Artica Proxy

Artica Proxy is an open-source proxy server and web filtering appliance used for various network-related tasks, including content filtering, caching, and security. Artica acts as an intermediary between web servers and clients, caching frequently requested content to improve performance and reduce bandwidth usage.

Connection Topology

Here’s the connection topology, where all the HTTP/HTTPS traffic from client will go through the proxy server first before going to the firewall then the internet

Artica Proxy Installation

Download the Virtual Appliance Installer on Artica Proxy official site

Deploy the VM as usual, the boot it

Access the DHCP-obtained IP on por 9000 to access the Web GUI

Give it network configuration

Select the deployment type, here it will be Proxy Service

Set the admin account, and finish

Configuring Artica Proxy

Now the proxy should be up and running

Configure the interface so it sits behind the firewall in the inside segment

Check the proxy status, make sure it is running

And configure the listening port, the default is 3128

Now accessing the internet using this proxy is working

On Realtime Requests, we can see the traffic indeed going through the proxy server

Configuring Firewall

Now we configure the firewall to only allow HTTP/HTTPS traffic coming from the proxy server and deny the rest. This will force the client to only able access the internet if using proxy.

Client Access

On the client side, configure the proxy

Now the internet is accessible only if proxy is configured

chrome (left) doesnt have proxy configured, while firefox (right) does

On the firewall it shows all the web traffic is blocked except the ones coming from the proxy server

And the proxied traffic can also be monitored on artica

Website Blocking

On Artica, we can also set to block access to certains websites, on Your Proxy » web-site blocking, add the entry

And now if the blocked site is accessed, it’ll throw an error “access denied”