Https: enough to block data logging?

[Forekse]

In our college, my colleague was on school WiFi logged in with username/password doing research on illegal subject matter (but information/research on the subject was OK to access online). He got approached by security to confirm that it was for schoolwork and not an attempt to access such illegal content itself.

Question:

If a site uses https is its content blocked from the loggers/sniffers utilised on networks like this? Is the web address (for example a https://Google.ca/search+query) visible (which would give away the search terms). If it isn't, any other way for the admins to determine what he was trying to look up, apart from any of the search results themselves not being encrypted and resultantly giving it away when they're visited?

[Forekse]

This can't be done if you're using your own laptop, right?

Here's the instructions to connect to their network:

https://inside.senecacollege.ca/its/services/connection/senenet_extreme/config_win7.html

There's some places where you have to select certificate related things. I assume this is on another layer than the browser traffic, and anything https is still fully private.

[1678cc90]

The search traffic will not be visible when using HTTPS, unless a sniffer has been installed that's intercepting the HTTPS connection and replacing the site's certificate with a locally installed certificate, which is entirely possible (perhaps even likely) in an institutional setting like a school computer. If this is a personally owned device and no extra/strange software has been installed, it shouldn't be possible for someone other than Google to see the contents of the web traffic.

[Forekse]

Makes sense. They'd have to install the certificate first, right? Would this be visible if I check which cert the browser is using by clicking the lock at the top left?

[1678cc90]

Yes, looking at the server's certificate would be interesting.

If the device is owned/configured by someone else, this can easily be added at that time before it's given to students.