CS & IT Solutions

Using squid is my goal to speed up browser experience for our office users. Then, my netizens are so fsck‘d up. Bandwidth dried up for useless traffic. Porn, advertising, spyware, files and other non-work related is cloggin our office network. Verbal abused isn’t an option anymore, so i’ve got find a way get rid these problem once and for all. But, maintaining the ACL is a tiresome and boring job to do. Here comes squidguard

TOC:

1. Install
2. Configure
3. Automated Maintain Script

Install

Using repository

We recently had a complaint in our in our school about not-existing internet filters. So I setup squidGuard. It took me about 2 hours from learning that squidGuard exists, to having it working in a very basic way. For more advanced things see the bottom of the page.

“Note: The listings within this wiki have been worked out using a Sarge Tjener.”

Installation

become root, then:

apt-get install squidguard Read the rest of this entry »

Administrators can use various methods to block access to websites that are pornographic in nature, like URL Filter, URL Blacklist, Keyword Filter, etc. But many porn sites allow users to register their email IDs on their website and deliver the latest images and pictures to their personal emails. So if a user is allowed access to his personal mail, he can enjoy himself without having to access any porn site. Such images are also regularly displayed as ads and banners on other web pages, that might not be pornographic in nature.

Pornographic Image Filter can analyze an image in real-time, and identify the ones that are pornographic in nature. It analyzes the graphical content like skin tone, contour, etc. to identify a pornographic image. It is a commercially distributed add-on plug-in and can be used with SafeSquid to block pornographic images. Although it is about 85%-90% accurate, it acts as a good deterrent.

Follow the procedure below to install Pornographic Image Filter and use it with SafeSquid:

Download the trial Pornographic Image Filter Add-on Module from the SafeSquid Downloads Page and copy it to a directory on the SafeSquid Server, e.g. in /usr/local/src.

The add-on module is about 11MB in size and although it is an expired trial version, you can install the files. Once the installation is complete, you can request for fresh trial binary files by sending a request email to information@safesquid.net. Just replace the files that you receive in the installation directory.

Change directory to /usr/local/src Read the rest of this entry »

Google offers users with an option to filter out results that contain explicit sexual content, called SafeSearch. If enabled, is does not allow users to search of words that may display results that contain explicit sexual content. For example, if a user tries to search for words like porn, boobs, etc., the resulting page says -

The word “porn” has been filtered from the search because Google SafeSearch is active.

Your search – porn – did not match any documents.

It also displays a warning message with search results identified as sites that may install malicious software on your computer. For example, a search for rus.freeddls.com displays this warning message along with result for the site – This site may harm your computer. When the user still clicks on the link to visit the website, he is shown a full page warning that suggests that the user should pick another result, or continue at his own risk. This page also has a link to a diagnostic page with detailed information about the problem they found with the site.

You can enforce Google SafeSearch with SafeSquid, so that it overrides the user preferences, and displays only SafeSearch results. This can be done by simply appending the string &safe=active to the google search URLs, if they do not already contain the string.

The rule snippet that enforces Google SafeSearch, is available for download from the Sample rules section of SafeSquid Downloads page. You can directly import this rule snippet into your existing SafeSquid configuration file – config.xml. To import the rule snippet, click on Load settings in the Top Menu of the SafeSquid Interface. This will display 2 options – Filename and Overwrite.

In the Filename option, type the URL – Read the rest of this entry »

SafeSquid – Content Filtering Internet Proxy, has many content filtering features that can be used to decide who is allowed what, when and how much on the net. In this tutorial I will describe how to create user profiles, and give them access to specific websites only, while blocking access to all other websites.

Note: See ‘Deploying A Content Filtering Proxy Server To Distribute Controlled Internet Access With SafeSquid’ for the procedure of installing Content Filtering Proxy – SafeSquid.

To help you understand the procedure, I will use this short example:

SafeSquid has a browser based GUI Interface for management of rules and filters. Although it has many features, in this tutorial I will be introduce you to three important features, viz. Access Restriction, Profiles and URL Filtering.

Access Restriction:

This is where you define who is allowed to access SafeSquid Proxy, based on client IP, username & password or authenticating users from an external user database like ADS, LDAP, Radius, POP3 Server, MySQL database, etc. Here, we will create user accounts for Admin, John and Sam.

Open the SafeSquid Web Interface with Read the rest of this entry »