Cor blimey guvnor
Friday afternoon is “get out of the lab and go to the Market” day for our students. James gave the ladies an extra hour of browsing time then chased them away so he and I could try connecting two computers directly with a cross-over cable; something he has to teach on one of his courses. In the process we discovered two machines with lots of unwanted Explorer toolbars and spyware on them… and lots of links to pornography.
I don’t know whether our students have been following these links or whether they were just installed by some software someone downloaded. Much as I like pornography myself, and have enjoyed it in the past, I’d rather not be exposed to it here. I think, and the other staff agree, that we don’t really want to give our students a learning environment where the Explorer favourites menu is full of “anal rape” and “animal sex”, etc.
Anybody know anything about content blocking software?
Raj Says:
Mark,
You might be able to set up a firewall or web-proxy to block this sort of stuff.
I figure you must have a gateway machine between your college network and your link to the outside world.
if you stick a firewall/web proxy between the two you might be able to do this.
I’m thinking of doing the same at home on my network (pile of decrepit PCs) - just to have a play with firewalls etc. (when I finally go to broadband) and have considered installing ipcop (http://www.ipcop.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/IPCop/WebHome) or smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org/).
Ipcop is smaller, but I think smoothwall offers better options.
Both are Linux based and require a suitably decrepit PC.
May 28th, 2004 at 6:20 pmMark Says:
Excelent stuff Raj, thanks a lot for a quick reply! I’ll look up those tools next time I’m here as its time to leave now. I spent the time between when I wrote this and now reading about SquidGuard.
May 28th, 2004 at 7:00 pmCyka Says:
maybe something like ‘net nanny’? something like that should take care of it!
(btw…greetings from london!)
i sent you a number for sailesh, have you harrassed him? he told me he’d take care of getting those machines out to you while i am gone!
May 29th, 2004 at 1:42 amCyka Says:
maybe something like this…http://www.ccl.co.uk/chaperon.html ??
May 29th, 2004 at 1:55 amMark Says:
Hi Cyka, yes I’ve called Sailesh each day since you sent me his number. He says his lawyer hadn’t reposessed the PCs from the school but has now visited and given them a court order demanding return or payment of the PCs. I’m to call him on monday.
I should say something about what we need for content filtering: we currently have a heterogeneous collection of versions of windoze on most machines and a servwe with Linux. The server dishes out networks addresses (DHCP) to the windoze boxes and also keeps frequently accessed web pages and adverts locally (caching proxy) to increase speed. Since we already use the Squid proxy SquidGuard looks appealing but I want to know what the alternatievs are. In any case we’re probably looking for something open source that runs on linux so I’ll be checking out Raj’s suggestions.
[Geek alert!]
May 29th, 2004 at 10:42 amI’d like to make the proxy transparent to our windows machines (so that you can’t get past it from our cybercafe where customers have been seen downloading "very sensitive", i.e. shocking and, in Kenya, illegal porn). Tried this as an experiement in the lab with the second linux box using iptables but at the moment I believe the proxy has to be the same machine as the client’s gateway, which is not the case, and it didn’t work. Have I got the wrong idea here? Anybody know, or know someone who does?
Cyka Says:
grrrr…bloody sailesh. i’m not sure what’s going on at new edge. ever since nitesh left last month (very abruptly and under mysterious reason) they’ve been in chaos. pbn’s just told me that a load of equipment they ordered for camp is also majorly delayed. unfortunately i have to stay here a few days longer than planned, i’m back in nbi late wed and will go see him thurs morn.
will be at maria’s tomorrow and tues night!
May 31st, 2004 at 2:32 am