Installing WoW at work: Ease my fears, ty

[Cowbell]

So I am in the process of installing WoW at work for the times when I am not doing much. With my current situation (research coordinator), I find myself having some free time in between patients and would love to play some WoW as I am not checked up on much at all.

My question is, can the network admins monitor which computer is using which port or just that a specific port is being used ?

Is the only way anyone will catch me playing is if they walk in on me while Im on or just doing some random checkon my computer to see what all I have installed. I have been here for 2 years and not once have they done that.

Is there any other way they could know that I am playing specificcaly on my computer in my office ?

Thanks

Dling patch 2.4 now

[Kindnugs]

I forget what ports wow uses. But if its not blocked already by the admins then I would say the admins don't know anything to begin with.

[Tuco]

I imagine that they could figure it out based on the net traffic since they could probably just see the source/destination of the packets. Depends on their network traffic tbh.

[Man0warr]

If your admins are anything like me they are probably playing WoW at work too

[Cowbell]

Well what if said place was inside a hospital. Should I be worried or am I just being a bit paranoid.

[rangoth]

They can tell what computer is using exactly what port. They can also check to see what is installed at any point in time.

In short, they will for a fact know that you have WoW installed IF they want to look for it, have random checks running, suspect something, get lucky, etc...

The choice is for you alone to make but they do have the ability to know if you are playing. So gauge for yourself how strict the office is and what type of consequences you could face if you got caught.

[t0nic]

Depends but here is a list of stuff that may thwart your efforts:

1. Management software (Altiris, SMS) shows exactly what is on every single machine. If you have a decent IT team, WoW is gonna come up as installed on your machine (company's) during their reports.

2. Firewalls (Cisco ASA's, Checkpoint etc) if configured correctly will be blocking ports not known by your IT folk as deny any is usually the default standard people work from.

3. Administration rights could be limited to install software through AD GPO's, local lock downs etc if its not your own machine.

4. Depending on how fancy the network is setup, the ability to disable unknown devices aka your machine is available. For example, if a machine is plugged into our network it will not work as we have checks for certain pieces of software before we enable access.

5. All this is dependent on how draconian your private network is at work. If in education IT then the rules tend to be lax very lax. If you are plugging into a private sector business lan then they are usually more restrictive.

My thoughts:

1) Is your web traffic proxied through an internal proxy? Yes - then you probably have firewalls in the environment as well which may or may not be blocking.

2) Is your network a AD environment with GPO's and login scripts? Yes - then you have a good chance that there are restrictions that may or may not block you installing/running WoW

3) Do you have patches, updates, etc pushed from a SMS/Altiris management platform? Yes - WoW is definitely gonna show up in the reports of software installed and someone if looking can find it.

[prescient63]

Unless something has changed you don't actually need to install WoW. You can just run the .exe from a external hard drive. As for network traffic you could always just set up a tunnel and run it through port 80.

[Kevincheese]

My school had software that would let the tech office view any desktop, and take control of it, from their office.

Made for some great times - mostly me and my friends getting into trouble, and having our pcs start being controlled remotely.

[Cowbell]

Well some of the things people are talking about here is over my head. I will explain my exact set up and then perhaps someone can comment more specifically on my situation.

Normally, when I turned on my OLD computer here at work, I had to log in, in order to access my desktop. Well when my new computer came in, it was inspected by the hospital and given stickers saying it was ok to use. The thing is, is that I no longer need to log in. It jsut boots up like normal. I have symantec on it but thats about it. Now, there is a caveat. I have a 2nd thinstar client that I only use for work. That has some crazy security on it and I dont even surf on that computer. I just use it for work.

BTW when I installed the game, which I already did, I unplugged the ethernet cable. Does that make it to where they cant know that I installed something or is that false logic

If I want to check for IT monitoring programs, where do I need to look?
Also, if I want to use a tunnel so that I can play through a different port, what is one that has no spyware and is easy to use?

[Zeste]

Start reading novels.

[rangoth]

Originally Posted by Cowbell

Well some of the things people are talking about here is over my head. I will explain my exact set up and then perhaps someone can comment more specifically on my situation.

Normally, when I turned on my OLD computer here at work, I had to log in, in order to access my desktop. Well when my new computer came in, it was inspected by the hospital and given stickers saying it was ok to use. The thing is, is that I no longer need to log in. It jsut boots up like normal. I have symantec on it but thats about it. Now, there is a caveat. I have a 2nd thinstar client that I only use for work. That has some crazy security on it and I dont even surf on that computer. I just use it for work.

BTW when I installed the game, which I already did, I unplugged the ethernet cable. Does that make it to where they cant know that I installed something or is that false logic

If I want to check for IT monitoring programs, where do I need to look?
Also, if I want to use a tunnel so that I can play through a different port, what is one that has no spyware and is easy to use?

Not trying to be rude man, but you are talking about playing games at work. I won't get into a right/wrong debate because I don't really care, but I think the safest bet is to assume they can catch you. If they are monitoring the systems/ports whatever, nothing you do will "sneak" by them. At least for long, any good admin will still catch you. If you are worried about people walking by and catching you then play safely and enjoy

However, all that being said I would say the "safest" thing to do is to get wow installed on an external harddrive(not sure how much these go for, you'd only need a small one so maybe 100$?) bring it into work with you, when no one is looking plug it(should use USB) and have a hoot. If you see someone coming unplug it and stash it in your bag or something.

[Grave]

Yeah, you need to decide whether or not it's really worth playing a fucking mmo at work. I would find something else to do and value your job more.

[MrGraham]

As someone in a large company's IT department, we've had people try to play or download retarded stuff and get caught, but we never tell anyone's supervisor about this kind of stuff, we just call them up and say "cut it out or else" and that's the end of it in 95% of cases. The only things that get reported right away are porn or warez type crap.

Lots of people don't work at work, so I think most people will try to be cool about it, but you never know when you're going to run into some hardass who feels like he has to work 50 hours a week so anyone else doing less is a bad person.

[Radahr Manasponge]

I play EQ at work occasionally, but its because I'm leaving this job soon anyhow, and the retards I work with couldn't catch a cold.

That being said, if you have an even remotely competent I.T. department, they will know, and you will be found out. Period. It is only a question of time, of when.

Is your position of research coordinator worth jeopardizing to play some fucking WoW? Load Peggle or some shit on there, there's a million and one standalone games that will work great to occupy free time. You can obviously install to the PC, that's good. But you bring the network into the equation and you're taking a risk...and not a small one.