Squid Caching Forward Proxy

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Squid - Secure Caching Forward Proxy for AWS

Deploy a production ready, hardened Squid 6 caching proxy inside your Amazon VPC in minutes. Squid is one of the most widely deployed open source caching proxies in the world, used to cache web content, accelerate repeat requests and control outbound HTTP and HTTPS traffic. This AMI launches with default deny access control, per instance authentication and no shared or default credentials, so you skip hours of manual configuration and security review.

### Who is this for?

This image is built for DevOps engineers, platform teams and security architects who need to cache and control outbound HTTP and HTTPS traffic from EC2 instances and other VPC based workloads. Common scenarios include:

• CI/CD dependency caching: a build fleet pulling the same package repositories many times a day serves repeat requests from Squid's on disk cache, cutting egress bandwidth and speeding up pipelines.
• Regulated egress control: teams that must restrict and record outbound connections route traffic through Squid's auditable access control rules and access log before it leaves the VPC.
• Bandwidth and NAT data cost reduction: cacheable HTTP and HTTPS responses are served from cache on repeat, reducing the volume of repeated outbound traffic.

### Secure by default, never an open proxy

An unauthenticated forward proxy reachable from the public internet is a magnet for spam relaying, credential stuffing and content laundering, so this image ships default deny with per instance proxy authentication. The shipped configuration denies all traffic as its final rule, requires a valid proxy username and password for every request, blocks CONNECT tunnels to non TLS ports and non web ports, restricts the cache manager to localhost, disables inter cache peering, and suppresses version and forwarding headers. There is deliberately no allow all rule.

No default or shared credentials ship in the image. On the first boot of your instance a one shot service generates a unique proxy password, writes it hashed into the Squid password database, and writes the plaintext login to a file only the root user can read. The captured image ships no usable password at all, so no instance can proxy until first boot provisions it, a stale or guessed password is refused with a 407 response, and every instance ends up with a different password.

### Application stack

Squid 6.14 runs as a hardened systemd service listening on port 3128 as the unprivileged proxy user. Cache storage lives under a dedicated on disk cache directory, access is controlled by Basic proxy authentication, requests are recorded to the Squid access log, and the whole configuration is a single reviewed squid.conf so the access rule ordering, and therefore the deny by default guarantee, is fully under control.

### How to get started

1. Launch the AMI in your VPC and choose an instance type appropriate for your expected request volume.

2. Configure the Security Group to allow inbound TCP 3128 only from your trusted client subnets, and TCP 22 from your administration network.

3. SSH into the instance and read the generated proxy username and password from the root only credentials file.

4. Point any HTTP client at the instance on port 3128 using the retrieved username and password.

5. Request the same URL twice and confirm the repeat is served from cache. The proxy is answering authenticated requests within minutes of launch.

cloudimg engineers provide 24/7 support and can help you scope client access lists, restrict the proxy port to trusted subnets, add upstream cache peers, tune caching and refresh rules, configure TLS interception for content filtering, and plan version upgrades.

This image is a caching forward proxy for your OWN authorized clients: content caching, egress control and bandwidth savings inside your network. It is not an anonymizer and is not a way to bypass geo restrictions or run an open public proxy.

cloudimg is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Squid project or the Squid Software Foundation. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.