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Mozilla The Internet

Browse All You Want At Work 443

Posted by michael from the corporate-drone dept.
choka writes "I came across a new Mozilla deriative known as Ghostzilla. It has the ability to open and hide the browser within most applications with simple mouse gestures, ensuring no one will discover what por^H^H^Hsites you visit in office ;) (i.e., if your sysadmins don't check the proxy logs...)"
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Browse All You Want At Work More

Browse All You Want At Work

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  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:49PM (#4628400) Homepage Journal
    Congrats! Now Mozilla will be on that hot list of stuff not able to download and use at the office!

    GOOD THINKING!

  • Great, but (Score:3, Funny)

    by endeitzslash ( 570374 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:50PM (#4628404)
    where can I hide my Cheryl Tiegs poster?

  • Devious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by trevinofunk ( 576660 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:50PM (#4628410)
    This is one of the most devious things I've seen in a while! I love it!!. It reminds me of old shareware PC games, where you could hit the F9 key to escape to a DOS shell, so you wouln't get caught at work. Hugo's House of Horrors anyone?

    • Re:Devious (Score:4, Insightful)

      by idfrsr ( 560314 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:54PM (#4628449)
      IIRC I think that chessmaster 1000 also had this feature that brought a dummy financial statement on F9

      useful to say the least. The big stuff makes good software but its the little things that make a program great.

    • Re:Devious (Score:2, Informative)

      by The Turd Report ( 527733 )
      I forget the game, but I remember one where you would hit the f9 key (the docs called it the 'Boss Key') and a spreadsheet and a graph would come up on screen.

    • Re:Devious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Punk Walrus ( 582794 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:17PM (#4628640) Journal
      Click and Clack, the old Tappit brothers who host Car Talk [cars.com] on NPR was one of the first truly interactive web sites out there for a PBS show. Ever since the beginning, they have had a "Boss" button to click so it would load your browser with something official and work-looking. Of course, any detailed look at these "work-looking" documents shows a bit of humor, like ratio of donuts eaten per producer per show, graphs showing increase in mailbombs sent to the office, and the precent of NPR listeners who wish they'd never heard of their show.

      I always thought Slashdot should have a boss button.

      [ Boss Button] [cars.com]

    • Re:Devious (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dephex Twin ( 416238 )
      On my Mac I remember there were programs that would take you to a fake Excel-looking spreadsheet or to some screen of "loading data" with different progress bars and whatnot. Can't remember which games these were though.

    • Re:Devious (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fishbowl ( 7759 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:21PM (#4628675)
      I always wondered what would be more suspicious,
      a game like rogue, or a dos prompt?

      There was one such game that had a boss mode which looked exactly like lotus 1-2-3 r2.2

    • Re:Devious (Score:4, Funny)

      by Dave2 Wickham ( 600202 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @05:27PM (#4629180) Journal
      Hehehe... I remember Space Quest III. You would press the boss key and have something like this popup:

      "So you don't want your boss to know you've been
      playing Space Quest III for X minutes?

      Tough!"

      Well, I was about 5 when I played it, so forgive me for not remembering :P.

    • Re:Devious (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @06:09PM (#4629413)
      " It reminds me of old shareware PC games, where you could hit the F9 key to escape to a DOS shell, so you wouln't get caught at work..."

      One of the Sierra games (Uhh.. I think it was Leisure Suit Larry 3, but don't quote me on that) had a boss mode that'd throw up a fake spreadsheet and pie-chart. That was cool until you tried to get out of it, only to be met with a message that says "no, you should be working now." Heh you had to quit the game and reload it.

  • This will work great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordHunter317 ( 90225 ) <askutt@NOsPaM.gmail.com> on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:50PM (#4628412)
    Until some idiot accidently embeds the wrong figure within his PowerPoint presentation.

    At the board meeting:
    "As you can see in this full-page figure..."

    "Well, something about that figure is certainly full..."

