91.239.26.140

I’m releasing version super-mega-alpha-0.0.0.1 of noads, a raspberry
pi distribution that’s designed to do nothing but provide an access
point that provides an internet experience that is free of ads.

Please keep in mind that this is a beta image, and uncompressed it is
about a gig:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4337718/noads-small.img.gz

If you don’t have a wifi card, this one is guaranteed to work (or at
least works for me):

http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-Wireless-Adapter-Wizard/dp/B003MTTJOY

It doesn’t matter which port you plug the wifi usb card in, it’ll go
either way. Hook up everything but power, then power and you should in
a few moments see an access point with the ssid “noads”. The password
is “suchlackofads”. The ethernet cable can go into any of your LAN
ports, assuming they’re not configured funk-ily. I’m using DHCP on the
LAN side, so that needs to be there, which almost all wireless routers
do by default. Feel free to update either in /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
(in fact, I encourage it! though it’ll work either way).

If you're up for testing this new beast, let me know if you experience
any issues. It’s entirely possible that there will need to be more
drivers supported/etc. for the wifi cards. You can log in as user root
using the password “raspberry”. I strongly suggest changing this if
there are clever people on your home network. The following is used
for the adserver list: http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/

The image size is ~250 MB, and unpacks to 1000 MB.

"the generated iptables script should use "-j REJECT" instead of "-j DROP" because the latter just drops the packet without notification, so the browser (or other client) will just wait for a reply until timeout. REJECT will immediately send back a "Connection refused" packet, so the browser can stop waiting."

I believe the Mac OS X instructions are not up to date. I cannot
comment on editing etc/hosts in 10.0 - 10.3 because I have not done
so, but I have edited my hosts file on 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6 without
ever involving any of Apple's utilities.

In 10.4 Tiger, the "BSD Configuration Files" check box does not exist
in Directory Access. There is a "BSD Flat File and NIS" check box but
you do not have to check the box to edit & have the system adhere to
the updated hosts file.

In 10.5 Leopard, Directory Access.app was changed to Directory
Utility.app. You have to go to the Services tab within Directory
Utility where once again you will find the "BSD Flat File and NIS"
check box, and as in 10.4 it is not necessary to check the box to
block the domains that you have added to etc/hosts.

In 10.6 Snow Leopard, there is no Directory Access or Directory
Utility in the /Applications/Utilities folder. The functionality may
very well exist in some other app or in some other location, but again
just editing etc/hosts seems to be all you need to do, followed by a
reboot or enter the command

/sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

/in Terminal.app located at Applications/Utilities (this is the
command for 10.5 and 10.6, it may be different in previous OS X
versions)

And for those who are intimidated by command line text editors it can
also be done in TextWrangler (preferred because it is plain text only,
free, asks before unlocking the file and requires Admin authorization
to save the changed file.

[The script] formats csv domain lists into master zone definitions for inclusion in a BIND config file. It merges multiple lists, processes an exclusion list, and removes any duplications that would cause BIND startup to fail. Intended to run periodically within a cron process.

• http://www.isaserver.org/tutorials/Exporting-Importing-Troublesome-ISA-Server-Rule-bases-2004-2006.html
  
• http://www.isaserver.org/tutorials/Exporting-ISA-objects-2000-2004-2006.html
  

Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:47:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: Steve Garvey <stevengarvey@yahoo.com>
Subject: Crazy question

I've recently started a company selling an ad blocking DNS service. Similar to
a hosts file, only the requests are routed back to your web server so things
can be handled correctly - blocking doubleclick.net breaks video playback on
many sites, but our server can perform redirects or even proxy content to
prevent that problem. And of course no updating is needed by the client.

Anyway, I was wondering if you'd be interested in running a text ad for the
service on your site? No, the irony is not lost on me. :)

Steve Garvey

From Wikipedia:

"Dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure, DNS forwarder and DHCP
server. It is designed to provide DNS and optionally, DHCP, to a small
network... Dnsmasq is targeted at home networks using NAT and
connected to the internet via a modem, cable-modem or ADSL connection
but would be a good choice for any small network where low resource
use and ease of configuration are important."

