4 ms·

I actually did exactly that a while ago. Where I worked, we didn't have internet access but we had email access, so as a workaround, I made an email server on m

by GuB-42 4y ago

I actually did exactly that a while ago. Where I worked, we didn't have internet access but we had email access, so as a workaround, I made an email server on my home machine that fetched web pages for me. A coworker took it even further and made a proxy server that automated the process so you could actually browse the web, although very slowly. Just to say that Stallman is not the only one with this idea. It was in the early 2000, and smartphones weren't a thing. It also was a time where companies were paranoid into letting employees access the internet, but at the same time had abysmal security. By that I mean viruses ran free on shared folders, undetected because their antivirus software was years outdated. Very different times...

chrismorgan 4y ago
I recall one time in 2015 or 2016 when I had only a very weak 2G signal, but wanted to check a couple of pages (at least one of which was several hundred kilobytes). Connections always timed out in browsers, but I got it working by SSHing into my VPS, downloading the page with curl, then copying that down with scp. My recollection is that the file size would increase by 32KB every 15–30 seconds. Fun times!
- anthk 4y ago
  Mosh works over 2.7 KBPS capped data plans. I connected to a tilde and just use lynx/links/edbrowse for light www/irc/jabber and gopher. It runs much faster than being connected natively to the inet. I can read everything and even answer in fora with Edbrowse.
bsenftner 4y ago
In the early 2000's I was working as an analyst for a VFX studio, and I had a meeting with the CFO first thing in the morning. At some point we needed to look at something on his computer, and he responds "we'll have to wait about 15 more minutes." "Why?" I ask, and he shows me every day when he turns his computer on the browser starts producing "pop under windows" at a rate of about 10 pr second, and that lasts for about 40 minutes. Shocked, I debate with him for a bit and he says they've tried every antivirus. I shake my head. When they stop popping windows he has a program that mass closes all of them and then he goes to work, using that same computer - and for studio finances. Blew my mind.
super256 4y ago
In Germany there is a "WhatsApp" SIM [1], where you have to pay for normal internet use, but WhatsApp texts are free of charge. With a technique which you described, you could probably abuse a phone with this SIM as a "free" hot spot with infinite data. [1] https://www.whatsappsim.de/ https://www.whatsappsim.de/
- 867-5309 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure there was something, within the last year or so, on HN front page which used [exploit/protocol/hack] to browse wikipedia over [SMS/tweet/etc.], or similar
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  A lot of paid Wi-Fi hotspots allow DNS traffic through unmolested, that's a similar loophole
  - cph123 4y ago
    Maybe one could use something like this https://github.com/yarrick/iodine https://github.com/yarrick/iodine
- account42 4y ago
  > Guthabenaufladung mind. 5 € alle 6 Monate zur Verlängerung des Aktivitätszeitfensters. So it costs at least 83 cents per month. Still might be worth it compared to the insane mobile data charges here if you can get a usable bandwidth. I suspect in practice they will just ban you if you abuse it like that.
cratermoon 4y ago
> It also was a time where companies were paranoid into letting employees access the internet, but at the same time had abysmal security In the early 2000s I was working at an insurance company. They used some kind of blocker in their outgoing firewall that prevented access to certain sites. At one point the blocklist included sourceforge, which threw my team's work a wrench because at the time a lot of the packages we depended on were hosted there. It took a few days to get that removed from the blocklist. This same insurance company shut down for multiple days when a virus, I think it was ILOVEYOU, infested their email system so bad that nobody could work, and everyone (except the poor IT folks) got a long weekend. And then a while later, it happened again, but with a different virus, possibly Nimda. The company was very bad about updating its systems, and even in 2003 most users were stuck on Win95.
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  Company I work for still blocks SourceForge because... something bad happened 15 years ago (?).
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    Enterprises.
    - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
      You gotta be a little more specific.
cptskippy 4y ago
> It also was a time where companies were paranoid into letting employees access the internet, but at the same time had abysmal security. I recall we had a crappy firewall that would collapse under the load of NAT for the 100ish employees and so executives got static IPs mapped to their machines. The late 90s and 00s were crazy.
- logifail 4y ago
  > so executives got static IPs mapped to their machines. The late 90s and 00s were crazy In my Uni days, all our department's machines had public IPs; no NAT, no firewall(!) So much simpler to able to telnet, FTP and/or remote desktop straight from home to the office :)
  - eashman 4y ago
    Same at my University in the mid-90s. I was the CS department network admin and we had an entire /24 to use as we liked. At least it taught me how to detect attempted hacks early because every machine had to be monitored for attacks. I just looked and they still have a /16 (65k public addresses). This is for a school that has maybe 15k students, not all of them living on the campus. And I’m sure most of the computing takes place in the cloud now anyway. I know there are a lot of places who were on the Net early besides the military that have excess address capacity.
lamontcg 4y ago
I did the reverse and had an ssh connect to my home machine and ran an IPv4 tunnel back through it so that I could browse the entire corporate internet from my home network, creating a full VPN essentially. Make me about 10 times as productive as going through the dial-up we had to use while we were oncall.

