Web Content Filtering in Australia? Didn’t think so…..but…
Some interesting stuff floating around about web content filtering with TPG. You have to ask what is going on here. Is this a well-intentioned system that has just gone wrong in terms of deployment for the ISP?
http://www.inthemix.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=228479
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/946858.html
Surely there’s a “problem” here that needs to be addressed. Opt-out options (in terms of content filtering being a standard from the ISP) are not what we are used to in Australia in terms of access to Internet content. Without going too hard and giving them the benefit of the doubt for now, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Hat tip to Wade.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
something is wrong when you can’t even get porn on the internet.
July 8th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Not exactly a ‘case study in transparency’ http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/05/a-case-study-in-transparency/
“Consumers must be completely informed about the exact nature of the service they are purchasing”
Aside: I am reminded of the time we did a POC with content filtering to address an audit point in a financial. I blocked the worst word I could think of at the time and ended up blocking the volunteer / community fire website as their webmaster had mis-spelled in a tag
July 8th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Erm, post edited out tag ->
July 8th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
TPG have been doing this for ages.. they have used a transparent proxy that you can not bypass, with optional keyword filtering.
It is for this reason that you can not do any penetration testing through their gateway as you don’t actually ever connect to the web server on the other side.
Many ISPs do this, and are very surprised when you want to talk about it.. Espesially when your reasoning for wanting to bypass it is to make it easier to hack people
July 9th, 2008 at 10:14 am
That’s like taking the meat out of a hamburger. Is there anything on the net other than profanity and vulgar content? These opt-in content filters make a fool of the govt’s ludicrous ISP filtering scheme, but it does show how willing they were to [vulgar language] Fielding for a bit of political leverage.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Hi Guys,
I’ve typed the story as I see it to Draz to publish more about/on. The whole scope of this in the recent online political situation of net neturality has just become very real.
Am sitting on holidays in Kiama, Have to walk 20 minutes to get internet access, not exactly a fun time to be writing an article
–Wade
July 9th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
sitting on holidays in Kiama. 20 minutes to get internet access. You poor poor thing
You have my deepest sympathies. I say bring down the Internet. It just means more work.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Gratuitous plug to break all the internets! I remember when Rob Thomas showed the FIRST list an 0wn3d Cisco GSR…back in Nam, have router would like to packet?
Anyways, @Needabreak.. here’s how to get started, even with anycast:
http://bsdosx.blogspot.com/2008/06/p0wned.html
MCP(Management Control Plane)
CP(Control Plane)
DP(Data Plane)
…should all be separate or as near as, especially in Tier1/2/3 ISP, INEX etc…
however why not try…with a global botnet to BGP announce your local SRC address for all DNS root servers sequentially while including BGP malformed/exploits with decreasing TTLs from the hopcount down to the first layer 3 hop. Lather. Rinse . Repeat. (including multipathed repsonses)
Hmmmm…..
July 9th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
[...] recent content filtering issues we discussed pertaining to TPG are very concerning in their own right, but they are part of a much much bigger [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
The opt-out mechanism lends itself to the ‘optoutees’ being labeled without evidence that they are doing anything wrong. I for one would dare not in the police state we are creating for ourselves.