Web Filters

[Vault Of Thrones]

Okay, so my school has recruited me to see what ways I can come up with to get around the Internet filters they have installed, so they can try to fix it, they are using Barracuda Web Filter and I need to think of ways to get around it. Any ideas?
I am a tech help person at my school and I am testing and trying to debug the laptops that we will be getting. Sort of a preemptive strike against the idiots who'll say "ma computers jacked up, fix it" and the intelligent people who will try to find ways around the Filters.

Also if this is seems too much like hacking feel free to close the thread.

[Mondt]

If it's stopping anyone from responding, if you're willing to trust me I guess, I can confirm that he is, indeed, a student tech helper person thing and that he has been assigned to try to get around protections and blocks on the laptops that will be given to us in the near future.

On that note, he already knows what I have to say about hte subject and I'm just throwing that out there to anyone who might think this is just a noobliness comin' in and tryin' to jack up all on the school computers 'n' stuff.

[Demetrius]

Honestly try to only find the really obvious ones, tis a cruelty to take away from your fellow students the ability to abuse the system. Unless of course you want to be known as the Benedict Arnold of your student body, and we all know what happened to that fucker...

[Mondt]

Well yeah, of course.

Keep the smart things to your friends and give away the obvious ones that the slightly less computer-competent people that one may or may not like will try to use. >.>

[Demetrius]

I'd leave out the Babelfish route, its the easiest one I know of.

[Vault Of Thrones]

Well I tried the Babelfish way, it works on the laptops we will be getting but not on the regular computers. Thanks for the help, all I was trying to find was the really obvious ways around the filter. My teacher knows about it so I assume that it will end up blocked soon enough. Next I will need to work on some more complicated methods, but I think that I will leave that to other people.

[ProphetX]

Proxy server in the browser which bypasses the barracuda (poor baby, I love those boxes) Or you could pull the ultimate dick card and just VPN out of the school network into another network which has split tunneling turned off (hairpin technology required for use) and just ride their internet pipe. *caveat* this does requite IPSEC over TCP connectivity configured to use an open egress port from your originating network *hint* try 110 =)

[bluestarultor]

I hate to say this, but when I was in high school, all you had to do was type in the site in the address bar to get access to "blocked" sites. Or maybe the IP address. I forget. I'd worry less about the IP address, as few people in high school know the ones to sites they shouldn't be looking at.


Other than that, all I can think of is taking the most popular sites the school wants blocked and shutting down everything for those specific cases, then applying more general actions to everything else.


I'm sorry, but networking isn't my area of knowledge, so advice is really all I have to offer.

[MasterOfMagic]

Sometimes just changing http to https in the address bar got me through our school's filter.

[ProphetX]

Not always applicable as the majority of websites dont have 443 access unless they do something which requires secure login methods...Though a lot of place do anymore, so I guess it is a crapshoot

[MasterOfMagic]

*nod nod* Yeah, it didn't always work, but it got me into forums, a few comics, and so on. And those were my major time wasters.

[Khael!]

My school's filter was set up to block out key words. Mostly to catch gaming sites and pornographic or otherwise inappropriate material. Stupid thing was webcomics and forums weren't listed as games, so they got through. Chat sites too. Any swearing or illicit material in image format got by, as the filter checked through text. Chats were clear because any swearing was confined to the applet, which was of course embedded within the site and not a part of it that got checked.

And for the love of god, if you do use something like that, pick the keywords carefully. I found pages on this forum containing the word fuck, shit and so forth to be fine, yet other pages got blocked. Later at home, I couldn't find anything key that would tip the filter off. Also, searching keyboard brought up hot naked chicks on Google. I don't understand how.

We had this really cool guy at my highschool who managed to get a keylog onto the tech teacher's admin account. I think from home. From there, he added programs to be installed across the network (including DOOM), changed some names to inconspicuous stuff, hid the new folders, turned off several settings. Yeah. He also hid an invisible link to several proxy servers withing the school website itself. I'm really not sure what you could do to stop someone like that, but perhaps changing the admin option setup might limit damage. If you don't want that sort of thing.

