HTTP redirectors

[Hal]

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Andrew Lowenstern <andrew_loewenstern at il.us.swissbank.com> writes:

>Normally a URL can specify an alternate port as well (of course).  A common  
>one is http://site.org:8080/dir/file.html...   This gets around setting up  
>the proxy without a privileged account.  The only web browser I'm familiar  
>with (OmniWeb for NeXTSTEP) also allows you to specify the port number for  
>the proxy.  I was under the impression that all browsers supported alternate  
>port numbers for proxies since they are commonly used for URLs...  Do Mosiac  
>and Netscape allow specifying the port for proxy servers?

Yes, I think you are right.  I think you can set your proxy to
site.org:8080 or whatever and clients will use the specified port
number.  This is at least true of lynx, and I think they all use pretty
much the same conventions on this.

So I was mistaken in saying that you would need root privileges to set up
your own proxy.  And I don't see that it would be much of a security
hole in that it would be no more privileged than the user who ran it.
Most security concerns come because httpd is running as a privileged
process, I think.  An http redirector shouldn't be much more trouble than
a remailer, although the user who is running it would want some assurance
that his own files wouldn't be threatened.

Hal

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