How to get on myspace at school
For the rebellious in schools, or those slacking off, there is no better way than to sneak-off to the internet in search of instant nirvana at social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, twitter and many others of those ilk. Most of school policies restrict access to social networking sites, and towards that end, firewalls with restrictions are placed in the school networks. But those who want to find a loophole to slip through unguarded and poorly designed software always find ways to run through.
What follows is a list of some glaring oversights when configuring proxies and firewalls; and a short discussion of tools that can be put to use by unscrupulous students and staff to get around restrictive firewalls.
Most proxy servers ban websites by name – so myspace.com might be in the banned list, but its IP address is not banned. Website names merely point to IP addresses. Thus banning a website by name is simply not enough, put in the ban list the IP address too. Finding IP address is easy – all websites have detailed WHOIS entries which have all the information the website, the names and addresses of the owners, and the crucial IP addresses. Perform a WHOIS query on Google and find the IP addresses you want to ban in your network. Or, do a simple search for IP Address name_of_website and you will get more than a few options. A number of free websites perform the same service for free. Search for IP address finder / locator at a search engine.
Some firewalls are programmed to block out non-secure websites. Instead of typing http://myspace.com, try https://myspace.com. If the firewall is programmed to allow all secure inbound and outbound traffic, you may be able to fool the firewall and pass through the restrictions.
Another way to get around proxy and firewall restrictions is to use proxy servers from the internet. These proxy servers let you evade the firewall and proxies. Search for free proxy websites in a search engine like google.com and you will have a treasure trove of IP addresses and website names. Use of proxies over firewall could be detected over time and you will need to keep changing the proxies that you use.
Those who do not want to keep changing proxy servers have another option – install a software on your system that literally tunnels through proxies. Such software like Tor, proxifier, and hopster and their many iterations use an encapsulating or tunneling protocol so that data packets originating from your request for, say, myspace.com, are carried as a payload in another packet which then passes through the network firewalls and proxies.
By using tunneling one can forward data over an incompatible network, or provide a secure path through an un-trusted network. Quite obviously, this software is not meant to help people circumvent the firewall restrictions in place. These software are meant to provide secure, encrypted and reliable connections over networks. Many of these softwares are free, and if the students and staff have permission to install software on systems connected to the internet, they can easily climb over most restrictive firewall policies.
