Ask Lemmy

(High school, approx 1 year ago) Not particularly trouble, just a bit of scolding from school IT admin.

The school network blocked certain sites and services. I also wanted to convert a few videos to AV1, but I had a shit laptop, and the school PCs were pretty fine.

So, in steps:

1. One of the teachers with admin rights created accounts for us on the most powerful PCs with RDP access to use them from other, shitty PCs.
2. I wanted to extend this access, and in the end went with AnyDesk since that didn't need admin rights, but could still do port forwarding. This was important as AnyDesk could run in background, but wouldn't show anything without being logged in. But I could port forward to the computer's RDP and connect to that.
3. There was VirtualBox. Cool. I installed Arch for the video conversions, and Ubuntu server for playing around.
4. I've experimented with remote access via ssh-j.com (SSH jump server), but didn't particularly like that. I wish I had known about Tailscale at the time. I only used AnyDesk for port-forwarding to the VM SSH.
5. I've installed tinyproxy (simple HTTP proxy server) and OpenVPN (later switched to Wireguard) onto the Ubuntu server VM. I've set it up as a proxy server that would connect to a VPN (ProtonVPN, later Mullvad) and share that connection over the HTTP proxy on LAN.
6. I've distributed the proxy server details and instructions on how to set up a computer to use it to other students. They confirmed it bypassed blocking, and even online games worked fine over it.
7. The school IT admin came into the class with that computer (when I was there which was a coincidence), and asked who was using Wireguard. Then he told me he'd block it by the end of the day, and to finish whatever I was doing.
8. Specifically Wireguard didn't work on any ports, so I assume it was DPI based blocking. However, there was an exception, port 123 used for NTP. Proxy back in service over 123.
9. Later on he was quite clear that I am not allowed to use the school computers for personal stuff like video processing, that I very much shouldn't be helping others evade the blocking because it exists for a reason, and then got a bit mad when I also mentioned the remote access, because yeah, a bit of security hole.

I personally wouldn't trust AnyDesk for access to my network, but that was all I had. I use Tailscale now.

Welp, next year they upgraded the setup, and now computers don't have local accounts anymore and use some login via e-mail. But I also just finished HS, so not my problem anymore.