Web filter evasion part 2: Out of band

A lot of times, you kind of want access to your favorite content, even if it's just to read it, while at work or school. Some places with more draconian Internet access policies block pretty much everything "cool" and paint their restrictions with a very wide brush. In this series, we'll uncover a few ways around these restrictions.

With each article, I will delve into techniques that are progressively more advanced and difficult to implement. Keep in mind that this is a thought exercise in evasion. Implementing this stuff could get you expelled from school, fired from your job, or banned from public-access computers in a library or coffee shop. With a little bit of wisdom, you can often get around the restrictions set in place without getting yourself into hot water.

In Part 2, I'll cover out-of-band communication. Why spend time trying to trick the web filter when you can simply not go through it at all? Creeping into our list at number two, this trick is somewhat obvious and well-documented. Most computer users can manage to connect to a wireless network or follow the instructions that come with a mobile data service plan.

Personally, this is what I do most of the time. I'm using my own laptop and my own internet connection. Where I work, I'm not breaking any rules at all, so long as the content I'm browsing doesn't offend my peers. If I'm not disturbing anyone and I'm getting my work done, my boss doesn't mind.

Problems

• Cost. To properly implement something like this, you'll likely need a laptop computer, Wi-Fi enabled PDA, a smartphone of some sort, or other expensive equipment.
• Totally uncontrolled access. Neither IT Departments nor managers are often comfortable when you have 100% unfettered access to whatever you want. This could get you in trouble.
  

Advantages that will work in your favor

• The fact that you'll be avoiding connecting through the work or school network means that anything on your computer is NOT on the work or school network. This is sometimes a sigh of relief for netadmins.
• What you do out-of-band can't be monitored by the network, either.

Wi-Fi 

The cheapest and easiest way.  If there are networks in range, fire up your Wireless Ethernet (IEEE 802.11, Wi-Fi, etc.) and join an open network that you can surf freely from. Most operating systems will display a list of open networks you can try connecting to. Obviously, you should try to access ones that are blatantly set up for public use. Maybe there's a cafe across the street. Failing that, you can TRY to access networks that are left unsecured by accident. This can get you into legal trouble, though.  HiR doesn't advocate that.

If you feel like getting a little bit more advanced in your search for a public network to piggyback, install wireless scanning software (KisMAC, BSD Airtools, Kismet or Netstumbler), pick up some high-gain antennae and a high-power wireless ethernet card.  The widespread deployment of privately-operated, free Wi-Fi makes this a viable option in dense urban and business districts.

Mobile Data plans (Wireless broadband) 

Sprint and Verizon (among others, probably) offer data plans with mobile data cards that you can plug into your laptop via PCMCIA, USB or Express Card connectors. These plans can be costly, but will work anywhere you can get a signal on your phone. Using these services is as simple as paying for it and following the instructions. If you have trouble getting it working, you can even call your provider for free technical support.

Also in the same vein are smartphones. Gadgets such as the iPhone offer feature-packed browsing via the phone's data plan. You can also get on AIM/MSN/Yahoo or check many websites and mail providers through the built-in WAP Browser on less advanced mobile phones.

Mobile Phone Tethering
This is a little more shady, and could get your account terminated with your wireless carrier. By plugging in a cable between your laptop and mobile phone (or using bluetooth to make the connection) you can "tether" and use your phone's built-in data connection to access the Internet. HowardForums is a good place to learn about this stuff in more detail.

Next in this series, we'll dive head-first into web-based anonymous proxies -- a sure-fire way to get your IT guys angry at you, should you be caught in the act.

Unofficial DUN Tethering guide: LG Chocolate (vx8550) Hack

-- OR --
Adventures of a new mobile phone Pt. 3...

Editor's note: this particular article involves downloading and installing software from un-trusted web site. That's dangerous. It also involves running Windows. That's also dangerous. To top it all off, it also involves software that interacts with your mobile phone at a very low level. That, too, is dangerous. In short, HiR isn't responsible if you get in trouble with the law or your service provider, get a virus from a russian s3ri4lz site, get somehow addicted to running Windows, or brick your shiny new gadget.

Now for the fun stuff. One of the things I kind of relied on my Motorola e815 for was dial-up networking (DUN) via bluetooth. I didn't necessarily use it a lot, but as a sysadmin that's always been a bit of a road warrior, I often find myself places where there simply is no Internet. Inevitably, the pager-of-doom goes off and I'm out at the lake camping or at a location where there's no obvious Internet connection available. Other times, I'll be on a commuter bus and have the burning desire to check the news, or do some research on something really quick.

