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Unless you do not control when the VPN is on/off, they're no more intrusive than connecting directly to your University's wifi. As far as I know, it's pretty c
by SkyPuncher 5y ago
Unless you do not control when the VPN is on/off, they're no more intrusive than connecting directly to your University's wifi. As far as I know, it's pretty common since most universities have a lot of legacy infrastructure. A VPN is the easiest way for them to grant you access to certain services.
At my university, we could use any client we wanted. The school just provided the VPN endpoint. Minimally invasive.
- tyingq 5y agoThere are some VPNs that do a "security scan" and require other nanny-type software to be present and working. And some places make it hard to use a 3rd party client via that security scan, or 2FA support, etc.
- op00to 5y agosome campus wifi networks require “security scan” software too.
- olyjohn 5y agoEven the ones that "security scan" like Cisco Secure Mobility Client still use just a cookie to authenticate you and standard protocols for the VPN itself. You can usually log into the web portal, snag the cookie, and then place it into something like OpenConnect. The server side just looks for an "okay" from whatever application was used to run the scan. This can be easily fooled by OpenConnect, assuming you know what response it's looking for.
- tyingq 5y ago>"easily fooled" I've done it, and it's not easy, though it does work. To make it work in my environment, I had to use a golang proxy and a fair amount of messing around with certificates to see what all it's looking for. It's more than a cookie...it's a form post with keys/values that vary based on whatever the local vpn people decided. See https://github.com/Gilks/hostscan-bypass https://github.com/Gilks/hostscan-bypass for details.