How to bypass web filters

There are several occasions where you will be at a public to bypass web filters require access to a particular website that is blocked for some reason or another. How to bypass these restrictions is a very common question, and will be covered here.

Lets pretend for a moment that the Internet is made up of 26 websites, A-Z. The web filter blocks your browser from accessing sites X-Z, but not sites A-W. Simply make the browser think youre going to A-
W. There are a variety of ways to do this:


Proxy Servers: 
This is a list of http proxies. These sites may not be up forever, so you may need to search for free http proxy or public proxy servers or other similar terms.

Proxy server lists:

• http://www.aliveproxy.com
• http://www.multiproxy.org
• http://www.publicproxyservers.com/index.html
• http://www.tehbox.com/proxy
• http://www.proxz.com
• http://www.proxy4free.com/index.html
• http://free-proxies.com

Now that you have a list of proxies, you would open IE (internet explorer) and click on Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN Settings > Advanced. Enter the address and port of one of the servers from the list in the proper area (http) and make sure the “use a proxy server for your LAN option is selected. Remember to replace the proxy and port at your terminal to the original when you're done.

*Note: Some proxies listed may not work, and this method may decrease your surfing speed. By trying various entries, you’ll find one that works, or works faster.

The infamous translation trick:
Go to a web page translation site and use their services to “translate a page to English thus accessing the blocked page through their trusted site.

You'll notice that several translation sites are blocked, but by using less popular ones, this method can still be effective. Here is a list of some translation services. Again, these sites may not be up forever, so you may need to search for them.

• http://babelfish.altavista.com
• http://world.altavista.com
• http://translation.langenberg.com
• http://freetranslation.com/web.thm

Url Scripting:


Url scripting is the easiest method. It works on a select few web filters and is based on the same principal as the translation trick. By typing and address like “www.yahoo.com@www.restricted_site.com the filter will not go into effect as it recognizes the trusted site (in this case yahoo.com)

Other tricks:
Simply open the command prompt and type:
Ping restricted.com ? restricted.com obviously being the restricted site
At this point you can take down the IP address (ex. 216.109.124.73) and enter it into the browser. If access to the command prompt is also restricted, see “How to bypass restrictions to get to the command prompt.” If this article has been taken from information leak, then know that it involves anything from opening the browser, selecting view > source, then saving it as X.bat and opening it to opening a folder or browser and typing in the location of cmd.exe depending on the OS. I will not go into further, as this a completely different topic.

Use https://restrictedsite.com as referring to it as a secured site may confuse the filter.

Note: These are ancient methods that many new filters defend against, but still may be applicable in your situation. If not, a little history never hurt anyone.

Web based Proxies:
Another one of the easier, yet effective methods include web based proxies. These are simple in the fact that you just enter the restricted address and surf! Some of these have some restrictions, like daily usage limits, etc but you can also use another proxy (perhaps one that sucks, like a text only) to bypass their restrictions as well. Here is a list of some:

• http://proxify.com
• http://www.anonymizer.com/index.cgi
• http://www.guardster.com/
• http://anonymouse.ws/anonwww.html
• http://www.the-cloak.com/login.html
• https://www.megaproxy.com/freesurf
• http://www.anonymizer.ru
• https://nadaily.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxyb.cgi
• http://www.userbeam.de/cgi-bin/nph-userbeam.cgi
• http://www.free2.surffreedom.com/nph-free.cgi

Proxy Programs:
There are many proxy programs that allow you to surf anonymously that are more or less based on the same topics we’ve covered here. I’ve added them just to cover the topic thoroughly:

• 
  
• http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/28480.html
• http://www.inetprivacy.com/a4proxy/anonymous-grc.htm
• http://www.orangatango.com/home/index.ie.html
• http://www.steganos.com
• http://www.anonymization.net ? toolbar that requires admin rights to install

Making your own CGI proxy server:

Making your own proxy server may come in handy, but I personally find that simply uploading a txt file/w a list of proxies to a free host makes for a much easier and headache free solution. If you don't know PERL, there is code out there to help you set it up. Check out these sites for more info:

http://httpbridge.sourceforge.net
http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy]http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy
http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/open-source-personal-proxy-servers-written-in-java/view]http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/op...en-in-java/view



Admin Access:
When all else fails, you can simply take over the PC and alter or delete the damn filter. This method varies according to the OS (operating system) you are dealing with. Please see Hacking Windows NT for more information. If this tutorial has been taken from information leak, then I will go as far as to say it involves booting the PC in another OS, copying the SAM file and cracking it using a program like saminside or LC5 rather than start a whole new topic within one.