  • Damn, I need that one. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Railroader ( 139848 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:51PM (#4628418)
    as I sit here at work on a Friday afternoon reading slashdot.

    • Re:Damn, I need that one. (Score:5, Funny)

      by vsprintf ( 579676 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:56PM (#4628963)

      as I sit here at work on a Friday afternoon reading slashdot.

      You say that like it's a bad thing. Remember, this is "News for Nerds". You're just staying abreast of the latest technological happenings. Hmm . . . probably shouldn't use abreast in a post here . . . You're just trying get on top of things . . . oh, screw it.

  • Simple mouse Gesture (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Speaking of simple mouse gestures, the site has been slashdotted by a simple click! :)

  • Uhh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vaulter ( 15500 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:53PM (#4628430)

    But what if your hands aren't on your mouse?

  • links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:53PM (#4628437)
    Thats why I use links [mff.cuni.cz]. Perfect for viewing websites that you shouldn't be, with the added bonus that if you run it remotely through an ssh connection, the sysadmins *CAN'T* look up your history in the proxie logs.

    • Re:links (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:59PM (#4628496) Journal
      Text-based browsing is the way to go for "clandestine" browsing sessions. Especially if your job consists of programming anyway, from a distance it all looks the same.

      Even better, if you're a web developer, just browse in source form, then nobody at all will be able to tell you're slacking off instead of working on the new internet site.

    • Re:links (Score:5, Informative)

      by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:15PM (#4628627) Homepage
      if you run it remotely through an ssh connection, the sysadmins *CAN'T* look up your history in the proxie logs.
      Ah, but that's where ngrep [sourceforge.net] comes in! :^)

    • Re:links (Score:4, Funny)

      by msfodder ( 610252 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @05:59PM (#4629359)
      Well if I'm a competent sysadmin I know exactly what traffic is going where, when and how. If you attempt to use external dns I redirect it, if you attempt to connect to ssh I block it,if you hit port 80, it goes to the proxy,etc.. You have a client and I have the power. If you want to play I'll route you into a hole and wait for you to complain so I can show you the logs. If you get really stupid I'll have your job and a pat on the back. Don't fuck with sysadmins.

      • Re:links (Score:3, Funny)

        by Zebbers ( 134389 )
        Don't fuck with sysadmins.

        We all know thats the last thing you sysadmins need to worry about....you won't be getting fucked anytime soon.

  • Quite apropos (Score:4, Funny)

    by MrEd ( 60684 ) <tonedog.hailmail@net> on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:53PM (#4628438)
    Something about their web server seems pretty 'ghostly' right now.

    ..... hey, somebody had to say it...

  • screw ups.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    Leaving that on a shared laptop, your boss is giving a presentation for a room of investors and with one deft flick of the wrist.. goatse.cx pops up.

    That would rock.

  • The Difference (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:54PM (#4628447)
    if your sysadmins don't check the proxy logs

    There is a distinct difference in a sysadmin who checks the log and rats you out, and a sysadmin who checks the log and gives you a few tips on a really good asian schoolgirl site. :)

    • Re:The Difference (Score:5, Funny)

      by Cervantes ( 612861 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:05PM (#4628549) Journal
      As a former and future sysadmin, I take offence at that!

      Everyone knows that good sysadmins check the proxy logs to find the really good asian schoolgirl sites!

      (along with passwords. Thanks, Microsoft Autocomplete!)

      • that is so true.

        i recommend grepping for the IP of an Anime-addicted graphics artist's machine in the logs...

        cause, ah, he needs to have web access so he can get, ah, ideas...and, ah, source images! yeah! that's it!

    • True Story (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Years ago, I was running a firewall for my company(this was back when firewalls were "BRAND NEW" and "MYSTERIOUS".

      Anyway, at the same time, my wife was working for a company for a real asshole boss.

      Keep reading, this gets better.

