Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 4:01 pm

Ok ..
So I used to mud at work, at ----> durismud.com 443
Their server recently crashed. They had three ports running on the old box, but on backup, they're down to one - mud.durismud.com 6666
So anyway, the hotel I work at recently franchised and became a chain hotel. With the new name came the new computers and software, and (dammit) firewalls.
Now the server sits on the counter right next to my work station.
I'm not above doing some covert stuff and "altering" the server to make my muds work. Or if there's an easier way, that would be great, too.
I gotta warn ya guys, I've been more or less computer illiterate since the days of DOS. I know nothing about "creating a shell" or some of the stuff I've seen on the other posts. I really gotta start from scratch here, but at least I'm not a complete idiot, so I can follow directions, if they're spelled out for me.
PLEASE HELP ME! I'm dying at work from 12 midnite to 8 a.m., sitting in a chair doing nothing. My muds made the night just cruise right by, I need 'em back! *gasp*!
Yours truly,
Mudless in Detroit

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:03 pm

Are you trying to get yourself fired? Seriously, if you tamper with the server firewall and someone finds out, then you will find yourself without a job and with a nasty mark on your record. Firewalls, especially for hotel networks, are serious business.

The better way to handle this would be to contact the network admin, or the IT person in charge of the hotel's computers and networks and try to make a good case for having them officially modify their firewall to allow MUD-playing (or, stick to calling it Telnet sessions). Business people often need to make a Telnet connection to get their work done. And some hotel customers are going to want to play MUDs too.

But stick to the business argument: I certainly wouldn't want to stay at a hotel that bans telnet sessions. Convince them to modify their firewall to allow telnet for legitimate business reasons. You could turn this into an opportunity to get yourself a "gold star" for thinking about the customer's needs, rather then running the risk of getting yourself fired and sanctioned.

Someone else can probably post about the various options available to set up a legitimate telnet proxy server. But these forums are not to be used to discuss something illegal like hacking your server.

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:30 pm

First off - sorry Zugg! I didn't mean to post something that offends you.. (after all, this is the house that you built!)
As far as legitimate business reasons, well, that won't work, because they also have a WiFi connection for the guests. I unfortunetly do not have a notebook, only my work station. So "talking to the boss about it" won't get it done...
And I wasn't nessecarily talking about "hacking the server", just maybe opening a port or two.
I'm willing to take the risk of losing my job.
I wasn't aware that this was "illegal" however. If that is true, then this option is off of the table. I'm married, and not looking to go to jail or anything like that.
Maybe it's morally wrong, and maybe I'd lose my job, but I didn't think this was a "handcuffed in the back of a cop car" kinda thing.
Anyways, that would be as an extreme last resort. Im not in a hurry to lose my job. I'd rather have a loop or bypass around the system that is in place, but I was just putting another option out there.
I guess yer right, Zugg.. it's probably not worth it. Any other ideas, then (anyone)?
I'm suffering from mud withdrawls.... Confused

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

You might want to consider ask your boss anyway. What if you get "caught" MUDding on duty? :P

If you don't have much to do while working, maybe you could explain that as reason to open the port? Would they allow you to read books at work while waiting for customers? Or maybe they have some other possible 'work' that you could do ;)

Some years ago there was a player in a MUD where I played that used to brag about how he played MUD from work. He was online quite a lot. Later I learned he was the boss where he worked Rolling Eyes

.

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:36 am

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:46 am

I knew a guy a few years ago who worked in a Navy recruitment office or something. About one week a year he actually did some work, the rest of the time he was paid to answer a phone that rang three times a day on a busy day. Lucky git :(

I'm pretty sure SSH can be used to get around this kind of firewall, can't it? I've never had to sneak my MUD traffic out as HTTP so I don't know exactly how to do it, but I thought it was possible.

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:22 am

Yikes.. I didn't think about that, Zugg... I get the point - it would be like I opened the back door to let in the cat, and 14 tigers came charging through before I could close the door again. Not a pretty scene.
Ok, so opening ports without the boss's permission is out.
Asking my boss will get me nowhere. Compared to her, I'm a computer genius. She asks ME questions when things go wrong, that's how bad it is. We *do* have a computer tech that comes in when stuff gets really messed up..
Sheesh.. I could write for days about how screwed up my work is. It's really bad. The whole operation is held together with shoestrings and play-doh (or at least it seems that way).
SO - without "asking my boss to open the port for muds" and without "altering the server", is there another way? I know when I did a google search for "mudding at work bypass firewall" I got a couple of threads on this very forum, but they were all written in tech-speak, and I couldn't follow. Even still, I tried to do some of the things mentioned.. I downloaded PuTTY and tried to set up a "proxy", but I don't even know what that *means*!! (it didn't work. I probably screwed up somewhere.)
We're on day 5 of no mud at work.. I'm really beginning to hate this job all of a sudden!
Please help me save my sanity and my income! Sad

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:38 am

It's not so much asking the boss TO open the port, it's asking the boss' permission. If you can fabricate a reason (the telnet sessions was a good one), and get permission, you can do it yourself if you know how.

SSH requires more than just the program anyway, you'll need an account at somewhere like www.silenceisdefeat.org (not sure if this one does forwarding though) or somewhere else that offers SSH shell accounts. The idea is that information from your MUD will be sent to the server, the server will encrypt it and send it on as HTTP (that is, normal web traffic) and it's then decoded on your end. It doesn't have to use HTTP if there are other ports open (from the sound of it, there are others you could use) and the firewall lets the SSH traffic out.

Of course, you can pick up a wireless internet dongle for a tenner and that'll let you connect to the customer network too - why not do that?

