All language subtitles for 12. Connecting to Captive Portals

Previously we learned how to install and use data or browser and in the previous lecture I showed you

how to use it with tails.

Now this will be the browser that will use most of the time to protect our anonymity and privacy and

to access the hidden services or the darknet web.

In this lecture though I want to show you another browser that comes with tails which is the insecure

or unsafe browser.

Now you might think why would they want to use an insecure or unsafe browser.

See as we mentioned before unlike install and deter browser on other operating systems such as Windows

OS X or Linux where only traffic going through the Tor browser will go through the Tor network and all

other traffic will literally go directly to the Internet on tails.

All traffic is forced to go through the Tor network.

So regardless of what application generates this traffic even if it's a system update even if it's some

malware that got downloaded and got executed on your system it will always be forced to go through the

Tor network.

Now like we said this is great because it prevents leaks.

It improves our security and anonymity because no other programs can access the Internet directly.

Therefore all of our connections are always going through to our network.

So this is really really good and an amazing feature of tales.

The only problem is sometimes you actually need to access the Internet directly or you need a browser

that will not use data or network.

For example if you're trying to connect to a captive portal what I mean by a captive foretell is a network

similar to the networks you see in airports universities or coffee shops where once you connect you

have to log in or you have to authenticate.

Now usually the authentication is done using a web browser.

Any web browser will work but the Tor browser will not work because as we know Tor browser will arrived

traffic through the Tor network and therefore you want be able to authenticate with the local network.

Now if you were running the Tor browser from a normal operating system like Linux Windows or OS X the

solution to this is easy.

You just go to one of your other browsers and like I said these will be access and the Internet directly.

So that will be fine.

The problem is as we mentioned Intel's everything is forced to go through the Tor network.

So even if you had another web browser it will be forced to go through the Tor network and therefore

you still won't be able to authenticate with these networks.

Therefore for this reason and for any other cases where you would actually need to access the Internet

directly tells comes with another web browser.

It's actually called the unsafe browser because this is the only application on the operating system

that can make direct connection to the Internet outside of the Tor network so you want to be very very

careful when you're using this and you want to make sure that you know what you're doing because it

is not using detailed network.

It's going to be accessing the Internet directly revealing your location your IP and so on.

So right here unpack a tails and if I go to my Wi-Fi networks and look for a Wi-Fi network you can see

that there is a Starbucks Wi-Fi around me.

So this is a coffee shop network and this is an example of a network that uses a captive portal.

Like I said these networks are commonly used in coffee shops colleges hotels or airports.

So it's all the same scenario.

Once you connect so I'm going to click on it and connect.

You'll see that I will be able to connect to the network but I won't have internet access.

So if I go up here you can see that I am connected to the network.

But as you can see the tour icon right here still has an X beside it.

So I'm not able to connect to the tower network and even if I go and run my Tor Browser As you can see

it's telling me that the Tor network is not ready yet.

So the browser will probably not be able to access the Internet.

And even if you wait for this it's not going to connect.

So I'm going to click on start anyway.

And as you can see nothing will load will be stuck at the welcome page.

And even if you try to go to any Web site it's not going to load because the captive portal needs you

to first authenticate with it.

So this network is configured in a way that the users have to authenticate using a web interface first

see usually on normal operating systems when you launch your browser.

You'll see the authentication web interface the authentication page by default but because Thales is

configured so that it routes all traffic through the network the web interface or the authentication

page is inaccessible to us.

Therefore the only way around this is to go ahead and use the insecure browser which accesses the Internet

directly to do this we're going to go to applications Internet and we're going to click on the unsafe

browser.

It's going to show us a warning telling us that this will access the Internet directly.

You will not be anonymous.

So be careful.

I've explained all this to you.

So we're going to click on launch and as you can see we get another web browser with a big warning again

about the implications of using this browser.

But we know what we're doing so that's fine.

And now you can use this browser similar to the way that you use any web browser on any other operating

system that does not force traffic through the Tor network so you probably already connected such networks

in hotels or airports.

Once you connect to it you open your web browser and you can go to any Web site you want.

For example I'm going to go to Dr. Cole dot com

and as you can see the Web site that I want will not load but I will get the page for the captive portal.

Now some captive portals will ask you for a name and e-mail.

They might ask for your phone number.

You can fill this with any information you want.

You don't have to give valid information.

And once you do this you can click on Connect.

In my case I can just connect without filling any information.

And as you can see I'll get redirected to the Starbucks Web site.

So I got authenticated with the network with the capped portal now.

So now tails should be able to establish a connection with the terror network and the terror browser

should work for us as well and perfect as you can see we get a notification telling us now we can access

the Internet on detail.

Right.

The X has disappeared.

So if I go to check the Tor Project dot org as you can see we get a nice message telling us that we

are connected properly to the TOR network our IP is changed and everything is working as expected.

So now we don't need the unsafe browser anymore.

We can close it because we have authenticated with the target network properly.

And the network is going to allow us to access the Internet and then Thales is going to force all traffic

through the Tor network which is exactly what we want which will improve our privacy and anonymity.