Can ssh to my home MBP from work, but cannot make outbound connections

Question

Details:
I have a MBP with a wired ethernet connection on my home network, and a 24/7 file server that I can access via SSH from outside my firewall, so I can ssh to my fileserver, then ssh to my MBP from it:
(I use a python script on the fileserver to send WakeonLAN packets to the MBP to rouse it from sleep before ssh'ing to it.)
WORK --ssh--> Fileserverbehindfirewall --ssh--> MBP
Once signed onto my MBP I can do normal unix stuff and I can ping external addresses, but any application that tries to access external addresses hangs.
For example, running wget {URL} hangs, and 'sudo gem update' hangs as well.
I figure that there is some kind of application firewall blocking going on, but I don't know enough about OS X internals to have an idea where to look.
When I get home and log on locally, I can run these same apps from Terminal with no problems, so I figured that connections from Terminal.app are allowed, but those from a raw tty session via SSH are not???
Any pointers or ideas very welcome.
Tom P. (Old Linux guy, new Mac Guy)

Answer 1

"deh2k" is correct. Ssh or using Terminal local should see the same behavior.
I would very much suspect LittleSnitch. This is a case where you might try something from the local terminal and see if LittleSnitch displays a pop-up asking if you want to allow the action. You would not see this pop-up from a remote location.
And of course turning off LittleSnitch is another way to go.
Or as part of establishing your ssh connection, you also create a Screen Sharing/VNC tunnel
ssh -L 5901:localhost:5900 [email protected]
this of course assumes you have started the Screen Sharing on your remote Mac.
Now you connect using Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server...
vnc://localhost:5901
and now if LittleSnitch is going to complain, you should see it via the Screen Sharing session.
Of course, you could also use the Screen Sharing session to just do what you want via a GUI interface