As for the Linksys thing, allow me to explain. Linksys decided with
their earlier versions of the WRT54G, earlier versions of the WRT54GS,
and now the WRT54GL to have their firmware based on Linux. Because of
GPL license, this meant that Linksys had to release the source for
their firmware, and allow others to modify and distribute, etc. That
allowed people to see how the router worked and then produce a number
of alternative firmwares.

The idea that, with an alternative firmware, you make a $60 router do
what ever you wanted that the hardware was capable of doing (including
adding features normally found only in $600+ Cisco routers) excited a
lot of people, and very quickly a whole community and business
platform built up around this little $60 router.

Some firmwares, such as OpenWRT and DD-WRT, focus on adding a large
number of features, even if they're features that many would consider
rather esoteric. The Tomato firmware on the other hand, focuses on
keeping things simple and fast, providing an excellent user interface
(screenshots and videos can be found at the top of
), while still adding some
additional select functionality over the stock firmware that many find
useful.

In that thread, we're simply taking advantage of the fact that with an
alternative firmware (Tomato in the case of the forum the thread is
in), the router is able to run shell scripts (lists of command line
commands), and has cron (scheduler), wget (non-interactive
downloader), and the ability to block servers (through a dnsmasq
configuration file or a hosts file). By blocking ads on the router, we
block them for every device on the LAN with no additional setup. We
take this further by scheduling automatic updates of the ad server
list, making this a set it and forget it process.

"I needed this list in a specific format that you dont have - which I am sure many do, and would be rather impossible for you to keep up with.

So I made a little tool - it wont do much - but it will put the list in most formats someone could need

http://USAwins.com/filter

After the hosts file in C:\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts (for
Windows2000, it is C:\WINNT) is updated, you have to click Start > Run and
in the Open text box, type: nbtstat -R
NOTE: The -R is case sensitive and must be upper case. After typing the
above, you should receive the following message:

Successful purge and preload of the NBT Remote Cache Name Table.

This is per: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q180094
and applies to the LMHOSTS file as well.

I noticed that the registry key string for Win32 (post patch) is incorrect. At least on my system (Win2K server) the path is different. For example your string is..

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DNS Server\Zones\4d5.net]

mine is

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DNS Server\Zones\4d5.net]

Not sure if you heard of this before. I've been fixing it with a text editor but someone else may not be aware of the problem.

In newer versions of Mozilla(/Firefox), cookperm.txt is deprecated in favor of hostperm.1 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219752).

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219752#c4
This patch creates a new file, named "hostperm.1". The format is:

host \t cookie \t 1 \t www.mozilla.org

so:

host    image   2       ads2.clearchannel.com
host    image   2       jinisearch.co.uk
host    image   2       oas.villagevoice.com
host    image   2       aaddzz.com

... and so on

cookperm.txt is probably the same way, but hostperm.1 is very sensitive to the delimiter (single tab only) and is stored in the same place as cookperm.txt (http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Profile_Folder).

On 23 May you said: "On Mac OS X the hosts file is in /etc/hosts and can easily be modified through the terminal using pico. I used the command to open it "sudo pico /etc/hosts" and everything worked fine. It works the same as on any UNIX system except that for your computer to use it you must use a utility called Directory Access, which is in Macintosh HD:Applications:Utilities:Directory Access. Just press the check-mark next to the option "BSD Configuration Files" and restart your computer."

These instructions are wrong, at least for Mac OS X 10.3.4 and 10.3.5. I can't speak for earlier versions as I've only had my new imac for a month.

