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I am connecting to a free public wifi, I want to connect or use other ports like FTP and SSH. What are the possibility to override it? In order to connect to the internet, They are requiring me to add their proxy on my HTTP and HTTPS settings, under network (Mac OSX). I've asked them why I can't use other ports and they told me that their internet setting is only open for HTTP and HTTPS port.

Is using VPN be able to override their settings? Please advice some way around if your connecting to a public wifi and you want to use other ports.

Just FYI, I need to use the other ports like SSH and FTP to manage my FTP server. I am using a MacOSX environment.


I'll try to add detail as much as I can, I'm not really sure about their network structure as i'm not good at networking and I haven't seen their setup. But I know they have wireless router in every corner where you can get signal from it. I think it's also the same setup as public libraries are setup, you can only browse that are related to research and some sites like p2p, hacking, etc are being blocked.

I've looked some tutorial (youtube) how to use VPN to bypass restriction, And most of them needs to connect through SSH first. Unfortunately, the port for SSH is already block. Am I on the right track?

Thanks for you responses! :)

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migrated from security.stackexchange.com Oct 7 '12 at 20:44

This question came from our site for Information security professionals.

This question could probably use some more detail to be useful and answerable. What sort of devices lie between yours and the Internet, which are keeping you from using non-HTTP services? Device type, position in the network topology, and the make/model could be useful. –  Iszi Oct 7 '12 at 14:56

2 Answers 2

You could use SSL-VPN (SSTP) or you could set your SSH server to listen on port 443 (the https port), and connect to it.

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Openvpn running with s port 443 connect should work too –  ewanm89 Oct 6 '12 at 8:58
@Eriend, If it's not too much to ask, can you point me in some good tutorial how to do SSL VPN. Most of the tutorial I a saw are kinda confusing and confuses me more because, it's window based. Apologize for being noob. Thanks! –  Pennf0lio Oct 7 '12 at 16:01
@ewanm89 Can you exapnd about Openvpn, I have PrivateTunnel installed. Should the port 443 be set inside PrivateTunnel app? Thanks! –  Pennf0lio Oct 7 '12 at 16:18
@Pennf0lio you need to be running the openvpn server endpoint yourself somewhere. –  ewanm89 Oct 7 '12 at 16:26

Any good VPN should be able to forward arbitrary packets through a HTTPS proxy. E.g. OpenVPN can do it. Of course, as with all VPN, you need an exit point: a machine you control on the other side, where your packets can be unwrapped and recover their full potential.

Other techniques include tunneling IP traffic over DNS, because some access points with enforced rules (like a mandatory HTTP(S) proxy) let DNS requests pass (not all access points work that way, though). Last I heard, IP-over-DNS often works, but performance is, let's say, suboptimal.

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Thanks @Thomas Pornin, really appreciate your links.. will try it out which works for me. I installed OpenVPN's PrivateTunnel and notice they have a 100mb restriction for each account, which is kinda bad news for me.. :( though I still haven't try to connect through it on the public wifi. –  Pennf0lio Oct 7 '12 at 16:26

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