Internet Explorer 6

Idgeitman

Hey All,


Any help on this would be great. In the place were i work, There are a few sites that I would like to block access to. Dose anyone know is there any way that i can redirect the URL of a site, say if www.bebo.com (for example), was typed in the URL bar, it would redirect to another page showing the restricted access?.


Im not sure if there is any programs out there at the moment for this or if I would have to write something


Thank you kindly

- Idgeit

l337

websense [.com] is probably the most used (and most hated by corporate employees) application for this kind of thing

rogue-entity

Websense is widely used yes, but it is also very inefficient. Websense only blocks according to a list of URLs, URLs are categorised and you just tick off the ones you want to block. If the URL that is blocked changes even slightly, it will instantly become accessable. E.G. "www.site.com" is blocked but "site.com" isnt.

And since Websense only does URL filtering, if you use a proxy site, you will have complete access to blocked sites, until websense finds the proxy you are using and blocks it.

I would suggest a system based on DansGuardian. DansGuardian also checks the URL for certain keywords e.g. porn (handy for blocking certain search keywords).
It also checks the actual content on each page and if enough of the naughty words such as porn or proxy are found, the page gets blocked under "weighted phrase limit". This means if a site is not in your block list but is of the type you would normaly block, such as a porn site, it will still be blocked.

Dansguardian itself needs a proxy program to actualy fetch the pages, but Censornet is an entire system that uses DansGuardian and Squid to do this while also including an easy-to-use webadmin system and optional image filtering.

Hobbes

The most easy way is to edit the hosts file.

%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

In there put in the IP of the restricted access page and then put in the URL after it.

although easy to circumvent.

Idgeitman

Hey thanks for all the help guys,

I've been lookig at the one below,

%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

And it works fine for redirecting to an IP address, but is it possible to redirect to say a DNS address?

say for instance www.bebo.com redirects to a page we have companyname.com/redirect/warning.html

Thanks you kindly,

~ Idgeitman

aidan_walsh

Idgeitman wrote:

Hey thanks for all the help guys,

I've been lookig at the one below,

%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

And it works fine for redirecting to an IP address, but is it possible to redirect to say a DNS address?

say for instance www.bebo.com redirects to a page we have companyname.com/redirect/warning.html

Thanks you kindly,

~ Idgeitman

Have you tried putting a DNS address in and seeing for yourself?

rogue-entity

It wont work. The HOSTS file exists for legacy reasons and is used to assign domain names to IPs. So you can add 127.0.0.1 to bebo.com and also www.bebo.com so that it gets blocked.

But those ideas are no better then websense, a web proxy can bypass it and of course they can easily edit the host file anyway.

If you want to filter your internet access, you get a proxy server with content filter software to do it. CensorNet is a complete system that you install on a spare PC with two NICs.

Hobbes

aidan_walsh wrote:

Have you tried putting a DNS address in and seeing for yourself?

It works fine. If it isn't working for you then you don't have LMHOSTS enabled in your network card settings. Of course its going to stop working once the DNS takes back the IP but if you have your DNS Set up correctly then as long as the server doesn't go down for a long time it should hang onto the IP.

Of course it is easy to bypass if the person can access that file.

But you wouldn't set it to the 127.0.0.1 You can change the IP to your restricted pages site which will need a fixed IP.

eg..

216.239.59.104 www.bebo.com

Idgeitman

Hey thanks for all the help guys,

~ Idgeitman

dbnavan

They blocked bebo in college, which i agree with as i could never get near a pc however it was not long before lads found sites like unblockthis.com which allows access to any site

Idgeitman

I've always used Idzap.com seemed to do the job, but thanks for the link

~ Idgeitman

aerocell

Hey lil man, im well sure at this stage (ccna3! now I think!!!) you could mayb figure this one out!!!, and yeah! the host file is prob the quickest and easiest way to sort this out.
Drop me a PM and I can give you a lil help if you like! TPB rule BTW :-)