      Anyway, she ended up quitting a long-time job because she couldn't stand her asshole boss.

      Well, after she left, that company pretty much went down the toilet and he was looking for a job. It turned out he got a job with my company.

      I think you can see where this is going.

      We only kept aggregate logs; the security guy and I had the unwritten rule on porn...once or twice was an accident, more than that was surfing for porn.

      Well, one day, we noticed a lot of hits to some site that sounded "porn-ish" if you know what I mean.

      I checked the site, and sure enough it was porn. Not only that, but it was men on boy gay sex. Hoo-boy.

      We checked back on the IP address...you guessed it, her old boss was surfing gay kiddie porn at work.

      Got his sorry ass fired within 8 hours. My wife to this day will forgive me almost anything when she remembers getting her old asshole boss fired for gay kiddie porn.

      Seriously, this only happens in sitcoms, but this time it happened in real life.

      Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
  • its the wang in my hand I wish was easier to hide!

    (let the small penis jokes begin. i can take it!)

  • What platform? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by updog ( 608318 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:55PM (#4628465) Homepage
    What platform does this run on... the screenshots show only Windows. Is there a Linux version? The download link doesn't allow you to specify the platform...

  • I dunno... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hayzeus ( 596826 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:56PM (#4628468) Homepage
    If they're serious, they're going to be checking logs. If they're REALLY serious, they'll check your machine periodically for unapproved software.

    I've worked plenty of places where IS and IS only were allowed to install ANY software. Even though most of us were developers with years of experience, unauthorized installation of anything was potentially grounds for termination.

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by truesaer ( 135079 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:05PM (#4628545) Homepage
      I've worked plenty of places where IS and IS only were allowed to install ANY software. Even though most of us were developers with years of experience, unauthorized installation of anything was potentially grounds for termination.

      I hate that crap. My last job was like that, and productivity was very poor. You have to move fast, and delaying for a week to get IS to approve and install some kind of utility or program you need is rediculous. Those companies deserve what they get, which is probably bankruptcy.

      • Re:I dunno... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )
        I hate that crap. My last job was like that, and productivity was very poor. You have to move fast, and delaying for a week to get IS to approve and install some kind of utility or program you need is rediculous. Those companies deserve what they get, which is probably bankruptcy.

        Does anybody keep a list of such companies so we know who to avoid (when the tech econ improves and we have choices again)?
    • "I've worked plenty of places where IS and IS only were allowed to install ANY software. Even though most of us were developers with years of experience, unauthorized installation of anything was potentially grounds for termination."

      My last (co-op student) job was like that. I actually got an e-mail from them yesterday asking if I was interested in working for them again in January but I said no. (I've got at least one interview coming up soon.) I made sure they knew it was because such policies limit productivity.

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by elvum ( 9344 )

      http://www.javassh.org [javassh.org] may be of interest them (assuming you can persuade an IS representative to install the J2SE 1.4 RTE with Java WebStart...)

  • Expand this concept. (Score:3, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:57PM (#4628479) Homepage Journal
    Include a custom peripheral, like Steel Battalion does.

    This peripheral would convert any office chair into an ejection seat, for those times when you absolutely positively cannot get out of admitting you were surfing the web, instead of working.
    • office chair into an ejection seat

      thinking about people looking at pr0n at work. Read that as ERECTION seat.
      Gave me a very strange mental image. I think I'm going to go to sleep now...

      *Shuts door, puts head on desk, hopes the boss doesn't walk in*

  • porn does it again.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nebenfun ( 530284 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:58PM (#4628489)
    yet more proof that porn drives innovation....

    what is the saying? "necessity is the mother of invention"
    it should read
    "horniness is the mother of all invention"

    *crosses fingers* porn industry don't let me down...
    daddy wants a holodeck
    nbfn

  • Slashdotted...Download size 9.27 MB (Score:5, Informative)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:58PM (#4628490) Journal
    As the site is already suffering, the download size is over 9 MB and there is not much other information on the site than this...

