[aetherh4cker]

So here is my situation. I have OpenSSH running on my home machine. So from here at work, I start a putty session that forwards port 8080 traffic through my SSH connection that is on port 443 with this command:
putty -D 8080 -P 443 -ssh my.ip.goes.here

Now, I set up my work browser to use the ssh connection as a sort of proxy, by setting a SOCKS proxy in the internet options of 127.0.0.1, port 8080. This works just fine, forwards my traffic through my home pc. When I go to a web page that displays an ip address, it shows my home one.

I then set up my messenger client, Pidgin, to also go through the SSH. I do it the same way, in Pidgin settings I set a SOCKS proxy of 127.0.01, port 8080.

Since I can't really display a webpage on Pidgin, is there any way to tell for sure that it's traffic is going through the SSH connection? Pidgin works fine... but I want to know if it is using the SSH connection.

[Capricorn]

I generally use tcpdump or ethereal on my linux box for this, so I'd guess that the windows versions should work for you. Try looking at Windows tcpdump or Windows ethereal to see if they would help you. I believe they are both free or at least the tcpdump version is.

[CalcProgrammer1]

I guess you could log all the activity through the home PC, then see if Pidgin shows up, you could also simply unplug the home PC's network (or just leave it off) and see if pidgin doesn't work on the remote PC. Otherwise, I don't really know (but I always browse from home PC's, so yeah...no experience in proxy systems other than using open proxy servers here and there).

[ctm2k]

Telnet work?

[mBernhardt]

You could always run a netstat while connected and see what connections are active.

I feel obligated to ask if your SysAdmin knows that you taking these steps to bypass whatever security measures they have put into place?