ANSWERED Need some help with circumventing a firewall

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

A company I work at utilizes the Sophos UTM Firewall for packet filtering. While it's perfectly okay for me when they block torrent sites or porn, they also block games sites (steampowered.com), personal storage services (wuala.com) and anonymizers (airvpn.org). They even drop packets to social network domains (facebook.com) (no blocking message, Firefox says it simply couldn't connect).

OS is Windows XP. Regardless of the changes made to the computer PC Sheriff restores a preconfigured snapshot after every reboot. But what serious changes can be made if the only user you can login to is restricted?

 

So, first thought: proxy. But hell no, proxy-listen.de is blocked! And pretty much every other website offering a proxy list which I found on the internet, too. Okay, I need new ideas. TOR. Oh no. Blocked.

Then, by accident, I typed airdns.org instead of airvpn.org and Firefox successfully connected to the AirDNS website. There are two links - AirVPN homepage, and a link to the DNS FAQ entry. Both work, although airvpn.org is blocked. I can even type airvpn.org after this and Firefox could establish a connection. This really turned everything upside down. What if torproject.org can be unlocked in the same way?
So I searched for Torproject.org with Google and clicked the link. Success! But why on earth does this work? I could even download the package! I installed it, I attempted a connection. It's stuck at "Connecting to a relay directory". Last week I let it run for an hour and it could successfully connect to a directory but couldn't go further. Pity. Don't have the time to let it run longer.

 

My ideas to solve this:

• Linux Live CD. But I cannot configure the network settings because there seems to be no DHCP server and I cannot view network settings, registry, command prompt, the device manager, etc. for valuable information on IPs for example.
• Configuring a small proxy at home and connecting to it. Since the firewall is clearly working in blacklist mode it would work. But I need some advice on which software to use and how to configure it to redirect traffic. Never did that before, honestly.

I appreciate every kind of input you can share, especially on other ideas and guides. Thank you in advance.

[flat4 79]

I cannot help in your path to hacking the sophos but how are they restoring a snapshot after every reboot, is it a thin client?

[hashswag 11]

Get a new job where they don't treat the employees with this kind of disrespect. 

 

I have no other solution...

[flat4 79]

Get a new job where they don't treat the employees with this kind of disrespect. 

 

I have no other solution...

 most business are moving to this model becasue of people abusiing their internet to spend more time on social media and porn than to their work,

[hashswag 11]

 most business are moving to this model becasue of people abusiing their internet to spend more time on social media and porn than to their work,

 

Businesses should be focusing on job performance and results more than controlling behavior, making employees feel like they are guilty for just being employed.  Great for morale.

[flat4 79]

Hey I'm with you, but i know we implement some of these tactics. It was industry leaders are doing so we should follow. blah blah blah

[hashswag 11]

You could always use a T-Mobile device with unlimited service and tether....

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

how are they restoring a snapshot after every reboot, is it a thin client?

 

PC Sheriff. I don't know how it works. (I'm seriously asking myself why I don't install it on my "hacker netbook" and analyze it. That way I can exploit it. Added to To-Do. Thanks )

 

Get a new job where they don't treat the employees with this kind of disrespect.

 

It's a temporary job. Will end in May this year.

 

You could always use a T-Mobile device with unlimited service and tether....

 

I'd need a tethering driver for this, and driver installations require admin privileges.

 

Well, I moved to another building with another computer network. I reasonably think it's based on Microsoft's Active Directory. All network traffic is routed through a proxy (Squid). The only blocked pages are the most common porn and illegal sites such as TPB and some fascist and drug stuff.

Now the biggest problem is the power of all the computers. A small computer based on Windows 7 with a Intel Xeon CPU and no graphics card. Pretty much everything system-related is blocked: You cannot execute CMD, you cannot edit your desktop, you cannot install anything. You have (restricted) access to two network drives and absolutely no access to local files. USB is working but as you don't have access to local drives you also don't have access to any removable drives. So you can say USB doesn't work, too.

 

No, I don't work in an IT company. As I mentioned, it's temporary.

[flat4 79]

Wow, dude I think you work for the same company that I do.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

I finally found out why. It doesn't block ANY HTTPS traffic! Now, I will just install HTTPS Everywhere and HTTPS Finder and work with that.

 

// solved.

[flat4 79]

awesome.