Xfce Forum

julian

Member

Registered: 2020-09-07

Posts: 31

Blocking tech giamts?

I'm developing a study to research the extent to which blocking connections to tech gisnts (via the OS firewall) affects the User Experience (UX).

Has anyone developed a program that determines all the IP addresses owned by given coprorations? Bonus points if someone can point me to a graphical interface that might accompany the firewall to tell the user which corpoartion they were just blocked from connecting to.

If it's easy to setup, would you be interested to join the study? Connections to the giants over proxies like Tor are, of course, allowed (whether the connection is accepted is another story).

Looking forward to thoughts, suggestions and help. Thanks for reading.

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alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

I don't know of such program. The problem is hugely complicated, see, for example:

Quora: How can I obtain a list of IP addresses owned by a specific company?

julian

Member

Registered: 2020-09-07

Posts: 31

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

Yes, thanks alcornoqui. I realized it might be difficult during the initial brainstorm. I've been able to amass a large database manually that I'm personally happy to start with. Pairing this with a firewall that asks a user for permission before the OS connects I think I can get very close to an ideal testing ground.

If anyone wants to take part feel free to contact.

Btw it seems quora don't respect Tor privacy:

403. Forbidden.
You don't have permission to view this page.

Please visit our contact page, and select "I need help with my account" if you believe this is an error. Please include your IP address in the description.

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Find my email where you get good encryption keys.

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

I've been able to amass a large database manually that I'm personally happy to start with.

You can add it to The Firebog!

Pairing this with a firewall that asks a user for permission before the OS connects I think I can get very close to an ideal testing ground.

Are you aware of the Pi-hole project? It's not exclusive to the Raspberry-pi at all.

julian

Member

Registered: 2020-09-07

Posts: 31

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

You can add it to The Firebog!

Neat little resource, yes, thanks for adding!

(...) Pi-hole (...) ?

Kudos!!

The problem is hugely complicated

Thankfully most have reasons to give the info. Ready for it?

Cloudflare:

IP Addresses:
IPv4: https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v4
IPv6: https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v6

Domains:
A large file apparently with over 3 million Cloudflare domains (Cloudflare have been said to control, by various means, 25% of the internet so noone should be surprised by this). As explained here (https://securitytrails.com/blog/explori … public-dns) a full list of domains is here (https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-data.se … mp.csv.bz2):
- because this list is so huge, would the best way be to onion route all DNS lookups then use ip addresses exclusively to block?

Google:

IP Address ranges:
https://www.gstatic.com/ipranges/goog.json

Domains:
https://whois.domaintools.com/domains.google (I'm doubting that this is a complete list)

Amazon:

IP Addresses:
https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json

Facebook:

IP Addresses and Domains:
https://ipinfo.io/AS32934
  - Site hides the full list with CSS so use HTML to find both IPv4 and IPv6

A domains list that (seems a tad outdated, see below):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jmdug … cebook/all

Microsoft:

IP addresses:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downloa … x?id=53602

Apple:

IP Addresses and Domains:
https://ipinfo.io/AS714
  - Again this page (also above) uses CSS to hide the full IPv4 and IPv6 lists so use the HTML:

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If you find this info useful, feel free to share it around, but expect more here as I/we do more work on this list

Last edited by julian (2020-09-19 13:35:25)

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no-cagemafia

Member

Registered: 2024-02-21

Posts: 2

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

Hi I'm interested in moving forward with something like this. Has there been any movement in this area over the past 3.5 years?

I was talking to a random young person recently and what they said absolutely shocked me. Let's just say very important institutions that collect very sensitive data have outsourced our data security to BigTech firms that don't seem to have privacy at front-of-mind. This person gave instructions on how to check for some BigTech services in a browser, and I'm a bit speechless. But I think I want to go further, to the IP address level.

In addition to the above list by julian, I'd also like to block Akamai.

I'm interested in seeing if I can go a year without "CAGeMAFIA" sites.

Is there anything in linux that is ready made to do this? Eg. rules to add to my firewall that are prepared? The above suggested pi-hole and firebog don't seem to have anything about blocking BigTech.

Continually checking the HTTP headers in a browser is not sustainable, nor it is a solution I can suggest to others. Something that can be set-and-forget, and yes it should inform me when it blocks, too. I want to know what it's doing.

Thanks in advance.

PS. I could have someone glue something together but it will probably take them a *long* time . Would rather not reinvent any wheels if I don't have to .

Last edited by no-cagemafia (2024-02-21 12:12:05)

eriefisher

Member

From: ON, Canada

Registered: 2008-10-25

Posts: 528

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

There are many HOST files available to download that will block just about anything such as malware and ads etc. They have nothing to do with a firewall instead just completely block the connection. You can edit or add to them as you see fit.

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Xfce 4.18

reincoder

Member

Registered: 2024-02-21

Posts: 1

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

Hi, I work for IPinfo and saw that you need the IPs of "big tech". I am happy to help. We have a free IP to ASN database that is updated daily and provides complete accuracy. Since these companies are constantly acquiring new IP addresses, I highly recommend keeping an up-to-date database and generating these ranges frequently.

? https://ipinfo.io/developers/ip-to-asn-database

I am using SQL to generate the IP address ranges (both IPv4 and IPv6), but you can do that using a combination of grep and our CLI. I suggest using the 'domain' key for identifying organizations, as these organizations can operate in different regions with different names.

From this discussion, I am choosing:

- apple[.]com
- microsoft[.]com
- facebook[.]com
- google[.]com
- cloudflare[.]com
- akamai[.]com
- amazon[.]com

Here are the IP ranges: https://gist.github.com/abdullahdevrel/ … 3e75761dc0

The list is massive by the way. If you need any help in generating these IP ranges, let me know. Thanks.

no-cagemafia

Member

Registered: 2024-02-21

Posts: 2

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

Thanks eriefisher and reincoder!

eriefisher, from what I know about the host file there is no notification aspect. It just blocks yes? In the interests of transparency I'd like to know when my system is blocking. Some kind of immediate feedback so if a thing breaks then I know the culprit. Is there anything in xfce that might make this easy?

reincoder, SO GREAT in every sense of the word, thanks so much for that!! I think it will be even more useful if we can separate out the different corporations, I'm really interested in having something that says "Akamai blocked" or "Amazon blocked" etc. I've archived your current list here because github is microsoft but warn it might be stale when a person reads this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240222031 … ch_ips.txt

15MB is crazy, but when you think about it, no it makes perfect (but horrifying) sense. I was wondering why Mousepad stuggled with the copy/paste, lol.

This so wonderful, thanks and great to know I can begin straight away, even If I don't have everything perfect quite yet. I'll lookup how to use the HOST files and such and report back how I go, but yes if you know how to do the notifications please PLEASE sing out. It will make my year a lot easier.

Thanks and see you soon.

uibits

Member

Registered: 2022-07-02

Posts: 39

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

Hi,
If you want something that tells you when it blocks and are not too scared of following a few instructions you may find Digital Feudalism Counter Action (DFCA) helpful, see https://git.zzls.xyz/unsender/dfca

Its almost a year old so you might want to supplement the IP addresses with those provided by reincoder. If I remember, DFCA comes with tools to help you sort and condense IP addresses, so you might find that the 15Mb file condenses to 1Mb

Good on you for taking the initiative!

Gans

Member

Registered: 2024-03-15

Posts: 5

Re: Blocking tech giamts?

Powerful hosts file:
https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

You're right though, it's not that user friendly. You can do a Wireshark check every month to see, if anything goes through.

Blocking by domain can be done better through dnsmasq.conf. Blocking by IP is even more radical.