How To Bypass ANY School Security Software

DISCLAIMER: This instructable is meant simply to show you HOW to do this. This instructable is in no way meant to tell you that you SHOULD do it. Any trouble you get into is a result of your own stupidity not the fault of this instructable.

I'm sure anyone who has ever gone to school after the new millennium has been fed up with the restrictions placed on our education through computer security software. This instructable will show you how to bypass any OS based restrictions without leaving a trace.

The concept is simple: if the OS is a problem then write your own OS.

This may sound like a large and complicated task, and that is because it is. But it is a cool way to give yourself some on a secure computer.

Required Resources:

-An OS that can fit on a floppy disk or CD/DVD drive (e.g. Slax MikeOS , etc.)

Option A - The Floppy Drive:
-Personal computer with a floppy drive (very uncommon now but the easiest storage medium to boot to)
-Floppy disks
-School computer system that have floppy drives on their computers

Option B - The CD Drive:
-PC with a CD/DVD drive with read write capabilities (much easier to find)
-Rewritable CD's or DVD's
-School computers with Read/Write CD/DVD drives (needs to be Read/Write capable if you want to save any data to the CD)
-Another instructable (unfortunately I haven't attempted to do this with a CD yet so I cant help you yet)

Optional Resouces (if you want to build your own OS):
-NASM
-a working knowledge of assembly language

Step 1: Build & Burn The OS

Depending on your choice this step can be different but I will go through what I did to build MikeOS on my floppy drive on a Linux Fedora VirtualBox:

1. get MikeOS and extract to [OS directory]
2. insert floppy but dont mount
3. burn floppy image to disk using the dd command (very useful command to learn see here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/learn-the-dd-command-362506/
code: dd if=[OS directory]/disk_images/mikeos.flp of=[floppy directory]
4. wait
5. eject
6. done

Other resources:
-Mike OS on Windows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MJUGVFAXKg (also useful if you intend to build your own OS)
-Slax on any computer: download the iso file and burn to disk or download the .tar.gz and follow installation instructions on the site

Comments

[apine]

This would be good except it will not work as I'd like to think all network administrators are smart enough to set a bios password and set it to boot from HDD only.

[willrandship]

That is actually very uncommon at schools, since the IT administrators really don't see the students as smart enough to pull something like this. I was pretty much the only one in my graduating class who could even think of trying something like this. (class of 2012) Oh, and I did it often. :P

Plus , if the admins are anything like at my school, they don't configure the computers they get at all before putting them into the labs. All the filtering software is over the network, so the BIOS is free.

[Mr. E Meat]

Don't bother doing this. You're just causing problems for the IT Department and if anyone there has any idea what they're doing, they will easily catch you (monitor the network for host names or MAC addresses that don't belong, find out what ethernet port they are connected to). Even if they don't, you are probably just forcing them to put even more restrictions on your school computers. If they could trust you to use the computers responsibly and within the school guidelines, there would be no restrictions; people like you keep proving that you can't be trusted and that you need to be forced to obey the rules.

FYI, the school computer usage restrictions are not there to keep you from doing what you need to do, they're there because of the parents that will sue the school if their child sees something that they don't agree with.

[zidakano]

all of the schools I attended in the states "eventually" switched over to virtual OS that are pulled over lan at boot. Its like we went to the past and use mainframes and slave terminals again. Also all sorts of "software" to prevent you from going to/ running things you "shouldn't" etc. Of course there are ways but honestly it's more trouble than it's worth.

cellphone+laptop= free internet anywhere there is service. as long as you don't mind 756k dsl like speeds.

When I was in high school I had to use proxy servers just to do my final paper research at school because there content filter blocked too much. Also remembered quite a few that got suspended/computer privileges revoked because they looked at porn at school ...seriously... guess they just couldn't wait.

[Burnsides]

I'm doing this with a flash drive and Ubuntu :)

[Kiteman]

No UK schools still use floppies, and very few school PCs have CD drives.

[Puze]

You say that but my old school had CD drives in all computers and floppies in 2 of the 3 30 seat ish IT rooms. Also you could boot from USB making life even easier, allowing for anyone who wanted, to be able to then get the password for the admin account and wreak havoc or just use admin privileges appropriately.

[jackonhismac]

This won't work on my computers at school because they have disabled booting from removable media in the bios.

[jbaker22]

How can i be sure that i won't get caught by the server

[kirk.cieszkiewicz]

You can essentially guarantee you won't be caught because you won't actually have any network access unless you bypass the server's security as well.

This is also unfortunate because you won't be able to do much, unless you delete the software being used to hold you back, or monitor you.

Either way, I would suggest removing the software that is monitoring you, and then just using the OS provided.

DISCLAIMER: This usually is a cardinal sin against the school's tech contract, so don't do anything stupid, and then blame me for it. IT IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY.

[TheHawkeye]

While making your own operating system could be really cool, you'd benefit from a larger community. It's relatively simple to make a portable flash drive have Linux installed on it. Think, it has a pretty good GUI, lots of support (community based), and can run Firefox, OpenOffice, whatever. As well as the ability to run Wine, a Window OS emulator, or you could run a virtual machine that runs Windows through Linux...

[TheHawkeye]

Also, if you just use Linux it would be relatively easy to brute-force any passwords... Not recommending any illicit practices, of course...

[fadeddeath]

When I was going to High School (2000-2003) the school used to try and filter everything at the browser level. Easy to circumvent on the antiquated system by opening Microsoft word, opening help, and using that to browse any site we wanted. We also used to embed web content into Power Point presentations and go from there. Those days have changed and like DarkStarPDX Says, Hardware appliances are much more efficient. I'm an IT professional and we use them here at my job so I know that if they are configured correctly, they are a blessing in a little metal box. :)

[TheHawkeye]

Other big work-arounds were using the SSL version of the site (https://), using a proxy (sometimes you could use a web based iframe version), or other simple ways were looking at Google's cached version of the page (generally easiest).

[backyardengineer]

This would not even begin to work at any school around here. It would bypass a password login though. If they have not secured the system

[DarkStarPDX]

This is why most institutions now use hardware firewalls to prevent illicit access...

[thegeeke]

Also, you could flash the bios with a password and boot settings. That way even if someone cleared the cmos, they still couldn't boot from removeable media.

(Pretty advanced for most people, but it's great for those of us who know how to do it!) :)