Desktop Proxy

[DougWD61]

Last night when I was shuttting down, I got a message that "Dedsktop Proxy" was not responding, "End now." You've all seen that, but I never installed a "desktop proxy" nor would I ever run one without explicitely starting and monitoring it myself.

I did a search, and "destop proxy" comes up as a Goolge item that you install. I would never install such software, so either I'm compromised, or it is some other inert function.

Whatever it is, can any of you give me some insight? Proxies running without my permission are a BIG nono.

Thanks
PS--any files that I can search for to determine what software is installed as "desktop proxy" would be appreciated.

I'm running Spybot, Adaware, AVG Antivirus ver.7.0 and Sygate Firewall.

[DougWD61]

Forgot one thing. If this is Google, how did it get installed? I didn't do it.

[Jimbob1989]

Some more background info

-{ Quote: "Background and motivation

The Google Desktop allows you to search the contents of your hard drive, email and browser history contents.

The search interface runs in your browser. The Google Desktop software provides a web server which binds to your PC's TCP/IP loopback interface and can only be accessed by requests originating from your PC.

Hence, other machines can't send search requests to your Google Desktop search engine.

This is generally a good thing from a privacy point of view: do you really want random people looking at not just the contents of files on your PC but at emails and at web pages you've retrieved and even deleted from your browser cache?

Well, maybe. Maybe you like to share everything. If so, read on.

If Google Desktop were accessible from places other than the machine on which it was installed, some interesting possibilities would arise:

* Install it on a web site and use it to index/search/cache copies of the static pages (and unless you are very careful, the web server logs, configuration settings, scripts with embedded passwords...)
* Install it on a workgroup file server and use it to index/search/cache copies the contents (including secret memos, tedious MSPowerpoint presentations, suprising job applications and resumes, commercial-in-confidence tender information...)
* Install it on your PC's at work and home and your laptop and search/retrieve on any from the others (along with anyone else who uses/steals/spoofs the right IP addresses)
* Use it as the basis for a distributed, maybe a P2P search service

The Java program described here allows others to search your Google Desktop.

It contains some very simple restrictions which may allow you to make it harder for some people to search and retrieve content from your PC:

1. Requests to configure Google Desktop preferences or delete content from the Google Desktop index are blocked unless they originate from the local machine
2. By default (as installed) access is only granted to the local machine. However, a parameter file can be supplied which defines which IP addresses or IP address prefixes are allowed access. Be aware, however, that it is optimistic in the extreme to have confidence in associating IP addresses with people or organisations, and that for example, a compromised machine within a trusted IP range can easily broaden access to "the world".
3. A log file can be specified in the parameter file (but be aware that if the parameter file is stored on the PC, it too will be indexed and retrievable via the proxy, as will the proxy parameter file...). The log records date/time, remote IP address and the start of the request so you can see which horses have bolted in vaguely which direction.

[Since this simple program was released, a more full-functioned/easier to configure alternative has appeared - see http://dnka.com/. I haven't tried it, but it looks impressive.]

How it works

This program is a very simple proxy. A browser or other program on another computer can open a connection to this program which passes the request through to the Google Desktop web server on the same machine as the proxy. Because it is on the same machine, the Google Desktop web server processes the request and passes the result back to the proxy which in turn sends it back to the originating requestor.

The Google Desktop server sends back 6 types of results (maybe more?):

1. Status, home page: these are passed straight back, rewriting the Google Desktop web server's network address of 127.0.0.1:4884 URL's to the address of the proxy
2. Search result listings: ditto.
3. Data retrieved from the Google Desktop Cache: ditto
4. Data (files) retrieved from the local system disk: Google Desktop opens a window containing the file. This is not appropriate when the request comes in remotely, so instead the proxy reads the file from the disk and sends it to the requestor, hopefully with the right MIME type (determined by file extension). Any URLs in the contents aren't rewritten so unless they are absolute references or the retrieving machines sharse the same address space as the source machine (eg, drive mappings) links will be broken.
5. Redirects to "live" web servers. The proxy sends the redirect back to the requestor without contacting Google Desktop (because I think that sometimes at least Google Desktop tries to open a new browser window on the local machine).
6. Preferences and remove-from-proxy functions: these disallowed except from the loopback address.
" }-

http://www.projectcomputing.com/resources/desktopProxy/

[DougWD61]

I found the problem. It's a microsoft sub routine inherent in Explorer. Sometimes it gets confused and allows more than one instance of explorer to operate, which locks the subroutine (something like that) and casues the program to hang, and report "proxy desktop" is not responding. I had it backwards. It's proxy desktop. If you do a search, you'll find the MS knowledge base.

The wayt o stop it is to end all but one instance of exploere.exe--you will find at least two or more running. Also, you must uncheck "open in seperate process" in teh Exploere>view>options panel.

$hit, this reminds me of the old Win 3.1 days.

Thanks

[IBO]

Love you Doug.
Will those Win3.1 days ever really go, do you think?
Not while Microsoppy's around!

[Kluster]

Thanks DougWD61

I saw this "Proxy Desktop" error and freaked.

You set my mind at ease.