Proxychains & SOCKS Configuration

Config File Path

On most Linux systems, Proxychains uses:

/etc/proxychains.conf

You can quickly inspect the last lines (where you usually add SOCKS proxies) with:

tail -4 /etc/proxychains.conf

Basic SOCKS Configuration

Add these lines to the bottom of /etc/proxychains.conf:

socks4 127.0.0.1 9050
socks5 127.0.0.1 1080

When using tools like chisel that expose a local SOCKS5 proxy on port 1080, you can also add:

127.0.0.1 socks5 1080

This ensures that tools wrapped in proxychains will send traffic through your SOCKS listener.

Example Usage

Run Nmap through a SOCKS proxy:

proxychains nmap -v -sn 172.16.5.1-200

Run Metasploit through a SOCKS proxy:

proxychains msfconsole

Open Firefox and route traffic via SOCKS:

proxychains firefox-esr :80

These commands rely on a correctly configured SOCKS entry in /etc/proxychains.conf.