Juniper VPN software not working with Safari for Mac OS X

I haven't been able to use Safari on my MacBook Pro laptop running OS X version 10.8.3, aka " Mountain Lion, to start a VPN connection from home to the office network for some time. When I attempt to establish the VPN connection, by going to the website address that worked in the past from within Safari 6.1, I am asked about running a Juniper Networks application.

Do you want to run this application?

Name: NCAppController
Publisher: Juniper Networks, Inc.

When I run it, a "Setup Control - Warning" message then appears containing the following information:

Do you want to download, install, and/or execute software from the following server?

Product Name: Network Connect
Software Name: NetworkConnect.app

When I click on "Yes", I see a "[Network Connect] Error" window open stating "An error occurred while extracting one of the Network components." The only option available is "OK" and the VPN connection is not established.

According to Connections to Juniper Network Connect VPN failing in Safari 6.1 and Safari 7, this problem also occurs with Safari 7 on OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). The author of that article states:

Based on what I’m seeing, it looks like Safari 6.1 and Safari 7 introduced a new sandbox for browser plug-ins, replacing the previous Java whitelist. At this time, it does not appear that Juniper’s software is able to work with this sandbox.

I can establish the VPN connection by going to the Applications directory in the Finder and double-click on Network Connect, which starts the Network Connect 7.4.0 application, then put in my username and password for the VPN and establish a connection by that means without a problem.

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Choosing a country for the Tor exit node

If you use the Tor Browser Bundle for web browsing, you may sometimes see "This service is not available in your location" or similar messages when you attempt to use some online services when a service is not available to residents of some countries, if the exit node, i.e., the last hop in the Tor network, for your browser session happens to be in a country for which the oline service is unavailable. You can see the location of the exit node, i.e., the IP address that websites see for your location when you visit them by visiting WhatIsMyIP.com or similar websites that provide geolocation information.

If you wish to specify an exit node in a particular country, you can use the country code for the country established by the International Organization for Standardizaton. Two characters are used to represent the country code in an online address, e.g. us for the United States, dk for Denmark, gb for Great Britain, etc. You can find the complete list of country codes at ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code. The country code to be used for the exit note must be placed in the torrc configuration file used by the Tor browser bundle. Look for the torrc file in the Data/Tor directory beneath the directory in which you installed the Tor Browser Bundle. You can edit it with a text editor, such as Notepad on a Microsoft Windows system. Put the following line at the end of the file where cc represents the country code:

ExitNodes {cc}

E.g., for a United States exit node, you would use:

ExitNodes {us}

To confirm the exit node location, restart the Tor browser, if it is running, and visit a site such as WhatIsMyIp. Note: if there is a problem accessing an exit node in the selected country or if you entered an invalid country code, you may find that you don't get past the "Connecting to the Tor network" window when you start the Tor browser. In that case, you may need to select a different country code. Also, some online services may block access from all known Tor exit nodes, since some people use Tor for malicious purposes rather than simply for online privacy. E.g., Wikipedia does not allow editing of articles when an editor is accessing Wikipedia via the Tor network.

Also note that the Tor Project does not recommend specifying an exit node. At Tor FAQ: Can I control which nodes (or country) are used for entry/exit? you will find:

We recommend you do not use these — they are intended for testing and may disappear in future versions. You get the best security that Tor can provide when you leave the route selection to Tor; overriding the entry / exit nodes can mess up your anonymity in ways we don't understand.

But that option is available, if you wish to use it, at least as of version 3.5 of the Tor Browser Bundle.

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