    Ghostzilla is a browser for surfing the Web when you don't want anyone to physically see what you are doing. It renders Web pages to look indistinguishable from your work screen. You make it disappear instantly with one move of your hand and bring it back with another. Ghostzilla can show Web pages discreetly within literally any application you work with.

    and the screen shots.... I'd believe everyone would be better of if you waited atleast some 30 minutes before hitting that download button. Why?

    ** Here is an analysis of the Slashdot Effect. [openchallenge.org]

  • Oh baby. . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by polyphemus-blinder ( 540915 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @03:59PM (#4628492)
    Wow, this is great! That's because the office is, of course, the best place in the world to oggle porn. Yeah.

    So now instead of seeing the embarrassing sites you're visiting, your boss will only notice more frequent hand...er...mouse gestures.

  • Hah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 )
    Slashdotted already? Guess that says something about how popular (and necessary!) this is for slashdot readers!

    Of course, I know it was unavailable because I tried to get there asap. :-)

  • Then again... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dze ( 89612 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:00PM (#4628510) Homepage
    If you somehow get *caught* using this, you're gonna be in huge trouble cause it's obvious that you've gone to some length to conceal your activity. I'd think that looks worse than being "caught" visiting cnn or slashdot every so often.

    And at my work, like most other workplaces no doubt, they check the proxy logs anyways, so it wouldn't be much of a gain. It would be very easy to write a little script to go through and identify the "top" web surfers and to see who's surfing sites with pr0n-related terms, or anonymizing sites.

    <hypocrite>Anyway, you should do your web surfing from home!</hypocrite>

  • Normal Mozilla works too.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:00PM (#4628511) Homepage
    Since most of these work spyware programs search for IE specific history, you're still pretty "safe" using normal Mozilla.

    Even the humans do this, seems to me like most of the tech support guys searching for 'inappropriate' material are looking in the IE history anyways.

  • Off topic but I don't care (Score:4, Funny)

    by kin_korn_karn ( 466864 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:00PM (#4628513) Homepage
    Why is slashdotting a site so hilarious to you fools? Every time a story is posted there are a dozen idiots that get modded up to +5 funny just saying "oh gee, look, their site's down"

    1) There's nothing fun about being the admin of that box
    2) The fact that all these sheep are blindly clicking on the link is sad and pathetic
    3) It's just not humorous.

  • Hrmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:06PM (#4628556)
    I've had this for awhile. I call it "Alt-Tab"

  • Mac users have it easy (Score:5, Informative)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi @ y ahoo.com> on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:10PM (#4628583) Journal
    In OS X you can hit CMD(Apple) H, which 'hides' most apps. Have a doc open in the back and you're all good. For added 'security', have another browser (IE) in the dock for when the boss wants you to look something up, or show you something.

    Now I can read /. all damn day! NOOO000ooooo....

  • you can even schedule it in to your diary.

    turn the web cam back to base off tho.

  • Since I don't have access to Windows, and their download is an EXE, I can't check myself, but if their download includes the browser itself, isn't this a license violation? Where's the source?

    If it's installed on top of/under a seperate Mozilla install, all is fine.

    Can someone take a look at what's inside that .EXE for me?

    • Re:Source? (Score:3, Informative)

      by flippet ( 582344 )
      The licence page [ghostzilla.com] says the source is available at http://www.ghostzilla.com/source/ [ghostzilla.com]. At the moment I'll have to take their word for it, it's thinkin'...

      Phil, just me

    • Re:Source? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Can someone take a look at what's inside that .EXE for me?

      Sure, man!

      Hmm ... let's see ... It starts with alot of binary numbers, anyway.
      Ok ... more binary numbers here. Binary, binary, binary ... Ooops! The file ended there!

      Yeah, binary all the way.

