I was using my own home personal computer on a weekend while connected to my work’s VPN (it’s called pulse secure), and was bored so I decided to look at some “non-work” related websites (possibly/definitely nsfw stuff). Am I fucked? Can they see all my activity? Obviously I don’t know anything about this stuff so please help me out cause I’m kinda panicking? Thanks 
If your employer has Pulse Secure configured to use a split tunnel, then your network traffic would travel through the tunnel (and to your office) only when connecting to business resources. Any access to local resources, like a networked printer, or to the Internet would use your own network or Internet connection. You’re employer likely cannot see your Internet usage if this is the case AND if they’re not using other technologies to monitor/track your computer/Internet use. I suggest cleaning up after yourself - clear cache, history, etc, and don’t do it again. Once probably won’t get you fired unless you broke laws.
I suggest googling “pulse secure configuration” for how to determine if the Pulse Secure client is configured locally to use a split tunnel. Another test could be to connect to the VPN and trace your route to the Internet. If the public IP that your ISP assigns you is reported, then you’re likely on a split tunnel.
So what kind of porn were you watching?
Yes they probably can and do. I’d suggest not doing it again.
By work VPN do you mean a remote access tunnel to the company servers or a service they’ve bought for their employees to use to encrypt their work while online that the company does not own?
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I’d recommend not using a work vpn on the personal computer. Just in case you get a virus, you don’t infect their network. It’d be a good practice. Work stuff to stay off personal machines.
Unless you work for someplace that has some morality clause like a church I don’t imagine anyone would make an issue unless it started being a regular thing during work hours even if they do log it and cared to notice. I will say if you mess up for some other reason and they decide to go digging for a reason to fire you this might not help you.
It depends on if they are using split tunneling or not (most corporations do because it saves bandwidth on their end which improves performance of the VPN). If they are, your personal web traffic does not go through the VPN.
To check this Google “my IP” while on and off the VPN in a private window. If the IP address doesn’t change, than your browsing is safe. If it does change, then it is being tunneled through your work VPN.
Yea, basically you just showed your work you were browsing NSFW material on THEIR network.
Now, it’s your own ISP at your house that likely doesn’t know what you were looking at…so you definitely did this in reverse.
Depends on whether they have split tunneling enabled. I would think that they use Internet filtering software and you would have gotten a nasty warning if you went somewhere that is against company policy.
A possible way to check is to VPN in, and then do a tracert to amazon.com. The disconnect from the VPN and do anoither tracert to amazon again.
If the two match, then you’re probably split tunneled and they can’t see what you did. If the two are different, and the one while VPNed in has some 10.x.x.x addresses in it, then you were probably on their network.
Another thing you can try is to go to Google and type ‘What’s my IP address’ while on and off VPN. If the two match, you’re probably good. If they do not, then you may have been using the VPN connection for your surfing.
A suddenly jump in the bandwidth is likely to attract some attention. And the websites you are visiting can be easily tracked from the log record.
my job allows citrix to VM’s and then i can rdp from there to my work pc… way better than pulse secure in my opinion.
Must be a small company without a lot of Citrix users (or a whole lot of $$$)
No sir/ma’am, nationwide enterprise, hundreds of sites. We have both, Citrix and pulse secure. And we really push people to use Citrix but they aren’t usually rdp’ing into something. Oh and lots of money lol