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HOW TO BYPASS '403' BANS

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October 13 1998
Written by J.C.
Legion Of Magic
http://our.url.would.be.here.but.unfortunately.it.is.not.for.reasons.too.long.to
.explain.damn.damn.damn
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This text is for educational and informational purposes only.


So, you're at school or college or work, ready to catch up with the latest in
the underground,
but you can't visit a particular domain -- because it's banned by the
school/college/work proxy.
Try the following to work around the proxy.

This text is based around the 2600 site (www.2600.com).

Bypassing the proxy is easy for visiting 2600. 2600 registered '2600.net' and
'2600.org' in addition
to the normal '2600.com'. 2600.net and 2600.org both mirror the main 2600.com
site. A lot of proxies
only have 2600.com in their list of banned domains. Going to 2600.net or
2600.org overcomes this
problem.

If a domain is banned, getting to the same content using a different top-level
domain name (TLDN)
is reliant on:

1. The list of banned domains not covering all possible TLDNs (e.g. not having
all of 2600.com,
2600.net, 2600.org banned.) Having a disorganized sysadmin helps.

2. Having the desired, non-banned domain actually registered in the first place!
It would be no good
trying to access 2600.net if it didn't exist.

3. Having the non-banned, registered domain mirroring the banned domain, and not
merely providing a
link to the banned domain in the index.html of the unbanned domain, e.g. if
2600.net and 2600.org
merely provided in their index.html pages a hyperlink to 2600.com, when the link
is clicked, the
proxy would detect packets coming from 2600.com and kill the connection with an
error 403.

If all three of the criteria are fulfilled then the forbidden material should be
accessible.

However, say if the domain you wanted to visit didn't fulfil guideline 1 and the
site was only
registered in one TLDN (e.g. hackersclub.com, and that one domain was banned.)
If your proxy does
not ban connecting to websites by IP (i.e. you can type in an IP in Navigator's
URL field and you
can visit that site,) there is a way around the lack of a different TLDN. If you
have access to an
IRC client, log on to an IRC server (just about any IRC server worth its salt
should work) and type 

/dns apple.com

Substitute the banned domain for 'apple.com'.

The site's IP should come up in the IRC client's console. Type that IP into
Navigator's URL field.
If your proxy has banned a domain *name* but not a ban on the IP of the domain
(and allows connecting
by IP) then the connection shouldn't be killed.

If you don't have access to an IRC client on the terminal you are using, then
search the hard drive
for 'nslookup' or similar. On Unix the nslookup tool is named 'nslookup' (duh),
on the Mac OS or
Windows try searching for the program 'AgNetTools', since it includes an
nslookup tool.

Nslookup is fairly straightforward to use. Simply type in the domain and get the
IP back.

If there's no nslookup or IRC client on your hard drive, try looking for a
website with nslookup
running as a cgi. I don't know for sure but www.cyberarmy.com may help.

You can try that IP-substituting scheme instead of going through steps 1-3.


Personal Shoutouts (the other kind of PS):
Hi to [warlock] (Don't give up [warlock], keep the faith goddamnit...), ShAmAn,
Braxus, kM for hosting muh first text and friends at #hackersclub that I have
neglected/am too
lazy to mention...