• Main program hooks CreateProcessW Win32 API call.
• Main program creates child process which is intended to be called.
• After creating process, hooked CreateProcessW injects the Hook DLL into child process. When child process gets injected, it hooks the Win32 API call below:
  • CreateProcessW, so that every descendant process gets hooked;
  • connect, WSAConnect and ConnectEx, so that TCP connections get hijacked;
  • GetAddrInfoW series, so that Fake IP is used to trace hostnames you visited, allowing remote DNS resolving;
  • etc.
• Main program does not exit, but serves as a named pipe server. Child process communicates with the main program to exchange data including logs, hostnames, etc. Main program does most of the bookkeeping of Fake IP and presence of descendant processes.
• When all descendant processes exit, main program exits.
• Main program terminates all descendant processes when it receives a SIGINT (Ctrl-C).

About Cygwin/Msys2 and Busybox

Cygwin is fully supported since 0.6.0!

Switching the DLL injection technique from CreateRemoteThread() to modifying the target process' entry point, proxychains.exe now supports proxifying Cygwin/Msys2 process perfectly. (Even when you call them with Win32 version of proxychains.exe). See DevNotes.

If you want to proxify MinGit busybox variant, replace its busybox.exe with this version modified by me. See DevNotes.

To-do and Known Issues

ConEmu Compatibility

ConEmu prevents its descendant processes to do SetThreadContext(). This means proxychains.exe is in no way compatible with terminals based on ConEmu (like cmder).

To-do

In the following period, I will try to re-structure proxychains.exe (files, functions, ...) and complete some to-dos at the same time.

• Domain name resolution should be case-insensitive
• Proxify osu!lazer launcher? (#11)
• Configuration file path (#9)
• Recognize IPv4-mapped fake IPv6 address
• Resolve proxy server name by custom hosts file, or at least declare it as not supported in docs
• Properly handle "fork-and-exit" child process ? (In this case the descendant processes' dns queries would never succeed)
• Remote DNS resolving based on UDP associate
• Hook sendto(), coping with applications which do TCP fast open
• Powershell wget bug
• IPs resolved from hosts file should also be filtered like fake ip (fixed in 0.6.8)
• Resolve encoding issue regarding Cygwin and Mintty (fixed in 0.6.7)
• Fake IPs should be filtered according to types of resolved IPs and hints in GetAddrInfoW and gethostbyname, otherwise crash may happen (fixed in 0.6.7)
• Add an option to totally prevent "DNS leak" ? (Do name lookup on SOCKS5 server only) (fixed in 0.6.6)
• Connection closure should be correctly handled in Ws2_32_LoopRecv and Ws2_32_LoopSend (fixed in 0.6.5)
• A large part of socks5 server name possibly lost when parsing configuration (fixed in 0.6.5)
• Correctly handle conf and hosts that start with BOM (fixed in 0.6.5)
• Detect .NET CLR programs that is AnyCPU&prefers 32-bit/targeted x86 /targeted x64. (These are "shimatta" programs, which must be injected by CreateRemoteThread()) (fixed in 0.6.2)
• ResumeThread() in case of error during injection (fixed in 0.6.1)
• Fix choco err_unmatched_machine (fixed in 0.6.1)
• Get rid of Offending&Matching host key confirmation when proxifying git/SSH, probably using a FQDN hash function (fixed in 0.6.0)
• Tell the user if command line is bad under Cygwin (fixed in 0.6.4)
• Inherit exit code of direct child (fixed in 0.6.4)

Developing

Line ending, encoding and BOM

Different file types are required to have different line endings, encodings. See .gitattributes for details.

Licensing

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License version 2 for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version 2 along with this program (COPYING). If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Uthash

https://github.com/troydhanson/uthash

This program contains uthash as a git submodule, which is published under The 1-clause BSD License:

Copyright (c) 2008-2018, Troy D. Hanson   http://troydhanson.github.com/uthash/
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are 
met:

    * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS
IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER
OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

MinHook

https://github.com/TsudaKageyu/minhook

This program contains minhook as a git submodule, which is published under The 2-clause BSD License:

MinHook - The Minimalistic API Hooking Library for x64/x86
Copyright (C) 2009-2017 Tsuda Kageyu.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER
OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.