  • Old dos games (Score:2, Redundant)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
    used to have a 'The Boss Is Coming' button - when pressed the screen instantly changes into something like a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. Once the danger has passed you press it again to get back into your game where it was.

    Another DOS stealth trick: create a directory named ALT-255, it doesn't show up in dir listing. We'd put the games in there. That doesn't quite work in Windows tho.

  • I think I'm safe at work... (Score:4, Funny)

    by unicorn ( 8060 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:24PM (#4628709)
    One of the VP's here complains about getting too much porn spam at his work address. Not because he's opposed necessarily, just because it's all straight, and he's definitely NOT. I browsed his bookmarks accidentally when I was messing with Outlook for him. He's got quite the collection of favorites.

    And apparently at the company staff only Xmas party a year before I started, he was tanked enough to scream "holy shit, she's got tits" about one of the interns that had only been around a few months.

    I love my job. However, I think our HR manager hates hers.

  • Any resolution??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:26PM (#4628728)
    "Screen resolution in the pictures here is 800x600, but Ghostzilla works with literally any resolution and any size and position of any application window."

    C'mon, they can't be serious! A program that runs in any resolution? That would totally rock. ;)

  • Linux efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheFlu ( 213162 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:29PM (#4628765) Homepage
    I run WindowMaker on Linux and I hot-key the switch workspace command to ALT-1 (next workspace) and ALT-2 (previous workspace). It's extremely efficient to simply leave terminal windows and applications maximized in their own workspace and just hop between the screens when you need to switch to a different app. It's like tabbed browsing, once you get used to it, it's hard to go back to the old way.
  • Nothing like giving the lusers a false sense of security!

  • More porn-related addons for Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)

    by jesser ( 77961 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:46PM (#4628889) Homepage Journal
    Pornzilla [netscape.com] Modifications [netscape.com] - stealth profiles, image zoom, view (but don't download) all linked images, go to next/previous thumbnail gallery or image.

    Leech [mozdev.org] - download all links from a page that have an extension in your list of extensions to download. The author didn't figure out how to send referrers with the requests, which is annoying because many porn sites require a correct referrer header, but there are several workarounds included with Leech.

  • encrypting images (Score:3, Funny)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @04:50PM (#4628923)
    yeah, and i have a even more smarter browser. it encrypts all displayed images, so no one knows that the image on the screen is p0xxxrn.
  • ... instead of closing it? That aint that useful u know. I can envision many situations when it could make things much worse.

    Back in the day when I blindly opened executable file attachments without thinking, (Hey I was a kid, I didn't know about viruses and network security. I thought MS-DOS was an original, fully functioning operating system!!) I used to get lots of those comical programs designed to embarass you while at your desk. You know, the ones that opened up a porn pic of a man playing with himself, that u just couldn't close. Well one such time I received the goatse.cx picture via this method. I went to kill the process. It died. Phew, lucky escape. Little did I realise, that it had spawned a child process. Suddenly I had loads of little windows with scaled down goatse.cx pictures. So I turned off the screen. To my (and the rest of the JAM PACKED computer lab's) horror, a mans voice singing. "GIMME SOME ANAL LOVING" blared over the speakers....

    So basically no amount of hand waving will save your job, if your boss looks at a computer screen full of windows containing work relevant source code, while he hears the moans of a hentai anime school girl being pleasured by a giant robot.

    Not that I have ever.. er.... seen such... errrr... material like that errr... ever. No really. I haven't.

    I hate this forum. It makes me sig as a dog

  • Thanks Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CanadaDave ( 544515 ) on Friday November 08, 2002 @07:18PM (#4629808) Homepage
    Great, now thanks to Slashdot every boss knows of Ghostzilla's existence. Although what boss would have the nerve to suspect an employee of using Ghostzilla, and ask him or her to press CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows to prove it. Is there also a "KILL" mouse gesture? I mean a way to kill Ghostzilla from memory so that there is no evidence? Thanks.

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