Applications:Utilities:Directory Access doesn't have the option "BSD Configuration Files". I added servers to /etc/hosts and they are seen, and blocked ad sites successfully. An alternative to pico is textedit. To use textedit start Applications:Utilities:Terminal and type "sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts" There is no need to restart the computer. After exiting textedit to get back into terminal, type "sudo killall -HUP lookupd"

On Classic Mac OS, the hosts file is called "Hosts" and resides either in the System Folder or in the Preferences folder therin (depending, I beleive, on OS version). Of course, if you've never used one on your computer, then it might not exist. In any case, it is a plain text file (as usual), so anyone can create or edit it with no special software. After editing it, either restart (don't -- it's quicker the other way) or open the TCP/IP control panel, click the Hosts button, select it in the Open File dialog, click OK (when it asks), close the control panel, and click save (when it asks). On Mac OS X, of course, it is in the same location as it would be in Unix (BSD "Darwin").

i haven't done an exhaustive search of your pages for the following info, but after setting everything up i noticed firefox was being dog slow through my proxy (a max of 4 connections at once??) then i discovered the following:

- enter "about:config" in firefox location field
- enter "proxy" in the filter field
- increase "network.http.max-persisten-connections-per-proxy" from measly default of "4"

it seems to immediately help.

Under Mac OS 9 and earlier there is a hosts file in the root level of the system folder. If you're using Open Transport it can also be located inside System Folder:Preferences, although either will work. Or you can just open the TCP/IP control panel and go into Advanced under User Mode in the Edit menu. Then you have the option of choosing whatever hosts file you like and it will be put where it needs to be. I've also been looking at the syntax for host files under this system, and you should use for this either SITE_NAME. A 127.0.0.1 (the period is required) or SITE_NAME CNAME 127.0.0.1. On Mac OS X the hosts file is in /etc/hosts and can easily be modified through the terminal using pico. I used the command to open it "sudo pico /etc/hosts" and everything worked fine. It works the same as on any UNIX system except that for your computer to use it you must use a utility called Directory Access, which is in Macintosh HD:Applications:Utilities:Directory Access. Just press the check-mark next to the option "BSD Configuration Files" and restart your computer.

"a more moderate approach ...content (including ads) will still be downloaded into your browser from listed sites, but the site's abilitity to identify you as a user or correlate your viewing habits through widely known abuses in cookie management will be somewhat diminished.

A similar list could be constructed to automatically place these sites in the p3p restricted site list, which would have a similar effect, but in addition block these sites from other potentially nefarious activities. Prudent users will have these settings enabled for all sites.

(^|\.)adserver\.example\.com$

this small "vbs" script will simply load a "hosts format" file and use it to generate a couple of files (null-zone and config) which may be used by BIND (and/or BIND-PE).

simply extract the files from the zip into an empty folder, copy the "hosts" file into the same folder, *ensure* that *no valid address* is contained into that file (neither "localhost" nor any other valid host) and then run the nsblock "batch" file, this will in turn start the "h2d.vbs" (Hosts 2 Dns) script which will parse the hosts file and generate the "null.db" file (null zone) and the "extra.conf" file (BIND partial config file), at that point to use such files with BIND-PE one should simply copy both of them into the BIND-PE etc folder i.e. "...\system32\dns\etc" and (after deleting/renaming the current HOSTS file) start/stop the DNS service, to use such a file with other BIND distros the idea is the same although in that case the "extra.conf" file should be merged (or "#included") into the BIND master config file.

• View the list of hostnames as a block list for a Netgear FM114P
• View the list as a Webclean pattern file

• Potential for abuse - anyone who has control over any of the servers listed can decided to change the IP address to point to anything they like; so potentially you might one day find Google unavailable because some irate advertising whore has decided to be spiteful.
• IPs may not be just ad servers - with a hostname like "adserver.example.com", you can be pretty confident you're not going to miss anything by blocking it, but the actual machine maybe used for more than just ads. Blocking the IP makes it much more likely that you might be unable to access the more useful services provided.

update Mon Jun 10 16:57:29 BST 2002
You can now view the list in a format suitable for using in a Bind 8 configuration file. This format assumes that you have a file called "null.zone.file" which will contain dude information about the ad server. The easiest way to use the list in this format is just to save it as some file, and put "include adservers.conf" (or whatever you've called it) at the bottom of your named.conf.