Shool firewall workarounds

[goatCE]

I thought i'd share some of my workarounds for my school's firewall, and some things that i know about it.
I'll start by saying that the firewall/filter MY school has is called x-stop.
Things i know/hear about x-stop:
1)Certain ports are blocked, such as ports for irc, shoutcast, and ssh.
2)It can block things based on keywords in the url.
3)I hear it "learns" which sites to block.
4)From my experiences, peacefire does not bypass the filter.

Workarounds:
Chat programs can be used if they are java based. However, aim express doesn't work, so i tried odigo express and it worked fine (wap.odigo.com), effective for aim/yahoo/msn chat clients.

Searches can be performed by spacing out the letters, normally a word like porn would be blocked, but if you put 'p o r n' it lets the search go through.

And while i'm on the topic of google, it's cache feature lets you view many pages you're not supposed to.

there are sites like rewebber and such, but chances are slim that they won't be blocked already.

My friend also set up a proxy server on his comp, and we just change ie's connection settings to use his proxy and bypass all restrictions.


If you have any other secrets or workarounds, post here.

[James S]

I was just about to post this exact thread.

Tell me more about this proxy. My college blocks just about everything, except it's totally open to telnet and even ICMP bombs. I don't want to hack my school, I just want to download a song or play a game!

Go to http://scan.sygatetech.com/ to see what all is open on your school's firewall and see if anyone has installed a trojan and stuff. It's supposed to test firewalls, but it also tells a malicious user behind the firewall all the holes

[goatCE]

Well my friend is big on linux and set up a proxy manually, so we just go into ie, then tell it to use a proxy and we can use any ports we want so long as he allows it on his comp.
SSH'ing to your comp would also work around the problem.
Hell, i used to use java vnc on nautilus's site when it was around to get past the firewall.

I should also mention that images.google.com is probly the only porn site not blocked, considering it's not a porn site. Though i don't condone porn at school, too risky.

[sponge]

Better yet since he's running Linux there's a way to use an HTTP frontend, so if your computer has something like Fortres (our school does) AND disabled the backdoor code (like they eventually learned) you can just goto a website and enter a URL, ala Anonymizer, et al, which are usually blocked.

[James S]

How exactly will a proxy get me past my college's port blocking firewall? Say if I set up a proxy on my Windows desktop at home through my cable modem, will I be able to set up IE to use that proxy and thten be able to play computer games and download from Kazaa? Those ports of blocked by my school's firewall.

[goatCE]

You have to set up your proxy to run off of ports that aren't blocked by your school's firewall, like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80. I know in winmx you can set which ports to use, but i dunno about kazaa, never used it for very long. Like i said though, my friend did the setting up, i just came up with the idea.

[James S]

Does anyone know of a good public proxy server online that redirects all ports to open ones?

[Warren]

I have to ask, are you all talking about your colleges blocking sites and stuff? Is that only in libraries and stuff, because if they block sites from people's dorm computers, that should be illegal! Really, we have a right to see anything on the Internet, as long as it's on our own property, and the dorm is our property ($8000, it better be!). Moose, do they block sites at your college, but do they do that for the dorm network too?! My high school uses FoolProof security (even though I know the password), and that's fine, because it's public property, and we don't own the computers nor servers. But in a dorm, we pay for it directly, so there should not be any blockage. Is there any for you Moose?!

[sponge]

You can't have a service like that Moose, however if your running Linux/have a Linux firewall/perhaps other methods you can redirect ports around. It's possible, but it's not going to be an open proxy that automagically finds open ports.

[James S]

Yes, my college blocks everything but email and the web IN MY DORM ROOM. That's what I complain about so much. They say that people downloading music slowed the network down so much that they just had to block everything... now there's no need for the bandwidth they do have.

Sponge, that's not exactly what I was wanting. I just want to run a proxy on my machine at home that I can connect to in order to play games and stuff. That's all I ask!

My college even blocks SETI@Home and UD Cancer Research screen savers! I think they have it set up to block everything and excluding 80 and 25 and 110 (web and email). Of course, AIM runs, so there are more ports open.

[sponge]

Run the TCP scan.

If your paying for service, with your own PC, demand that filtering be turned off.

[James S]

I'm not paying for the internet or tv or anything. I'm paying for my dorm room and tuition and stuff, no specific "internet" payment. And they don't filter any websites. They just block Kazaa and games. It's kind of hard to argue why they shouldn't block those, when from their point of view they have zero legal liability from kids downloading stuff from Kazaa and kids don't "waste" their time playing games.

Instead, they just go out drinking every night of the week.

But this seems to be working for me: HTTP-Tunnel
http://www.http-tunnel.com/

Except when it's running through their free servers the speed is limited to 1/21st the speed of the connection. So I'm running at 1.5KBps when the rate is 30KBps. Usually it's 15KBps, so it's looking pretty good tonight. Compared to 300KBps at my cable at home, there's barely a point to playing games or downloading. I can get everything in one weekend at home what I could get in a week or two here.

[Warren]

Well that would explain why you're not listening to any music right now...

But seriously, everyone in the world (except for China...) has the right to view every public web site on the Internet on their own property. They are violating that right Moose, and you should do something about it. You say you're bored and there's nothing to do, so complain! I'm not advocating porn in the dorm (ha, a pun), I'm saying it in general. My school blocks yahoo.com because it can have inappropriate ads. My school blocks any anti-capitalist/anti-democratic web site, any GAMING web sites, any gaming news sites, any sites about any kind of weapon (I wouldn't be able to research the atomic bomb at school), and many many other sites. They even block the Center For Disease Control web site!! I use that site all the time for biology stuff! Having sites blocked in a dorm only makes it a million times harder to research, and I still believe it's illegal.

[edit] Oh, so they don't block sites. Well, still, you should be able to play games and Kazaa... Wait, why can't you play any games? You can't connect to any servers?

They want you to pay for that software, but wouldn't it be funny if you use their free software to use Kazaa to download their software that they want you to pay for and then use that one? Yes, that would be funny. Kazaa is not a good program for games though, but for music it's good. eDonkey is for games, but don't ask me about it, it's underground stuff.

[goatCE]

[johannpublic]