Whatever the reason, I enjoyed this functionality. On the e815, this was simple to enable. A quick punch-of-numbers on the keypad and voila. My MacBook could see it as a bluetooth modem with surprisingly quick download speed nonetheless -- at times upwards of 1mbit/sec.

The LG Chocolate? Different story. My MacBook saw it, but I wasn't getting anywhere. The connection would be refused with an invalid login and password, even though my login and password were fine when using my e815. This had me concerned.

I did a quick bit of research, and found that the phone has some internal IDs that differ when used for DUN. There's no quick handset-hack for this. Two things were required: A Data Cable, and the proprietary software from Qualcomm (called QPST) for changing the phone's settings. Even BitPIM wouldn't help me here.

All of the Windows operations were done within Parallels Desktop on a small Windows 2000 partition with all the latest patches. This isn't saying much, I don't know when the last patch was released for Windows 2000 but it's a lightweight operating system that can run the few Windows apps that I am ever tempted to launch.

The first order of business was to find the software. Unfortunately, the location where I got it seems to be offline, but you'll have to search for it. The specific file I found was a compressed installer for QPST 2.7 Build 231. Other builds might work fine. I'll caution you that a lot of sites that I found contained massive amounts of shady stuff, so do this at your own risk. I scanned the downloaded file for viruses before transferring it to my Win2K virtual machine. This is only available for Windows. Once downloaded, install it. It's a pretty straight-forward next-next-next installation.

Next, of course, was finding the data cable. I went ahead and purchased the Verizon Chocolate music accessory kit. It was a relative bargain at only $45. Along with the USB Data cable, I also got a special stereo 1/16" headset, a 2GB TransFlash card and adapters. The package also came with drivers for the USB connection as well as software for managing music on the phone. I obviously had no intention of using their Windows software just to copy files to my phone, but the driver was also Windows-only. I installed the USB driver, inserted the 2GB card into my phone, and went on my way with the rest of this hack.

Once the drivers are installed, the phone shows up on a high COM Port. Make sure the phone is plugged in and if running Parallels (versus doing this on a dedicated Windows machine) make sure that the USB Device is enabled for Parallels (Devices > USB menu) then open QPST Configuration and hit "Add Port". If all's well, you should see your phone in the dialog. Select and add it accordingly.





Once the port has been added, close QPST Configuration.

Next, open QPST's Service Programming tool. It should immediately prompt you to select your phone. Select it and continue. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING AT ALL, hit "Read from Phone", enter the SP code (usually 000000) and then save the data to a file. This will back-up your phone's configuration.


Now that that's out of the way, on the row of tabs across the top, scroll over until you find the M.IP tab. Expand the "NAI" and "Tethered NAI" columns so you can read them both clearly. You can see that Tethered NAI is not the same as NAI.


Edit Tethered NAI so that it matches.


Then, save this configuration to a different backup file. Don't over-write your pristine backup, please. Finally, get your phreak on and click the "Write to Phone" button and cross your fingers.

Quit the QPST Service Programming tool. Your phone should reboot and be completely intact.


From there, you set up your dial-up networking as usual. This is straight-forward in both Windows and Mac OS X.

Phone Number: #777
User Name: the tethered NAI you used above, ex: 1234567890@vzw3g.com
Password: vzw (but anything should work)

Now that you have the cable with a driver for Windows, you can do USB Serial or bluetooth on Windows.

Without a USB Driver on OS X you can still do Bluetooth DUN. If you configured your phone's Bluetooth connection with the "Access the internet with this phone's data connection" option checked, it should simply ask for a username and password.

Adventures of a new mobile phone Pt. 2 - BitPIM

Editor's Note: This is the second part of my adventures of converting to a new phone. The first two parts will cover synchronizing your contacts between my old phone and my new phone. Although I'm using Mac OS X for most of this series, the tool I'm covering in this article works on both Mac OS X and Windows.

So, either your first phone isn't supported by iSync, or both. Or perhaps you're a Windows user that's ready to give BitPIM a whirl. Whatever the case, BitPIM is the focus of this article.

In the last article, I discussed getting your contacts into your Address book from your phone via iSync. To get these contacts into a format usable by BitPIM, you must export the contacts. It's worth mentioning that any contact information manager including MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and most of the popular web-mail sites can export your contacts to a vCard file that BitPIM can load onto your phone. Again, if the screen shots aren't legible, click on them to get the full sized image.

To get your contacts out of OS X's Address Book, highlight all of your contacts (or only the ones you want to load onto your new phone) and then use the File -> Export -> Export vCard menu.



I assume that you've already established a bluetooth or cable connection from your computer to your new phone following the instructions in Part 1. Once that's established, download and install BitPIM. Run it.

