Cyberslacking: How to Beat the Company Firewall
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Update 03/08/2008
A colleague pushed me in the direction of Get My SIte, a service that runs on the Zelune engine. This web site is ultra fast and seems to be getting better results than all of the others tested.
Original Post
Have you ever fancied sending personal e-mails, updating social your networking page or doing a bit of online shopping whilst at work? The chances are that you have, over 80% of the adult online population has accessed the Internet at work for personal use at least once, according to a recent study. You may even be looking at this page right now from your office PC.
Some forward-thinking organizations now actively encourage using the web within reason, whilst at work but for many it is still a no-no. Your web browsing activities do not go unnoticed either; the number of employers who believe that they need to monitor their employees using Packet Sniffers, Log Files and Desktop Monitoring Programs has resulted in a massive global industry called employee Internet management.
Breadcrumbs
Computers leave behind a trail of evidence that can provide employers with all the information they could possibly need about an employee’s computer-related activities, just visit this site for an example. The entity that analyzes all of this information and processes it is called a firewall. A firewall is simply a program or hardware device that filters the information coming through the Internet connection into a private network or computer system. If an incoming packet of information is flagged by the filters, it is not allowed through. They can protect computers from remote access, operating system bugs, denial of service attacks, viruses, email bombs and much more. They can also restrict your surfing habits. Bad karma.
Getting Proxies
Before we continue, a quick understanding of proxy servers is required. Proxies are store-and-forward caches; firewalls are in-effect also proxies, with additional functionality. When a browser is configured to use a proxy, it never connects to the URL. Instead, it always connects to the proxy server, and asks it to get the URL for you. Proxies can be used as a sort of firewall, because it isolates you from connecting to the Internet. When you connect to a web site, your true IP address (or the company’s) will not be shown, but the proxy servers IP will.
In essence both proxies and firewalls do provide a good level of protection. What they do lack though, is human intuition. Lets look at how we can out-flank the wall of fire and get on with some slacking.
Give it Some Stick
If your systems administrator deems it necessary or is kind enough to keep the USB ports enabled then half of the battle has already been been won. There is a growing trend at the moment with people constantly on the move to use fully functional applications that run from a USB stick, like the Portable Apps suite. These enable you to plug your stick into any Internet enabled machine let’s say, and download your email or upload a file via FTP.
If we take this one stage further, there is a simple to use application available called OperaTor, which is a combination of the popular web browser Opera, the anonymization network Tor and Privoxy. Tor uses a layered approach sending your request through a series of servers that only know the server before and after them. This means that the destination server does not know that you requested the package, it only knows the IP of the server before that made the request. Again, the only breadcrumb of evidence available to the server logs will be the IP address of the initial proxy. Not only that, OperaTor is standalone, meaning that it will run directly from a USB stick. This is good news for people that use public terminals ie. Internet Cafes.
An Alternative Route
If Mr. Admin is felling a little mean then the next step (albeit not as good) would be to use a web-based proxy. There are literally hundreds available, most of them created to coax you into clicking on advertising links from Google and other similar vendors. The principle is the same though, you firstly navigate to the proxy site, enter your destination URL into the box and surf away. The downside is that potentially the proxy URL could appear on the server log. Your boss will know that you have been slacking, but he won’t know how or to what degree. The proxy Anonymouse is a very good example but as you can see, the clue is in the name. Many web-based services also give you some more advanced options like disabling cookies, caching and various scripts.
In the modern world of high speed data transfer there is a real need to use firewalls, if not only to protect your systems and from malicious damage and intrusion. If your employer is however, determined enough, they will employ far more than is mentioned here to catch you out. You could be on camera right now.
Tags: cyberslacking, company firewall, proxy server, OperaTor
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