Skip to content
anrub edited this page Nov 9, 2012 · 14 revisions

Usage scenarios of scotty

Your PC is behind a filtering censorship proxy

In this case, your workstation is connected through a filtering HTTP proxy to the internet. Even this access is restricted to a small group of users and in some cases requires a username and password. Unfortunately, this HTTP proxy filters out content. In fact, the filter rules, the content we are not allowed to see, are defined by the owner of the HTTP filter. This means, we cannot access urgent information, we need. Or we cannot send the message out of a secure und trustworthy network.

Scotty, we transport what you can't – he takes us everywhere.

Scotty helps out and opens up the net. In the following scenario, I describe the installation and configuration of scotty in that case.

The following 2 files have to be downloaded and started as described:

1. Scotty transporter – The starting point in the restricted network

scotty transporter has to be started on the machine, that is wired to the censored access to the internet. Scotty starts a local proxy server and listens to port 8008 by default for incoming requests from the browser. (Thanks to WebScarab for this!)

The following steps need to be done:

  1. Download scotty-transporter.jar
  2. Start scotty-transporter.jar or via commandline

java -jar scotty-transporter.jar -g [gateway on the free internet] -proxyHost [filtering proxy] -proxyPort [filtering proxy port]

The most important commandline switches from the sample:

-g Address of the gateway machine, where scotty-gateway-standalone.jar is started. -proxyHost and -proxyPort is the adress and port of the filtering proxy, which connects to the gateway.

Now, you need to configure your browser to use localhost:8008 as proxy – the communication runs through scotty-transporter, now.

In detail, scotty is doing the following:

  1. scotty-transporter encrypts the original request and sends it to the filtering proxy

  2. the filteing proxy is not able to analyze the crypted request and can't filter it out. It just sends the request to our scotty gateway, just like a nice proxy does.

  3. Sotty Gateway decrypts and executes the original request (Now, in the context of the gateway) and returns the encrypted response to scotty transporter.

You can see the state of scotty transporter down in the systray toolbar. There is a small animated icon that indicates the transfer state of scotty. You can exit the transporter by right-click, and then exit.

2. scotty Gateway – gate to an open world

scotty Gateway is the most important component of soctty. That small program fetches the data from the free and uncensored internet. In consequence, the gateway needs to be installed on a machine, that is connected to a free and unrestricted internet access. By default, scotty gateway listens on port 9000 for incoming requests. If you don't own a machine yourself, you can deploy scotty gateway to the Google Appengine as well. Acutally, scotty is based on Java, so it runs virtually everywhere, only a Java runtime 1.6 is required. (It even runs on Plug PCs, seamlessly)

  1. scotty gateway requires access to the uncensored internet – you need a machine, where the gateway can be started
  2. Download scotty-gateway-standlone.jar
  3. Start scotty-gateway-standalone.jar (by doubleclick or commandline)

The gateway is started and waits for requests.

Scotty provides access to pages and zones on the internet, that are illegaly restricted. Free and open information is the base of our information society. So scotty is a really harmless and non-invasive software, written as open source GPLv3, Java code.

You are only allowed to use scotty, if you are the victim of a regime or organization, that is illegaly restricting your internet access. You are not allowed to use scotty, to bypasss rightfully installed internet filtering systems, as the exist in nearly every company and every organisation.

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact us via the support forum http://www.scotty-transporter.org/forum/ .

Clone this wiki locally