Force an application's traffic through a SOCKS proxy

Question

How can the TCP traffic initiated by a specific application be forced to go through a SOCKS proxy, regardless of the remote IP or port?

A VPN would direct all outbound traffic on a host through an interface (tun0 typically), so it's an overkill solution. But in a split tunnel configuration, instead of doing that by default, the VPN client offers a SOCKS proxy for specific applications. While browsers support connecting through a SOCKS proxy, many other applications don't.

I've tried dante socksify but it didn't work with common programs like curl and wget. (I've sent a message to their mailing list, but it's not archived anywhere so I can't link to it.)

Solution

Wikipedia lists a number of open-source proxifiers. Of those, proxychains-ng seems to be the most actively developed, judging by GitHub activity.

To install and configure,

1. Download the latest release
2. Unzip and cd into the directory
3. ./configure && make
4. Optional: sudo make install && sudo make install-config
5. nano /usr/local/etc/proxychains.conf
6. At the end of the config file, set the SOCKS IP port address

Usage:

proxychains4 -q curl icanhazip.com

Comments

[Ipor Sircer]

use tsocks

[intika]

seems cool from that tool we could develop a gui to mimic proxifier on windows