Hello this isn’t strictly ‘selfhosted’ material but there seems to be a lot of networking knowledge in this group.
I’m thinking of leveraging my universities network to assist in downloading “Linux ISO’s” via torrent. I thought a cool little project would be and old rasberry pi with a battery pack, wifi radio and an external hdd in a box would be cool.
Considering I have to use a university supplied email and password, unique to me, to connect to the wifi (only once then it connects like normal). How obvious will it be that I am downloading “Linux ISO’s”? I’d definitely be running a VPN as a base level of privacy.
Also if there is a better community for this please point me in the right direction. Reddit’s adds were annoying but it was definitely easier to stumble onto relevant subreddits.
VPN sure, but if he’s using a VPN then all visible torrent activity should be terminated at the VPN server correct? Assuming they aren’t installing management software on whatever endpoint device OP is using, how would they be able to view the specific traffic between him and whatever VPN server he is using?
In any case, I would agree with another poster that Linux ISO’s and cars to a seedbox and then transfer via SFTP would be the best route.
They don’t need to see the traffic inside the VPN. They only need to see that there’s a VPN at all.
I get that - I was just confused at your “torrents would be detected” comment. I understand using a VPN would be visible and may be against whatever TOS they have.
Yeah, torrents without a VPN will be detected. Torrents inside a VPN won’t be detected, but the VPN itself will.
What if VPN traffic is on a non-standard port?
It’s still VPN traffic and will be detected as such.
Not really, if it’s on TCP 443 it will look no different than a typical HTTPS traffic.
That’s where you’re wrong, bucko. A true tunnel over HTTPS, yes, but if you use IPSec on 443 it will still look like IPSec.
And if the org requires a CA cert or agent installation as part of their AUP, they can decrypt the HTTPS tunnel and see it as a VPN.
Typically schools and universities have acceptable use policies for student VPNs. It is not very difficult to detect VPN setup on a network and universities almost always have at least some form of network monitoring happening.
That said, VPNs are often times blocked and so is SFTP. Most universities I’ve done work with have a requirement that the traffic will be blocked unless you can make a case to IT as to why you need that access.
There are few legitimate use cases for student VPNs and IT staff are usually not idiots and understand what you are up to.
I get that part, and it all makes total sense. I was only confused on the “torrents will be detected” part of the original comment.