Back Of The Book: HTTP Error... Website Access Denied

BACK OF THE BOOK
HTTP Error...
Website Access Denied

Companies may institute draconian internet policies, but the web-savvy employee will always find a way to get around these.

By Aparna Ramalingam

If that error message has become a regular on computer screens across corporate India, it's no comment on the state of connectivity in the country. Rather, it's a manifestation of draconian internet policies that companies have suddenly decided they need to enforce. Porn, understandably, is out. But so are chat, instant messaging, e-mail, job-sites, travel sites, and just about anything either the system administrator or some senior manager deems not-kosher. It isn't just crusty old-world companies that have such restrictive internet-usage policies in place. Software hotshops and dotcoms have them too. Only, their employees are more than equal to the task of using technology to circumvent access restrictions. This is the story of three techies and their individual victories over a Moloch-like establishment.

THROUGH THE RABBIT HOLE

Actually, change that to tunnel... but we're getting ahead. Dilip Subramaniam is the protagonist of part one of this composition. He meets with this correspondent on a rainy August afternoon at the McDonalds outlet in Delhi's most happening multiplex, pvr Anupam. Dilip is clad in the universal techie-habit popularised by Steve Jobs, blue jeans, and black T-shirt, and he is full of anecdotes of his exploits at work. This job with a Delhi-based software company is his fourth in as many years. Dilip has been in Delhi a mere three weeks, so most of his stories are about his last job in Bangalore. That was with a well-known software major which didn't like its employees using instant messaging services. So things stood till Dilip, wandering around the city's arterial mg Road in search of a breakfast-dive one Sunday morning spied a hoarding that said: ''http tunneling is not responsible for the bad conditions of Bangalore roads.''

TREADMILL

Fix Yourself A Drink

Take a cup of yoghurt (pascual's zero-fat would be ideal). Add a cup of ripe pitted plums, half a cup of prunes and a cup of apple juice. In what will now be fast resembling a gooey mass of indeterminate colour, add a diced banana and half a cup of low-fat milk. Put everything in a blender and switch on. Now drink that. Like it? Well, the shake that you've just gulped is one of the best things to drink if you want to prevent cancer; it's loaded with anti-oxidants. Foods with high anti-oxidants protect cells from cancer and prunes (dried plums) are right on top of that list with an oxygen-radical absorbent capacity score of 5,770. Other high scorers are raisins with a score of 2,830, blackberries 2,400 and strawberries 2,036. By the way, that shake's a great post-workout drink too.

But back at my gym, the kids are drinking a different kind of drink. It's fruit juice blended with creatine monohydrate, better known as creatine, and touted by nearly every gym-goer I've been talking to as being the wonder drug for building muscles. Found in skeletal muscles (fish and meat are a good natural source), creatine is currently not considered doping by the International Olympic Committee. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) too doesn't consider creatine a drug and, therefore, it isn't subject to the same level of scrutiny as other agents used to enhance athletic performance. What creatine does, says the growing breed of its Indian aficionados, is to increase the energy content of muscle cells. Creatine does this by increasing the availability of ATP, the energy currency of cells. Since our strength depends on how quickly ATP can be made available during exercise, increasing muscle creatine increases our strength-so you can pump more iron and build more muscle.

Does that mean you should buy yourself some creatine? It isn't that simple. Although creatine is marketed by various health supplement marketers (in India, the brands available are all imported and quite pricey too), the concentration varies from formula to formula. Worse, some brands recommend dosing up before workouts, while others say it works best afterwards. But what's important is the fact that being a new drug on the block, creatine's side-effects are yet to be researched. Some doctors feel it can lead to dehydration and put extra pressure on liver and kidneys. Remember how steroids were touted as the wonder drug for building muscle before their horrific side-effects were discovered? So, the next time your gym instructor suggests the c-word, be careful. As for me, my favourite post-workout drink is that shake I described at the beginning.

-MUSCLES MANI

''I knew a few things about http tunnelling,'' recollects Dilip. ''I managed to create a http tunnel, downloaded it, and saved it on my disk. Every time I felt like chatting, or using the instant messaging service, I did so through the tunnel.'' If you're wondering what a http tunnel is, dear reader, here goes: It is essentially a software construct that disguises a request (say, to chat or use an instant messaging service) as a http request. Companies prevent their employees from using these by writing in barriers against specific requests in their firewall. But firewalls allow http requests as these originate from web browsers. Dilip now decides it is time to share his philosophy with the world. ''In any organisation, it is important to have a culture built around trust, than to have one based on mistrust.''

GETTING AROUND VENAL SYS-ADS

Satish Gupta is the protagonist of part two. He meets this correspondent (where else) in an online chat room after much persuasion. It was in college-somewhere in the state of Punjab-that Gupta discovered the power of being a Systems Administrator: unlimited access to the net, the ability to monitor what others were doing, and the advantage, in an infotech driven economy, of being BMOC (Big Man On Campus). It isn't surprising that Gupta is nostalgic about college; he's just four months out of it. And he's a long way from home, working for a wireless software hotshop in Pune.

Gupta is still shocked by the internet policy at his company: the machines of most employees aren't connected to the net. But realising the importance of the Sys-Ad he befriended the three guys who managed the network at the Pune office. Sure enough, one of them told Gupta that he could use a machine in the system administration room to access the net. ''Just be sure no one knows you're here,'' Gupta remembers the administrator telling him. Now, he manages to slip away every now and then to access his e-mail, surf the net, or chat with his friends in other software companies in other parts of the country.

''Most internet policies are enforced by Sys-Ads,'' says Gupta. ''Get around them, and you've got around you're access difficulties. And let me tell you something, most of them are pretty dumb.'' We'd call him an ingrate, but you can't abuse a man for speaking the truth.

ALL FOR ONE; ONE FOR ALL

Akhil Mehra, who insists on speaking to this correspondent over the phone, should be happy. He has just been promoted to the post of Senior Software Engineer (from plain Software Engineer) at a NOIDA-based software company. He initially thought he would spend a couple of years at the company and then head for the US, but the slowdown in the American economy put paid to his plans. He is happy at the company, but spends at least 20 minutes a day scouring job sites for international postings.

That process should have been impossible in an office where internet access was restricted to project managers each of whom has their own unique passwords. But one of Mehra's colleagues came across a downloadable software called Revealer and he mailed it to all his peers in the organisation. Since all the machines run on the same network, Mehra merely copied the encrypted password string of one project manager on to his machine. Revealer decrypted the password, and he was in.

Mehra knows this can last, at best, for a few months before the system administrators catch on. But he is confident that something else will turn up. ''We've managed before, and I am sure we will do it again. We are sure to find a way,'' says Mehra. Maybe there is a moral in all this for companies; we'll let them find it themselves.

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