How to unblock ThePirateBay.se on a TalkTalk Internet connection

First download and install privoxy from http://www.privoxy.org/


Configure it as follows:

Place in your user.filter file:

# define rule to change host header
CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER: tpbfix
s@^Host(:.*)@host$1@i


Then in user.action:

# change host header for tpb
{ +client-header-filter{tpbfix} }
thepiratebay.se

Then restart and configure your browser to use
Host: 127.0.0.1 Port: 8118

and enjoy your ability to access TPB from talktalk!


BTW changing IP won't help you as they are matching on
^Host:\ thepiratebay.se  nor does the port matter the machine
you're talking to at the other end.  Send that Header to
a completely unrelated machine or unencrypted HTTP Proxy
and it'll also be blocked.


# Some experiments.
openssl s_client -connect 194.71.107.15:443
CONNECTED(00000003)
depth=1 /C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=RapidSSL CA
verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate
verify return:0
29722:error:1408F10B:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_RECORD:wrong version number:s3_pkt.c:293:

So they drop after the server hello comes back as we start to parse the certificate 
as well.

# Blocked
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: thepiratebay.se

# Not Blocked
GET / HTTP/1.0
host: thepiratebay.se

Note the above is legal, see
http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC2616#message.headers

"Field names are case-insensitive. The field value MAY be preceded by any amount of LWS, though a single SP is preferred"


More fun:

# Not blocked:
echo -en "GET /blog HTTP/1.0\r\nX-fill-up: `perl -e 'print "A"x5063'`\r\nHost: thepiratebay.se\r\n\r\n"|nc thepiratebay.se 80
[webpage]

# Blocked:
echo -en "GET /blog HTTP/1.0\r\nX-fill-up: `perl -e 'print "A"x5062'`\r\nHost: thepiratebay.se\r\n\r\n"|nc thepiratebay.se 80
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Length: 0
Location: http://www.siteblocked.org/piratebay.html?accessurl=dGhlcGlyYXRlYmF5LnNlL2Jsb2c=&urlclassname=cGlyYXRlIGJheQ==
Connection: close

# Also interesting:
# Changing order of Host header doesn't matter.

# Not blocked
echo -en "GET /blog HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: thepiratebay.se\r\nX-fill-up: `perl -e 'print "A"x5063'`\r\n\r\n"|nc thepiratebay.se 80

# Blocked
echo -en "GET /blog HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: thepiratebay.se\r\nX-fill-up: `perl -e 'print "A"x5062'`\r\n\r\n"|nc thepiratebay.se 80

Seems they ignore http headers >5kBytes.