At work, they have a corporate web filter that blocks access to certain web sites. But, I’ve figured a way around it.
At home, I have a Linux server behind my cable modem. I’m running a SSH server and a VNC server on it. At work, I open up a ssh connection, then I VNC to my home computer. Now, I can open up my browser in my VNC and surf away.
The key step was to start ssh at work to connect to my server at home:
ssh -L 5900:192.168.0.100:5900 fred@1.2.3.4
I’ve got my VNC server to listen to port 5900. The IP address of the server on my home network is 192.168.0.100.
fred is my user login and 1.2.3.4 is my router external IP address. The router is also configured to route port 5900 to my VNC server.
After I logged in through ssh, I started VNC and connected to “localhost:0”. Typed in the VNC password and now I’m in.
It is a little slow using this method, but it works. Next, I need to try to figure out how to do HTTP over SSH to speed things up a bit.
Links:
Real VNC
Securing a VNC connection with OpenSSH
VNC SSH
How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions
Tunneling with ssh
SSH tunneling using Cygwin
Tunneling Basics
Secure POP via SSH mini-HOWTO
Getting around any firewall