My school issues us laptops, which obviously has filtering. But, the filters don't work at home. And somehow, they can't block Google+, even at school, so they just pointed plus.google.com to 127.0.0.1. Is there any way I can ignore the hosts file so that I can get to Google Plus?
2 Answers
DNS works in several layers.
When doing a DNS request, the hosts file is the first place where it tries to translate a domain to an IP address.
If the domain is not listed in the hosts file, the local DNS server will get queried for what the domain has for IP address. If the local DNS server does not have a record of this domain either, it will forward this request to the internet DNS server (the one from the internet provider)
As you can see, the hosts file is the first place a DNS is being set, but its local on the pc. So anyone with administrative rights can edit it. If you have an administrator account, you can edit your hosts file and remove the entry for google plus. If it isn't there however, you can add one so you can override it pointing to 127.0.0.1 and it will work at school too, unless they block it differently.
But as DavidPostill pointed out: it is not wise to so and might be against school policy even.
-
I forgot to point out that I have less than standard user permissions. Sep 14, 2014 at 20:40
-
You might be able to view the hosts file to see if its there, but without proper rights, there's not much you can do.– LPChipSep 14, 2014 at 20:52
-
On second thought, if it just out of the blue started to be blocked, its definitely not the hosts file, but a local DNS server.– LPChipSep 14, 2014 at 20:53
-
You can use proxies! :D
or if you are on Windows, use a WinPE Disk that has Offline Windows Password Editor.
And also, we have another way: Make a relay through 127.0.0.1 to one of these IPs.
It can be done with XAMPP and some PHP knowledge. ;)
But I say again: As DavidPostill said, It may be against your school terms and policies.