PuTTY Port Forward Settings for SOCKS 5 Proxy

PuTTY doesn’t use in-line arguments for connection settings so you need to go into the program menus to set up a SOCKS 5 proxy to use with other programs. This is how to set dynamic port forwarding for SOCKS.

First, what we are doing is the equivalent of the following in a regular Bash shell:

ssh -D 1080 user@216.34.181.45

Go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels, enter 1080 (or your port of choice) as the Source port, switch the selector below to Dynamic, then hit the Add button.

Be sure to save your session settings on the main PuTTY page if you want them to be retained.

If you got to this page from the SSH SOCKS proxy server tutorial, return to that page to continue with setup.