Hinky’s Proxy Obsession

I just ran across this on the Web.

We need a small application that does the following:

- Scrapes and Tests socks5 resources online to bring/check consistantly new proxies.

- App should allow use of IP:PORT:U:P for Private proxies

- App should be able to scrape large list of Socks in site & forums on multiple levels etc..

- On user Interface, app should only show a list of all the working US Socks proxies

All other proxies from other countries, non-working proxies, non-Socks5, BlackListed, RBL, honeypots etc.; should be Filtered out so I have a clean list to use at any given time. Short and Simple result.

This should get done in 3-6 days, and the budget for this is around $100.

Bid only if you are a pro on proxy.

Hilarious. Hell. I’d pay $149.95 for a program like that! Plus shipping & handling!
This is a joke on so many levels it’s nothing short of pathetic. Good luck with those “SOCKS5″ proxies, fella. They are the rarest birds on the ‘Net.

Last Thursday, the SEACOM link went live, bringing high speed Internet access to the East Coast of Africa.

What does this mean for proxy hunters?  It means that people who have never done it before will be setting up e-commerce servers with mod_proxy listening on the outside link, green technicians setting up home cable or DSL modems with default passwords, and clueless noobie sysadmins on shoestring budgets will be putting up servers without firewalls.

It also means East African cybercrooks, hackers, and puppy scammers will be competing for the proxies already out there.

Anyway you look at it the opportunities are there.  And this is only the beginning…

While SEACOM will be the first cable connected to eastern Africa, it will soon be joined by two further cables. The East African Marine System (TEAMS), scheduled for completion later in 2009, will link Kenya and the United Arab Emirates, and the Eastern African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), which lands in many of the same countries as SEACOM, is expected to commence service in mid-2010.

It’s also an absolute boon for globe-hopping security companies and educators.

Gentlemen, start your scanners!

My original post about Cameroon on my UT99 blog has attracted a bit of converstion, ostensibly from Cameroonian scammers/hackers themsleves.

Here is one of the most recent:

This is papa Dollars. I do enjoy your proxies and indeed they are very helpful. I pray God keeps you alive and that you have many more days on earth like President Biya, so as to continue providing proxies for us.  Stay Blessed and continue with your hard work.

Awwww… isn’t that sweet?

I could be the Patron Saint of Puppy Scammers if I could pull off a miracle or two.

2,021,305 to be exact.

But who’s counting?

The count rolled over before the 8PM run on July 10th.  And then, the fucking 8PM run – the run that should have marked the two millionth proxy –  didn’t run.

I have no idea what the FUCK happened but the List was entirely blank.  Months and months of  flawless operation and the system decided to barf all over itself during this important milestone.  And it’s been running flawlessly ever since.

I tried to identify the 2,000,000th proxy but apparently it’s beyond my abilities as a database monkey.  Rest assured it’s in there somewhere, safe and sound.  In fact as soon as I gave up trying to find it I was on to Other Projects.

One of those projects was the Twitterfication of one of my Unreal Tournament servers.  That, my little proxy pals, was a lot of fun.  The result can be seen here.  Twitter’s API was made for scriddies like me.  I want to do the same thing for my other UT servers, but Twitter has a 150 tweet per hour per IP address maximum.  Of course, this is beatable with proxies, but it entails tossing your account credentials out in cleartext (if you go the low tech scriddie route).  It’s just a matter of time until someone steals your account.

I have considered the possibility of using SSL (I’m not even sure that works – I haven’t tested it yet), but the script would have to build up and tear down an SSL connection several times a minute.  Plus, if  Twitter’s smart (and there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary) they have probably already banned most of the IP addresses in The List since there’s an ungodly amount of advertising bot activity going on in there.  In the week since my script has been running, it has tweeted nearly 4,000 times and attracted over 300 “followers” with names like “fistinggirl”, “Russian SEO”, “Dr_Marketing”, and “onlineMoviesForYou”.

That  ”foryou” suffix always screams “SCAM” to me.  I hate it.  I’ve hated it since the 90s.

Those “people” are obviously not my UT players (in fact I doubt if any of them have even bothered with it yet), but some of these bots are very subtle.  You’d think they were real people musing about Life In General until you get the sales pitch and the bit.ly link.  I was actively blocking them for a while but there’s just too damned many to bother with.

And perhaps since I called the Twitter account “BOT House” (the unfortunate name I chose for my first UT server back in 2003 when botnets were in their infancy), advertising bots are somehow attracted to it.  Maybe bots just like to hang out with each other.

Anyway, I’m thinking of integrating The List with Twitter, since I have my own account.  It could be used to pre-announce proxies on the odd hours before the page is published, for instance.  Since the bruhaha in Iran there’s been a lot of activity in that area.  See this account for an example.

But, I think I’d rather have the traffic hit the Web page.  I’m Old School like that.

Should roll over this weekend, if not today!

I seem to be getting a steady stream using the usual feeds.  Knock on wood.  I am discontinuing the resurrection for a while.  I was doing it about twice a week, which is way too often.  I’m still wondering why two thirds of the active proxies are on again off again like that.  I had always suspected the proxy judges but whenever I checked them they were always fine.

But, I haven’t done that in quite some time.  And considering it’s always the same ratio no matter what, that’s probably not it.

Anyway, that’ll be my weekend project.