Create Your Own Online Proxy Server

How To Create Your Own Online Proxy Server In Minutes

I had quite a lot of trouble last week with a company’s browsing restrictions. It used an extensive directory of ‘forbidden websites’ that kept out all but a few popular sites. In effect, no games sites, no personal email, and no MakeUseOf.
None of the conventional proxy servers worked, and even Google Translate failed. My hopes were down until, yesterday, I discovered that one of my personal domains could be accessed.
Back on my home computer, in a matter of minutes, I had set up my own functioning proxy server. With the instructions below, so can you.

Prerequisites
If we want to pull this off there are a few things you need.

Web Host
In theory, any webhost will do, if they comply with the other requirements; an old computer in your basement, or even a free online webhost.

PHP5 or greater and cURL
Look for this on the website of your webhost. If it’s paid hosting, you can almost count on it. Especially cURL is a feature that’ll be disabled on most free webservers.

Permission
That’s right. Some webhosts will explicitly forbid you to create a proxy server (or a chat room, for that matter) in their terms of content. And you can expect them to find out.

1. Download and Install GlypeProxy

GlypeProxy is a free, standalone PHP script. That means it’s lightweight and incredibly easy to configure. You can download it from their website.
Next, upload the files to a sub directory on your webserver. If you see a folder called ‘www’, or called after your domain name (e.g. domain.com) create the sub folder in there. You need to avoid using the word ‘proxy’, because some companies pick up on it. Instead, use ‘web’ or ‘surf’.
There are a few different ways to upload your files. If you already know this, skip to the next paragraph. Here they are arranged from the least to the most effort.
Upload and unpack ZIP
Look in the filemanager for an ‘unpack’ or ‘extract’ option. You can then upload it in one take. This is not always supported.
FTP access
Use an FTP application to access your webhost, and let it transfer the files while you fetch some more coffee. Most often supported.
Manual upload
You really don’t want to do this – are you sure the previous two alternatives are blanked out? Your last resolve will be to manually upload all the files and folder structures. Or start looking for a different host – it might not be such a bad idea.

2. Ready For Use

There’s no real set-up needed. Just point your browser to the directory where you put all those files (ex. domain.com/surf) and GlypeProxy will pop up. If you don’t like the logo, you’ll have to replace it manually. But if you want a proxy server for personal use, some little branding won’t matter.
Users can enter any URL and, after expanding the options, choose to encode the URL, the page, allow cookies, scripts and objects. Encoding the page can help you access some sites that are still being picked up and intercepted, but might give you a corrupt webpage at times.

3. Admin Preferences

Although Glype is a powerful proxy script, the admin tools are obviously the backing power. You might not know this, but a lot of online proxy tools are powered by Glype, just like the one you just set up. The admin preferences leave room not only for customization, but for improvement. You can assign site-specific code for trouble-giving websites, and change user-agent and proxy lists.
Most useful to novice users will be the caching tools (pictured above), logs, and blacklists. The caching tools can help you improve the browsing speed by storing some files from all, or some of the already visited websites. Logs are off by default, but might have legal importance in the future, depending on who uses your proxy server. Always explicitly mention you’re keeping these logs. Finally, the blacklists will allow you to block (all but) a few sites, or users.
To access your admin panel, point your browser to admin.php on your webserver (e.g. domain.com/surf/admin.php).
Are you setting up your own personal proxy server? Do you have any other tips or experiences on the issue? Let us know in the comments below!