hiding ip address under linux

[hornet]

I have been told that if you setup linux routing you can hide your ip address online, I am new to linux and am curious, does anyone know if this true or how you can spoof or hide your ip address using linux.

[Terr]

Well, if you're thinking of all-around invisibility, it can't happen.

Let's say you're talking about web browsing, for instance, any normal activity involving two-way communication (your browser tells the server what pages to send it.)

You COULD give the wrong values when asking for the page... But that's like giving no return address on a letter. The webserver won't be able to send you any data back. (And if they were really anxious about it, they probably could trace it back to you with the right monitoring tools.)

So I'm assuming by 'routing' you mean a proxy server? I'm going to use the letter analogy for packets again. A proxy server is like a re-mailer for letters. You send a letter "Give me Document A from TheWebSite™" with your return address to the proxy server. The proxy server then reads that, and sends it's own letter (with it's own return address) to to TheWebSite, asking for "Give me Document A". TheWebSite then sends it back to the proxy, the proxy remembers who it was sending the letter for, and then repackages the information into a letter to you.

So it's like having a middle-man, a person in-between so that neither end deals with the other end directly. The thing is, both ends can still see the proxy. So if they have a really good reason, they could probably convince the person running the proxy to tell them who it was working for at a certain time sending a certain message.

By setting up your own proxy, basically all you do is get an increased control over filtering what gets in and out of your "real" computer. So what if nobody knows your 'real' computer IP address, they still know your proxy server, and if that gets mucked up your're stuck offline...

It can have definite advantages if you're a power-user, however.

[UberC0der]

I can think of ways that this can be done with tunneling and masquerading, etc. behind a firewall so that all machines appear as the one that actually has direct exposure to the internet. You could even play with icmp a little so that it does not respond to many of the replies/requests etc. These are not new concepts to firewalling/security, and they are not unique to Linux/Unix.

I may not really understand what you are asking, but if I do I would say that you could not completely hide on the net. The only way I can think of to make a machine *completely* invisible to other machines on a network/inetrnet is to disconnect it.