I have an interesting connection to my web site from a corporate network, and someone listening to my online radio station right now, from a corporate network in Cincinnati, Ohio I use one service that gives me details about where people connect to my website from, including "referrer" links. Whoever connected from their workplace, linked from a Usenet posting of my E-zine, in Google Groups. I thought that Usenet and/or Google Groups were VERBOTEN on virtually ALL corporate LANS worldwide. This one printing company in Ohio must be about the ONLY company that does allow its workers to access Usenet postings from work. I always thought that Usenet would always be the first thing that corporate network policy would ban, and every major filtering software ships their products with news software and/or news servers blocked by default.
No, in general the security risks of NNTP are fairly low compared to other threats. Of course free access to usenet can waste a lot time of the employees and therefore a ban can make sense but usenet is getting less and less popular.
And these are cases when usenet access is required for work.
Many companies don't understand security and don't implement it properly. If the company in question did properly implement security your site, in fact, most sites, including Usenet, would be blocked by default.
Usenet, with Binary groups filled with malware is a serious threat to any network. Google groups is not Usenet, it's a web interface to Usenet.
No, there are many newsgroups that are useful in corporate settings, and it isn't always practical to predict which ones they will be. You can make some educated guesses on -some- of the hierarchies (e.g., binaries pictures erotica) but the rest get harder as there is such a wide variety of tasks in a large organization.
HQ of the organization I work for is a major regional Usenet feed. The technical feeds are most obvious, but we feed a number of universities, and you never know what someone is studying at a university.
Well, with the subscription anonumity service I use, I just scrolled through the available nodes, to see how many people on corporate networks are connected, and it is mind bogling. Normally, there might be about 1000 subscribers connected at one time, but during working hours in the USA, it can go to nearly 3 times that. I logged on today, and scrolled thorugh the available online nodes in America, and an incredible number of office networks are surfing through the system. This service works as a P2P type of service. Not only can you surf out through available nodes, but anyone connected to the network can surf through you, as well. Right now, there is a preigious Chicago law firm, specialising in business law and business litigation logged onto the site, and gobbling up a LOT of bandwidth. There are at least FIVE connections to my website and online radio station originating from the computer network of this law firm, right now. Someone is logged onto the subscription anonymity service from there, and others are surfing through that open node that has now been created by this one person being logged on. The husband-and-wife team who own this particular law firm probably have NO CLUE as to what is taking place on their office computer network. The way this service works, someone could be on your network, right now, to this subscrption service, and you might not even KNOW it, until you get your bandwidth bill, and wonder why the bill has gone up. Unlike Tor, and other free services, these subscription services don't advertise themselves like a neon sign, so the bosses at this one law firm, with at least 5 different connections to my online radio station, originating through there, will never know what is taking place. At the 32K that I transmit music at (when not doing any live programming), 5 connections equals 160K of bandwidth being gobbled up at once. They probably have no clue as to what is gobbling down 160K of bandwidth.
Not as easy as it once was. While music streams are normally access on port 1755 (Windows Media), 8000 (MP3) or
554 (RealPlayer), one streaming host I an considering switching to, if the CRB royalty rates in America are eventually defeated, uses port 80. Part of it is to make is harder to block, without blocking out EVERYTHING, including work-related sites. And since my domain is not any site site blacklists, people would not have to use anything like Tor, or anything like that. I keep my streams at no more than 16K now, so that Tor users can get my station (Tor tends to have a lot of annoying rebuffering at anything much above 16K).
Basically, I will be assigned an IP address, where I will assign a subdomain to it. Since it would all be under my domain, it would be under the radar of almost any web filtering system on Earth, as of right now. So if and when I make the switch, it will be that much harder for you to block, and easier for users to access my station, without having to use Tor, open proxies, or subscription anonymity services.
Basically, it would blend in with all the other traffic going out on port 80, and would harly be noticed by most corporate network admins.
Anyone that allows free HTTP access is a fool, all quality firewall solutions provide blocking for it, all good network admins block HTTP access except to approved sites, and your site, since it's not an approved business partner site would be blocked for everyone of our clients by default.
However, this stream provider goes out of their way to make it harder to block. It is much more expensive that most streaming providers, which include royalties, but they charge that much more becuase they gotta pay all those techies that work day and night to make their site harder to block. For every measure you can come up with to block them, they will come up with countermeasures to circumvent it. They work hard for their clientelle to make it harder for any employers to block any of their customers' online radio stations.
I basically like what I see, in that it would be possible, in most workplaces, to access my radio station, through this streaming provider, without having to use Tor, open proxies, or any anonymity services. This means I can transmit at a higher bit rate, and not have to keep the bit rate down, to maintain compatability with Tor, which does not handle high bitrate streams very well
Basically, they provide a relay service. Just connect your server to the realay, point your domain at the address for that relay, and you are done.
I find that neither this streaming relay service, nor any of its clientelle are in any filtering lists from any of the major filtering vendors, so anyone broadcasting through this relay service could be heard in most workplaces around the world.
