{"id":171,"date":"2010-03-07T17:47:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T16:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/?p=171"},"modified":"2010-03-07T17:47:19","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T16:47:19","slug":"accessing-filtered-websites-from-behind-network-firewall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/accessing-filtered-websites-from-behind-network-firewall\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessing filtered websites from behind a network firewall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuck behind a firewall restricting your access to the Internet?\u00a0 You may have already tried HotSpot Shield<\/a> or various other anonymous proxies<\/a> with some luck.\u00a0 But what happens when your Internet Service Provider (ISP) finds the server’s address and then blocks it?\u00a0 You’ll have to wait for HotSpot Sheild to change their address or find a new anonymous proxy…<\/p>\n

Here’s a better solution: Tor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tor is like the underground railroad<\/a> of the internet.\u00a0 There are an incredible amount of reasons why YOU should be using Tor<\/a>.\u00a0 Even if you have no problems accessing the social networks, you are being logged everywhere you go: ‘.$_SERVER[REMOTE_ADDR].’<\/a>‘;
\n?>.<\/p>\n

The way Tor deals with anonymity is by creating a vast network of distributed anonymous relays.\u00a0 Instead of taking your information straight from source to destination, it will instead go through the maze that is Tor, where each relay is another Tor user.\u00a0\u00a0 This makes traffic analysis very difficult.\u00a0 As well, if you are in Iran or China or someone else that has decided that certain websites are bad for you, there is no one<\/em> server to block.\u00a0 Every user that decides to be a relay is a server.<\/p>\n

Here’s how to get started using Tor for securely browsing the Internet:<\/p>\n

1. ) Download a Tor Bundle for Windows<\/a> [alt<\/a>] [alt2<\/a>], Apple OSX<\/a> [alt<\/a>] [alt2<\/a>], PPC<\/a>, Linux\/Unix\/BSD<\/a>.
\nIf these don’t work, try looking here for more servers.<\/a><\/p>\n

2.) If you don’t have Firefox, get it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3.) For Windows, go here<\/a> for instructions on setting up Tor.<\/p>\n

For OSX, you could follow the instructions here<\/a>.\u00a0 But I found they left out a few details.\u00a0 I’ve contacted them though so hopefully they’ll update their website. For now, just use the instructions here.<\/p>\n

You’ll have downloaded a .dmg file for OSX.\u00a0 Mount this file (double-click) and open the folder.\u00a0 You’ll want to drag the application “Vidalia” into your Applications folder and double click the file: “Install Torbutton for Firefox”.<\/p>\n

4.) Open Vidalia from the Applications folder and click on “Settings”.\u00a0 Make sure your settings look like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The three lines are:<\/p>\n

\/Applications\/Vidalia.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/tor<\/code><\/p>\n

\/Applications\/Vidalia.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/polipo<\/code><\/p>\n

-c \/Applications\/Vidalia.app\/Contents\/Resources\/polipo.conf<\/code><\/p>\n

5.) While in the Vidalia Settings page, click on Network.\u00a0 You should see 3 checkboxes.\u00a0 Click the third one if you know your ISP is blocking access to the Internet (e.g. Iran and China).\u00a0 You should be presented with a dialog asking you to “Add a Bridge”.\u00a0 A Bridge is essentially your ticket into the Tor network.\u00a0 If you don’t have one and your ISP is blocking the general Tor entry points, you have a few options:<\/p>\n

Try going here<\/a> for access to 3 public bridges.\u00a0 If you can’t access it, try asking a friend who can access it to copy over the numbers on that page.\u00a0 They should look like something like this:<\/p>\n

bridge 88.198.184.69:443
\nbridge 62.12.235.143:9001
\nbridge 83.169.1.47:442<\/code><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Add each one to the dialog in the Network page of Vidalia’s Settings.\u00a0 If this doesn’t work for you, you can e-mail bridges@torproject.org with the line ‘get bridges’ by itself in the body of the mail. However, you must send this request from a Gmail or Yahoo account.<\/p>\n

Another option is to find someone on an unrestricted network willing to run a private relay for you.\u00a0 This means they will act as your bridge to the Tor network.\u00a0 To do this, they will need to have installed Tor and gone through steps (1-4).\u00a0 They’ll then need to click on the ‘Sharing’ tab in the Vidalia Settings page and click the third button: “Help censored users reach the Tor network”.\u00a0 They’ll need to fill in a Nickname and Contact Info and make sure they are connected to the Tor network.\u00a0 Then they should see a line that says: “Let others access your bridge by giving them this line:” with a bunch of numbers and letters:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once they have given you this line, you should be able to add it to your list of bridges and connect to the Tor network.<\/p>\n

6.) Now you have access to the Tor network, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you use it.\u00a0 You’ll want to setup Firefox to talk to Tor.\u00a0 If you have been following my instructions, you should have installed something called ‘TorButton’ for Firefox.\u00a0 Now if you open up Firefox (or restart it), you should see a little display on the bottom-right corner:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Click where it says ‘Tor Disabled’ and hopefully it will turn green and you’re ready to go.\u00a0 If you are having problems at this stage, you may not have setup polipo correctly and TorButton cannot talk to polipo.\u00a0 Make sure you have downloaded the correct Vidalia (if you didn’t use my links) as one has Tor and Polipo contained inside and another does not.\u00a0 As well, make sure you have included the 3 lines mentioned in step 4.<\/p>\n

If you aren’t interested in securely browsing the internet, you can always setup Tor as a relay and offer your unrestricted bandwidth to others on the Tor network. Just follow all the steps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stuck behind a firewall restricting your access to the Internet?\u00a0 You may have already tried HotSpot Shield or various other anonymous proxies with some luck.\u00a0 But what happens when your…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[77,148,197,346],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-china","tag-firewalls","tag-iran","tag-tor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkmital.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}