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:31 pm

I don't know why I never thought of that... a wireless modem, to pick up the wireless signal!
Ok, I feel really dumb for not thinking of that one myself... but this raises a couple more questions, since Im a computer dummy -
1.) Will it be external or internal? If its just a USB hookup, then thats a piece o' cake. But I'm not about to get on my hands and knees with a screwdriver and take the case off of my workstation (plus my workstation is on video surveilance. The server, ironically, is not).
2.) Will the firewall block the connection, since the software is installed on my workstation? Or does the firewall only block the network cable?

...If the answers are external USB and no (respectively), then that's exactly what I'll do. Anyone know for sure?
(what a great effin' idea, I'm still blown away by that one.) Twisted Evil

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

You can get an external USB wireless adapter, they're often better too as you can move them around a bit more if the signal is dodgy.
You may still be restricted though, it depends on the setup. I'd assume that both wired and wireless will be behind the same router/firewall to be honest.

You could always pretend you got a call from someone who asked if any ports were restricted - there are plenty of legit websites that don't run on port 80 and plenty of legit reasons to need to use telnet too.

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:22 pm

He implied earlier that the customers' wireless network has fewer restrictions, that's why I suggested a wireless dongle. They're usb, yes.

But it does depend on the firewall setup, yes. It'll more than likely be blocked, but not necessarily.

Would your office frown if you brought in a laptop? You can probably get a second-hand one that'll run zMUD for two pennies and some magic beans.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

You will need to be a "Computer Administrator", i.e. have a logon with administrative privileges, to add an external USB wireless adapter to your workstation (or more precisely, install the drivers for it), so if you are not, that is not going to be a solution for you.

There are other MUDs that run on port 443 that you could access. But you could try and encourage the administrators of the MUD you normally play to re-open port 443 so you can play as you did before. Otherwise you could spend the time you usually spend playing MUDs from work finding out about how to tunnel through firewalls and looking up the stuff you don't understand...

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:33 am

I did a little searching around and came up with this :
http://www.mosha.net/01-telnet-gateway/telnet.shtml
I had to register to get an ID number, and they haven't e-mailed it to me yet (it said to allow up to 3 days)...
I'll let ya know how it turns out, but it looked pretty promising.. Shocked

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:47 am

Found an answer!
Unfortunetly it means using stupid telnet, but it beats no mud at all...
http://www.mudmagic.com/boards/chat/12/2008/2013
Thanks for the help everyone.. oh, by the way, I'm going to check this posting periodically, in case someone comes up with a better idea.. I don't wanna use telnet forever.
My mud should be re-opening port 443 at some point, then I can use zMud again.
Happy days are here again! Razz

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

It looks like that would work with most mud clients, including zMUD: http://www.mudmagic.com/boards/chat/12/2008/2113

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:23 am

CONFIRMED. It does indeed work!
For all future users who happen upon this thread, the frustration ends here!!
I erased the mud address from zMud (durismud.com 443) and replaced it with the new one (mudproxy.mudmagic.com 443). then, once it says "Connected" there won't be a cursor, but all you do is type : connect (mud host) (port) .
It really works! Don't even need to use telnet either! Yaaaaayyyy!
(and, bonus - I didnt have to risk my job by messing with opening ports and the like!)
Razz

(I'm really happy!)
Thanks everyone! Hopefully my next post will be to help someone else, rather than needing help myself. Looks like I'm all set!

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:06 am

Btw, you can use the Proxy Preferences in zMUD to make this even easier.

From the main character selection screen, select the Edit/Preferences menu. This will show the Proxy configuration screen. The proxy that you are using is called a "Telnet Proxy", so click the option circle to the left of the "Telnet Proxy server" option to enable it.

Now, enter "mudproxy.mudmagic.com" into the Telnet Proxy Host field, and enter "443" into the Port fied. Leave the username/password blank (unless they require you to log into the proxy server). Then, in the Telnet Connect Cmd field, enter:

connect %host %port

and then click the OK button. Now, select one of your character icons, click the Edit button and make sure the "Use proxy server" option on the far right is selected.

What this does is it allows you to keep all of your normal character icons. You still store the MUD hostname and Port for each MUD character, just like when you used to connect directly. By checking the "Use proxy server" option for your character, that tells CMUD to first connect to the Proxy Server that you defined, and uses the Connect command that you gave it to connect to the MUD that you are trying to play.

This makes using a proxy server a lot easier. And if you ever get a direct connection again, you can just disable the proxy or uncheck the Use Proxy for your character.

Glad you found a proxy server that works for you.

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:51 am

Hi.

I'm an Imperian player (www.imperian.com), but those settings don't seem to work for me :( When zMUD connects, it immediately gets an "Access denied to imperian.com:23". Without the proxy settings it simply gets a timeout. I'm only using zMUD because it has these proxy settings, otherwise I'd just use the regular client when I'm at home.

Edit: I'm guessing the mudmagic port of 443 is also being blocked?

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:34 pm

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Try connecting to mudmagic port 443 on it's own. Just try connecting to Imperian from there, as per http://www.mudmagic.com/boards/chat/12/2008/2013 - it may be that you need to use the official port for Imperian and that may not be 23.

Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:39 am

Apologies for the late reply, was sidetracked.

Seb: that looks like what I am looking for, but how do I setup zMUD to connect like that?

In zMUD, I have edit->preferences->proxy firewall use telnet proxy server to "mudproxy.mudmagic.com" on port "80". I left the Imperian settings alone (host is "imperian.com", on port "23"). When I connect, it says "Connected to imperian.com", but then the screen remains blank. I can type on the commandline at the bottom but it just echoes what I type. I think I'm not doing something correct here, but I can't figure out what.