| FAQ Article: What are Wingates? |
Please note - this article is pretty outdated, Wingates are nowhere near as common now as they were in 1999!
A wingate is a windows-based computer that can be used as a gateway to other computers. It is running the software 'Wingate'. The idea is that you would install it on a LAN (Local Area Network) and then it would allow the people on the LAN to connect to the internet under the wingate computers modem.
However, if the person who setup the wingate is stupid (which most of them are) they will leave it improperly configured. This means that not just people who are on the LAN have access to it, everyone on the Internet has access!
Wingates are kind of like divertions that you can take when connecting to servers (Do I explain this well or what?). Here is an example (using Telnet):
If I want to connect to "Phreak.org" on port "25", I could simply load telnet up, tell it to connect - and Bingo I’m connected. But how anonymous is that? The chances are that when I connect to that server it logs my IP address along with the time I connected and the date. If I do anything bad, they can contact my Internet Service Provider and get me flung off.
So, what your probably saying is, "Ok, so is there anyway I can fake my IP address so that they cant find out who I am?". Well, that’s where the Wingates come in. Lets try connecting to Phreak.org again this time through a Wingate:
I load up telnet, and instead of connecting straight to phreak.org - I connect to the wingate, say, Wingate.com on port 23 (port 23 is the usual port Wingates operate on) and it gives me the prompt "Wingate>". I then type in "Phreak.org 25" and the wingate sends me to Phreak.org on port 25. The difference is - I am connecting under the wingates IP address, and not my own!
This isn't foolproof though, so don't go around thinking your untraceable - if someone really wanted to find out who you were, chances are they could. However, saying this, most Wingates have little no logging - which means that they dont keep tracks of who goes through them...so you might just get away with your haxor escapades.
I made a program which deals with the problem of Wingates going up and down, its called Server 2000 and its available from http://www.wangproducts.com
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Posted on: 18-08-1999
Article has been viewed 7842 times
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