Re: [squid-users] How to prevent illegal activity on squid?

On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:05:00 -0700 (PDT), John Doe <jdmls_at_yahoo.com>
wrote:
> From: Al - Image Hosting Services <al_at_familysafeinternet.com>
>
>> I have a squid server setup to block objectionable content from the
>> web. It is
>>publicly available, and free. All anyone needs to do to use it is
signup
>>for a
>>free account. The problem is that so far everyone who has signed up
>>either
>>wants to send spam through the squid proxy, go to sights that are banned

>>in the
>>country of their origin, or do something else illegal. What are all the

>>different things that squid can be used for that are illegal and how do
I
>>
>>prevent people from using it for that?
>
> That's a very broad question...
> How would you find which sites are "illegal" for a given country...?
> Are chinese people allowed to access tibetan websites?
> Are afghan and pakistani people allowed to connect to the wikileak
website?
> Do you block breast cancer websites?
> Do you block medical pot websites?
> Do you block all youtube like website that may show some violence or
kinky
> stuff?
> ...
> Anyway, you can check dansguardian...
> And use a list of banned IPs to block your spammers.

The basic security rules the bundle with Squid such as to be checked and
operate before any external access is permitted include these aimed
specifically at blocking spam and viruses:

  http_access deny !Safe_ports
  http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_Ports

The first one blocks spam and proxy-relayed scanning of unsafe ports.
The second blocks tunneling raw unchecked binary data to any non-SSL
protected port.

> But you will have a hard time chasing them...
> Maybe you should limit your proxy to people in your country?
>
> JD

Not to mention that accessing a public proxy in another country, possibly
via means you can't detect (ie VPN). Is itself illegal in a surprisingly
large number of countries. eg any which have signed the anti-terrorism
agreements with the USA.

Amos
Received on Thu Aug 12 2010 - 02:31:07 MDT