Fun with Squid and Webcams
This post may only amuse me. Reading it could be a waste of time.
I have squid running on one of my PCs at home. It is configured to allow connections only from specific IPs. I use it when I’m at work, so noone can track my IM conversations.
Lately, I’ve noticed several people trying to connect to my proxy. They scan my IP, see the open port, and try to connect. Of course, they can’t because they are coming from the wrong IP address. I’m sick of it. Here’s what I did to resolve the problem:
Squid was configured to run on port 8080. I stopped squid. Then, I connected a web cam to an old PC and set it in the corner. I installed Dorgem, (web cam software) on the PC. Dorgem runs a web server on port 8080. All it does is serve up images from my camera. Every 6 seconds the image refreshes. Finally, I configured my firewall to forward requests on port 8080 to the PC running Dorgem and the webcam.
Now, if someone configures their web browser to point to my URL and use port 8080, an image from my webcam comes up. It doesn’t matter what URL you type in, an image is displayed. I know, this doesn’t really fix the problem. It does make me laugh. Try it for yourself:
Note: Yes, I am painfully aware there are better, non-lame solutions to this problem.
I have squid running on one of my PCs at home. It is configured to allow connections only from specific IPs. I use it when I’m at work, so noone can track my IM conversations.
Lately, I’ve noticed several people trying to connect to my proxy. They scan my IP, see the open port, and try to connect. Of course, they can’t because they are coming from the wrong IP address. I’m sick of it. Here’s what I did to resolve the problem:
Squid was configured to run on port 8080. I stopped squid. Then, I connected a web cam to an old PC and set it in the corner. I installed Dorgem, (web cam software) on the PC. Dorgem runs a web server on port 8080. All it does is serve up images from my camera. Every 6 seconds the image refreshes. Finally, I configured my firewall to forward requests on port 8080 to the PC running Dorgem and the webcam.
Now, if someone configures their web browser to point to my URL and use port 8080, an image from my webcam comes up. It doesn’t matter what URL you type in, an image is displayed. I know, this doesn’t really fix the problem. It does make me laugh. Try it for yourself:
Note: Yes, I am painfully aware there are better, non-lame solutions to this problem.