Here is something interesting, someone is using an open proxy in Saudi Arabia to connect to my streams. A few days ago, I had about 10 streams served to one address in Saudi Arabia. It appears that someone, somewhere, is connecting to my stream, from work, using an open proxy server in Saudi Arabia.
Wherever it is, the boss will know that a connection was made to a strange address in Saudi Arabia, but would never have ANY IDEA they were connecting to my online radio station.
And if the firewall was properly setup it would not allow connections to Saudi Arabia - so, again, you only work if there are unsecured networks for your users to access. And since most Proxy sites are known, since many blocking services update their list daily, there is a very real chance that even just blocking Proxy sites would prevent them from accessing your unethical site.
Depends on what service you use. I use one service, with proxy sites, on which 99.9 percent of them are NOT in any blacklist. I test this by going to Wikipedia, and seeing if it will let me access the edit page for any article. I find that Wikipedia lets all but a handful through. If Wikipedia, as vigilent as they are, cannot detect most of them, then they are not likely to appear on any blacklists.
This service is SOOO good, that somoene could be using it right now, right under your nose, and you would likely never find out about it. Becuase some port HAS to be open to anything to get out on the Net, if you know what outgoing ports are open, you can specify to the software to only search to nodes on those ports. For example, someone can tell the client software to search for nodes on port 80, and it will spit back all the available nodes on port 80, then the user just selects one and connects, and, viola!! All that security you invested in is knockwurst. As long as any port is open for output, and as long as the client software can find a working node on that port anywhere in the world, someone can connect to the anonymity network via that port. It uses all kinds of addresses and ports, which makes trying to stop up like playing whack-a-mole.
Also, I use higher quality codecs now to make my streams Tor-friendly. I find a lot of people use Tor to access my stream, and I have found that does not not work well with streams much above 32K. So by keeping the streams at 32K or less, people can sneak on using Tor and there wont be the constant problem of rebuffering or getting disconnected.
One TV sports reporter on one of the major networks even advocated using Tor to sneak onto the feeds of the NCAA basketball tournament earlier this year, so I am not the only one advocating Tor to avoid monitoring and detection by the boss. This one reporter had even showed where to get it and how to use it, and did tout its encryption.
Yes, but what you need is an accessible _route_ to the Net, which may very well be non-existent. That's why we have filtering application level firewalls, and the most desperate resort to high-overhead http, dns or icmp-tunnelling (which may or may not be blocked by the firewall).
Now this one service has an optional US$8.95/month "premium" plan that includes an extra layer of heavy encryption, so that it is even easier to hide your activities from the boss. So someone could run an encrypted session with this service, and you, as network admins, would never know what that person is up to.
The address is whichever of this company's "elite" proxies you went to would show in the logs, yes. But where you went beyond tht proxies would only be known to the company providing this service. The only thing that you, as a network admin, would know is that someone was making an encrypted connect to some strange address in either Canada, the U.S., or the U.K, where their elite proxies are hosted for the fastest possible speeds..
And since that has no valid business reason, it's going to be blocked and then the person doing it will be reprimanded. So, as you can see, even if you fail to understand, it's easy to spot, easy to block, easy to get the person doing it, etc...
The only reason you get connections is because the businesses don't lock down their networks properly.
With some Internet radio stations closing down becuase of higher royalty rates, I am seeing more traffic to my station now. A partial deal was struck that will not silence as many webcasters, but enough of them to drive traffic to other sites. Beginning on Monday July 16th, I have seen a large jump in the number of corporate networks visiting my site and my radio station.
I do believe that is why I saw up to 10 streams being served at once to an open proxy in Saudi Arabia. The webcasters that will be able to stay in the air are buying bandwidth from larger "aggregators" and coming under the "umbrella" of their licence, and Live 365 does offer such accounts. Becuase Live 365 will be blocked where the independent webcaster, who uses his own server, will not, people have to do things like use proxies, to get to Live 365 stations.
I have do doubt those are people on corporate networks in America, given that these streams are being served during the workday in America, and that I am picking up some listeners looking for new stations after the close of some of the smaller independent webcasters, and many of those are on corporate networks in America. I am beginning to see a large increase in listenership from open proxies, anonymity services, and many direct connections from corporate networks all over the place.
It appears that a couple of 80s stations have been silenced, and people are coming to my off-hours music programming (when not broadcasting sports or talk programming), as an alternative, since I do play a lot of 80s music. With users using every possible workaround to listen to me, someone could well be listening on your office network right now, and you will not know what they are up to.
Even a lot of foreign broadcasters using U.S. streaming providers to avoid regulations on Net radio in their own home countries. The U.S. is one of few countries that have not yet enacted content and/or decency regulations on Internet radio, which is why my station, out of Australia, uses an American provider. And many foreign broadcasters take advantage of this.
As you can see, you ignored my reply that stated that the only reason you can provide content is because the firewalls of business are not configured properly or you would not be getting accessed from them.
Once the company finds they are lacking in network capacity they will start looking, find your connection easily, find the offending employee, block the connection and you will not have that customer. This is very simple and should be something checked for on a weekly basis with most businesses.
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