[Mondt]

Proxy server in the browser which bypasses the barracuda (poor baby, I love those boxes) Or you could pull the ultimate dick card and just VPN out of the school network into another network which has split tunneling turned off (hairpin technology required for use) and just ride their internet pipe. *caveat* this does requite IPSEC over TCP connectivity configured to use an open egress port from your originating network *hint* try 110 =)In english, please.

[BlackMageGirl!]

In English?
You stop using your school's connection, and use an unfiltered one.

How? I dunno. I need a translation for that as well.

- Melfice

[Vault Of Thrones]

Yeah, a translation of that would be nice.
If it makes any difference they're Macs and we are on a single district wide network.

[bananarama]

Here's the ultimate way to break through web filters:
http://www.bonesandblades.co.uk/catalog/images/alien%20axe.jpg
No computers= no web filter= no problem... oh yeah and your welcome :).

[MasterOfMagic]

Proxy server in the browser which bypasses the barracuda (poor baby, I love those boxes)
Use one of them proxy server sites to bypass the school's firewall.

Or you could pull the ultimate dick card and just VPN out of the school network into another network which has split tunneling turned off (hairpin technology required for use) and just ride their internet pipe.
I'm sketchy on this, but I believe he's saying to connect to an outside network using a Virtual Private Network that has things set up so that you can access their resources through VPN connections. It'd basically be like you were sitting at a computer connected to their network, using their Internet connection. Which doesn't have the school's firewall/filters. Essentially a fancy proxy.

I'm pretty sure anyway, I'm sure I've got some detail wrong >.>

[Zilla]

I have to circumvent our school's lightspeed filter on a daily basis to read the webcomics I like.

I don't like the idea of taking this away from people, so I'm a little reluctant to share it, and also I'm a minority. Most kids have given up since a lot of the more common routes have already been blocked.

[Mondt]

Whatever it is, Zilla, if he tells anybody about it other than people that will use it and not block it, he'll get a personal assbeating from me.

'Cause seriously I need more ways ot not pay attention in class.

[Zilla]

yeah, fine.

Google up {"Start using CGIproxy"} for one method. You may have to go down the list a ways before you find one that works/isn't slow/isn't blocked, but it works.

Alternatively, google up {"nph-proxy" cgi .pl} and you get a pretty extensive list that is a bit exclusive of the first list.

[Fifthfiend]

Whatever it is, Zilla, if he tells anybody about it other than people that will use it and not block it, he'll get a personal assbeating from me.

'Cause seriously I need more ways ot not pay attention in class.

Okay, cut the shit. That this thread is allowed at all is predicated on the idea that this is all helping your school make its filter more secure, not trading super-awesome tips on dodging your school's filters. I see any more of this 'okay but this super awesome security scam is one we're just gonna keep to ourselves cause titty-browsing during classtime is superteriffic happy-fun' shitcockery, this thread is closed and people are getting banned for capriciously lengthy periods of time.

[42PETUNIAS]

I guess yo should always make sure they've blocked all the proxy sites, and web instant messengers like meebo.

[Eltargrim]

One thing that can help is to disallow access to the browser's proxy settings; disallowing access to Internet Options and alternative browsers does the trick.

[Zilla]

42: I'm thinking that's impossible, but you can block popular ones. I can always find new ones though.

[42PETUNIAS]

True, but you should probably at least block some of the more popular ones, and any that you can get to from at least the first few pages of a google search.

[Zilla]

but you see, even that list changes like all the time so it's not going to be effective outside of a week. If they get blocked by a certain filter, they migrate out of the front page of google as the ones that DO work make their way to the front.

[42PETUNIAS]

Yes, it will move around, but as long as the people running the filter put at least a bit of work into it, they can certainly block most of the ones students would find. By no means can they block everything, but they can probably block enough so that getting through it isn't worthwhile.

[Vault Of Thrones]

So, in other words the only way around the filter is using proxies, the proxy settings are blocked by the admin password so unless some teacher gets really stupid it will be really hard to get around. Other than that I believe that all of the easy ways are blocked. Or at least all that I feel like trying to find right now. The district knows about the proxies also, they have taken measures to try to stop them, but it won't stop someone who is super-duper determined. (that is impossible.)