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I'm confused about Socks5. Some pages claim that Socks5 is protected between you and the server, but not encrypted.

How can that be safe?

..and some pages say you need an SSH tunnel for Socks5.

Another page said Socks5 is just plain text?

What's right?

schroeder
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user9795842
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  • https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1928 – CaffeineAddiction Sep 03 '21 at 16:08
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    It would be really helpful if you provided links to these sites. You might have missed important context or details. – schroeder Sep 03 '21 at 16:16
  • The dynamic SOCKS proxy opened by `ssh -D` is indeed encrypted by the SSH connection, but it is _not_ encrypted beyond that. Another user on the SSH host could theoretically see your traffic without the SSH encryption, though you may be protected by HTTPS. – Adam Katz Sep 03 '21 at 16:34
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    Does this answer your question? [Is SOCKS secure?](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/719/is-socks-secure), [Are SOCKS5 credentials safe during authentication on proxy server](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/183146/are-socks5-credentials-safe-during-authentication-on-proxy-server), [Is SOCKS proxy lest secure than VPN? How?](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/160586/is-socks-proxy-lest-secure-than-vpn-how) – Steffen Ullrich Sep 03 '21 at 16:51

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SOCKS Protocol Version 5 described here, does not online or specify anything to do with encryption or encrypted traffic.

  • If you are connecting to a HTTPS site, the traffic payloads will be encrypted.
  • If you are using SOCKS5 over SSH the traffic will be encrypted.
  • If you are using Shadowsocks the traffic will be encrypted.

However, SOCKS5 itself is clear text. It provides no "protection" encryption or otherwise ... it is simply a protocol for encapsulating traffic.

CaffeineAddiction
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