Date First Published: 1st April 2022
Topic: Computer Networking
Subtopic: Internet Protocols
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 7/10
Learn more about what the SOCKS protocol is in this article.
Short for the Socket Secure protocol, SOCKS is a protocol used for transferring data between the source and the server through a proxy server. It works by establishing a TCP connection to a server behind the firewall on behalf of the client. The SOCKS protocol forwards web traffic to a proxy server and then passes the information to the intended destination. SOCKS is a session-layer protocol and in accordance with RFC 1928, it uses port 1080. In addition, SOCKS 5 provides authentication that only allows authorised users to access the server
This protocol is called Socket Secure because it makes use of sockets to represent and keep track of different connections. The socket is the software component within a computer network node that acts as an endpoint for delivering and receiving data.
Below are common versions of the SOCKS protocol.
The introduction of this version of the SOCKS protocol aimed to manage traffic between the client and a server through a proxy server, which acts as an intermediary. SOCKS4 had no authentication or DNS translation mechanisms.
This protocol was an extension of the SOCKS4 protocol. The purpose of this extension was to add functionality that enables a client to specify a destination domain name rather than an IP address, helpful for when the domain name of the destination host cannot be translated to an IP address. The author of SOCKS4, Ying-Da-Lee proposed this.
SOCKS5 is an extension of the SOCKS4A protocol that offers more authentication capabilities. It supports IPv6 and UDP, which can be used for DNS lookups. It was specified in RFC 1928.
David Koblas, a system administrator of MIPS Computer Systems designed this protocol. Koblas presented a paper on SOCKS about SOCKS at the Usenix Security Symposium of that year after MIPS Computer Systems was taken over by Silicon Graphics. This caused SOCKS to become available to the public.
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