by GuB-42 4y ago

chrismorgan 4y ago

I recall one time in 2015 or 2016 when I had only a very weak 2G signal, but wanted to check a couple of pages (at least one of which was several hundred kilobytes). Connections always timed out in browsers, but I got it working by SSHing into my VPS, downloading the page with curl, then copying that down with scp. My recollection is that the file size would increase by 32KB every 15–30 seconds. Fun times!

anthk 4y ago
Mosh works over 2.7 KBPS capped data plans. I connected to a tilde and just use lynx/links/edbrowse for light www/irc/jabber and gopher. It runs much faster than being connected natively to the inet. I can read everything and even answer in fora with Edbrowse.

bsenftner 4y ago

In the early 2000's I was working as an analyst for a VFX studio, and I had a meeting with the CFO first thing in the morning. At some point we needed to look at something on his computer, and he responds "we'll have to wait about 15 more minutes." "Why?" I ask, and he shows me every day when he turns his computer on the browser starts producing "pop under windows" at a rate of about 10 pr second, and that lasts for about 40 minutes. Shocked, I debate with him for a bit and he says they've tried every antivirus. I shake my head. When they stop popping windows he has a program that mass closes all of them and then he goes to work, using that same computer - and for studio finances. Blew my mind.

super256 4y ago

In Germany there is a "WhatsApp" SIM [1], where you have to pay for normal internet use, but WhatsApp texts are free of charge. With a technique which you described, you could probably abuse a phone with this SIM as a "free" hot spot with infinite data. [1] https://www.whatsappsim.de/ https://www.whatsappsim.de/

867-5309 4y ago
I'm pretty sure there was something, within the last year or so, on HN front page which used [exploit/protocol/hack] to browse wikipedia over [SMS/tweet/etc.], or similar
Firmwarrior 4y ago
A lot of paid Wi-Fi hotspots allow DNS traffic through unmolested, that's a similar loophole
- cph123 4y ago
  Maybe one could use something like this https://github.com/yarrick/iodine https://github.com/yarrick/iodine
account42 4y ago
> Guthabenaufladung mind. 5 € alle 6 Monate zur Verlängerung des Aktivitätszeitfensters. So it costs at least 83 cents per month. Still might be worth it compared to the insane mobile data charges here if you can get a usable bandwidth. I suspect in practice they will just ban you if you abuse it like that.

cratermoon 4y ago

> It also was a time where companies were paranoid into letting employees access the internet, but at the same time had abysmal security In the early 2000s I was working at an insurance company. They used some kind of blocker in their outgoing firewall that prevented access to certain sites. At one point the blocklist included sourceforge, which threw my team's work a wrench because at the time a lot of the packages we depended on were hosted there. It took a few days to get that removed from the blocklist. This same insurance company shut down for multiple days when a virus, I think it was ILOVEYOU, infested their email system so bad that nobody could work, and everyone (except the poor IT folks) got a long weekend. And then a while later, it happened again, but with a different virus, possibly Nimda. The company was very bad about updating its systems, and even in 2003 most users were stuck on Win95.

WirelessGigabit 4y ago
Company I work for still blocks SourceForge because... something bad happened 15 years ago (?).
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Enterprises.
  - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
    You gotta be a little more specific.

cptskippy 4y ago

> It also was a time where companies were paranoid into letting employees access the internet, but at the same time had abysmal security. I recall we had a crappy firewall that would collapse under the load of NAT for the 100ish employees and so executives got static IPs mapped to their machines. The late 90s and 00s were crazy.

logifail 4y ago
> so executives got static IPs mapped to their machines. The late 90s and 00s were crazy In my Uni days, all our department's machines had public IPs; no NAT, no firewall(!) So much simpler to able to telnet, FTP and/or remote desktop straight from home to the office :)
- eashman 4y ago
  Same at my University in the mid-90s. I was the CS department network admin and we had an entire /24 to use as we liked. At least it taught me how to detect attempted hacks early because every machine had to be monitored for attacks. I just looked and they still have a /16 (65k public addresses). This is for a school that has maybe 15k students, not all of them living on the campus. And I’m sure most of the computing takes place in the cloud now anyway. I know there are a lot of places who were on the Net early besides the military that have excess address capacity.

lamontcg 4y ago

I did the reverse and had an ssh connect to my home machine and ran an IPv4 tunnel back through it so that I could browse the entire corporate internet from my home network, creating a full VPN essentially. Make me about 10 times as productive as going through the dial-up we had to use while we were oncall.