BitPIM is a bit of a kludgy beast. The UI isn't terribly intuitive. It won't work with all BlueTooth phones. Case and point, my e815 covered in Part 1 doesn't seem to get along very well with BitPIM, and I can't seem to get it to connect. BitPIM works on more phones than iSync, so between iSync and BitPIM you're likely covered.

First, get your phone working with BitPIM. Select "Preferences" from the "BitPIM" menu. Try the Phone Wizard, or adjust the settings manually. This isn't too hard.


We'll import the exported vCards we got out of Address Book:


You'll be prompted to merge or replace existing data. If this is the first time you've run BitPIM, you shouldn't need to do much else. Just walk through the prompts and get all your contacts into BitPIM.

Now, Click the "Write To Phone" button (Second icon on the upper left, between the "Read From Phone" icon and the Big H "Historical Data" Icon).


Select "Contacts" (and Add or Replace as you need) and hit OK. You'll see the progress meter at the bottom scroll a few times, and then when it's done, it will likely restart your phone.


You can also sync the BitPIM calendar to various calendars, for example Google Calendar, iCal, or a calendar on another phone. If your new phone supports it, you may be able to grab your calendar data and beam it to your phone easily with BitPIM. The LG Chocolate VX8550's calendar works well with BitPIM, so if you've got one, feel free to give it a shot. BitPIM has a lot of other functionality as well. Play with the Import and Export options in the file menu.

Beware that BitPIM does, in fact, alter your phone's internal data files. There is a possibility that you could brick your phone. All in all, I've had pretty good luck with it so far.

See Also:
Adventures of a new mobile phone Pt. 1
Other HiR Mobile Articles

Adventures of a new mobile phone Pt. 1

Editor's Note: This is the first part of my adventures of converting to a new phone. The first two parts will cover synchronizing your contacts between my old phone and my new phone. These instructions should work pretty well for most Bluetooth-enabled phones, or for phones that you have a Data Cable and drivers for. I'm using Mac OS X for most of this series with the exception of the final article, which will cover the proprietary Windows-based tool used to manipulate my specific phone for additional functionality that I wanted.

Well, the time has come for a new phone. It's not that my trusty Motorola e815 hasn't been great, because it has been. In fact, I was reluctant to give it up. I got it in 2005 or so. Since then, it's been buried in snow, had the case cracked, and other torturous events. The thing keeps ticking. Truth be known, I'll probably hold onto it just in case I fail to bond with my new gadget. So, why is it time for a new phone? Because it's FREE -- with a 2 year contract, of course! If I don't upgrade, I'm basically giving away an offer for a free phone. I've been with Verizon in one form or another (i.e. Cellular One) for about a decade, though. In general, I've got nothing but great things to say about them. Another 2 years won't hurt anything.

First things first: My current phone has almost 100 phone numbers, and almost 80 unique contacts. Re-entering all of that information into a new phone doesn't sound like my idea of a fun way to waste an entire weekend.

With iSync, I can pull all the data out of the e815. iSync works with quite a few phones, so yours might be on the list. If you're using only Windows, I don't know how to sync your phone to Outlook or whatnot, but I'd imagine it can be done easily enough. Let's get started! If you have trouble making out the screen shots, click to zoom in on them.

First, get the phone connected via Bluetooth. There's probably a "discoverable" mode on your phone that you'll need to activate. See your documentation for how to do it. Once it's in discoverable mode, it's time to go to work.

Select "Set up Bluetooth device" from the bluetooth menu:


Next, just work through the prompts including the bonding PIN which you'll have to enter on your phone's handset. Note that I'm in a public place and people have other bluetooth enabled devices nearby with clever names such as "The Blade!" (oooo, scary)








We won't need to enable the Internet connection through the phone, so you can un-check it if you want. When you activate bluetooth on your new phone, you can choose to enable it if you plan on tethering later on. Note that this is potentially against the terms of service for your carrier unless you cough up the cash for a data plan.


Once complete, iSync should launch on its own. It not, start it manually. With that out of the way, fire up Address Book (in Applications) as well. The default settings for iSync should be fine. Go ahead and Sync:


iSync, in true Apple form, will try to protect you from doing something stupid like updating a ton of information in its Address Book without permission from you. Go ahead and sync the contacts.


You'll now see all your contacts in the Address Book. You didn't think I'd actually show you all the names of people I talk to, do you?


Now, if you're lucky and your new phone is ALSO supported by iSync, you can shut off your old phone, fire up your new phone, and do the exact same procedure all over again. The Address Book will store all your contacts. Syncing your new phone will move all the contacts and their numbers over seamlessly.

Unfortunately, my new phone, the second-generation LG Chocolate (VX8550) isn't supported. Tune in for Part 2, where I'll discuss using BitPIM to help you out if you're dealing with unsupported phones.