L2TP/IPSec is a less-common but by no means less effective set of secure tunnelling and transport protocols that allow either a site-to-site VPN or a traditional client-server VPN to be established. While Windows does not provide native support for SSL VPN, there are plenty of free desktop clients and browser extensions, many pre-configured with an endpoint, gateway forcing and a pinned TLS certificate, making them very much 'plug and play' for the end user. SSL VPN is a very common VPN solution that utilizes SSL/TLS encryption to establish a secure tunnel between the client and the destination server, through which traffic (web and otherwise) can be forwarded. There are a multitude of VPN applications and browser extensions and generally they fall into one of three categories: SSL VPN, L2TP/IPSec and Wireguard. Due to the encrypted tunnel that is established between the client and the remote server, web traffic sent over that tunnel cannot be analysed - a web filter effectively becomes blind to whatever is going on within the tunnel. Where VPN's become an issue is when they are used to send web-traffic via an encrypted tunnel to a remote server which then proxies the web requests. The Smoothwall Filter & Firewall itself hosts a number of VPN options to allow remote workers to access resources behind the Smoothwall remotely. VPN applications and extensions allow network traffic to be sent and received from a remote host/network securely by creating a virtual network between two endpoints. This can make web filtering difficult for some systems as they may rely on being able to identify the website form the HTTP Host header in the traffic, and identifying an IP address is a lot more difficult. Usually in either case, any upstream interception of traffic will only see HTTP/S traffic to literal IP hosts - so instead of seeing a request to a web filter would see requests to, or else the IP address of an upstream public proxy server. Local ProxyĪ local proxy is an application installed to a device that intercepts web requests either from the browser or the entire device, and proxies them directly, or else forwards the traffic on to a predefined public proxy server. Typically, the applications work in one of two ways: local proxy or VPN. Many of these applications have legitimate uses out in the world, but can and frequently do get used with the aim of bypassing web filters. With the ever-growing uptake and focus on web-filtering and safeguarding in education, there has come a slew of browser extensions, desktop clients and mobile applications designed to penetrate, circumvent or otherwise thwart network-level web filters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |