++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

:: EDIT - 12th May ::

We now have two new list servers running , how long they will be available for our use is not certain but for now things are running good. All the main lists are being updated regularly again. We hope to have another list server up soon.

Thanks everyone for your continued support.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Hi everyone ,

As you may have noticed , yes there have been some problems with the lists this week.

So to save you all the trouble of asking the same questions in each part of the forum , I'll fill you in on whats going on.

The main problem is we have lost the use of the server that has been holding the lists for the past year or more. The lists on that server can no longer be updated but there are cached lists there that are about a week old and are still working.

We have been looking all week for some solutions to these problems, and I'm happy to say the main lists are now being hosted on seperate servers and have been updated yesterday.

Not all lists may be updated or working properly but we hope to have things sorted out by next week and then everything will go back to business as usual.

We are still looking for more servers to use to hosts the lists , we do have a couple of temporary servers that we are using right now , and a few offers , but there are either bandwidth or connection limits imposed so things are still not as they should be ..

We may also need to add a small amount to the forum donations to help cover the new lists servers hosting and bandwidth costs.

If you can help us out with some server space in anyway please let us know.

For the people that find they are having problems getting updates , please try again later if the lists are not working , do not keep trying to download the lists, this only adds to the congestion.

Many lists are being moved around at the moment and until we get things finalised there will probably be more interruptions in the downloads.

Updates to the lists will probably not be made daily at this point until we have fixed things.

At the moment the lists in the BLM should be up to date , if you have errors though please try again a bit later.

All the contents of the largest text files have been removed , in their place is a message to use the zip files which will most likely be the same URL as the txt files but obviously with a different file extension.

As our bandwidth usage is quite high on many lists , we are now monitoring them for repeat offenders, be careful you dont find youself on our IP ban list , the only way off it will be to visit our IRC channel and request removal ..

People making 100 hits a day and more will catch our eye , anything less than that we will not ban but during this time where our bandwidth is limited we just cant let people go nuts either.

We have found there are some people with their bots working overtime or their download buttons stuck and need a little help or some re-education [ baseball bat over the head ? ] ... like crazy drunk people they are requesting files over and over without end , even after being IP banned they still havent stopped trying lol..

Basically everyone found abusing our downloads like these people have been doing will have their whole IP range permanently blacklisted and added to our sh!theads list.

If we find that you have download hits in the hundreds or more a day, you will surely be banned from this site and any of the the servers that host the lists , most likely permanently.

There is no reason whatsoever to make hundreds - thousands of repeated requests for blocklists , the only conclusion we can make its that these people are trying to attack our site and anyone doing so will be treated as hostile.

These people bellow have hits in the hundreds to thousands a day and they will never be removed from our IP ban , I would like to send them a large bandwidth bill actually.

149.137.138.11
149.137.0.0 - 149.137.255.255
Saint Mary's College of California
Information Technology Services, PO Box 5065

168.9.210.210
168.8.0.0 - 168.15.255.255
State of Georgia/Board of Regents

68.252.234.79
adsl-68-252-234-79.dsl.chcgil.ameritech.net
68.252.224.0 - 68.252.239.255
PPPoX Pool - RBACK2 CHCGIL
2701 W 15th ST PMB 236
Plano
TX

69.238.30.130-69.238.30.135
ppp-69-238-30-135.dsl.scrm01.pacbell.net
69.238.30.0 - 69.238.31.255
PPPoX Pool - Rback6 SCRM01.437846

69.238.24.135
adsl-69-238-24-135.dsl.scrm01.pacbell.net
69.238.24.128 - 69.238.24.135
RAY SHELTON-050312025407
Private Address
Plano
TX

71.198.43.127
c-71-198-43-127.hsd1.ca.comcast.net
71.198.0.0 - 71.198.255.255
Comcast Cable Communications, IP Services


134.173.91.124
91-124.res.pomona.edu
134.173.0.0 - 134.173.255.255
Claremont Colleges
Claremont
CA
91711
United States
YMIR.CLAREMONT.EDU
TYBALT.CALTECH.EDU


And many more are being added each day..


Thank you all for your support and understanding , we will definitely let you all know when things are back to normal.

Please dont try to tell us there are problems all over the place , it only adds to the stress lol , we are aware of them and we will fix them as soon as possible.

Have U considered that colleges (campus) may in fact use 1 IP to serve hundreds of students and therefore it is not really fair to block them all?

not a student (or on campus)

I think You can report IPs.
EDU ranges should be reported - so those could be placed into the correct list.
I guess.
To be confirmed by some BISS expert.

Whether they are shared IP's or not , they are downloading our lists 24-7 day after day , non stop and thats just way too much for one IP when we are paying for the bandwidth and trying not to go over the limit .. We block them so everyone else can get updates as well..

We have tried to avoid blocking obvious shared proxy / cache IPs , but at some point there has to be a limit on how many times in one week/ day / hr people can keep updating their lists without a care in the world about anyone else.

~That~ was an unpleasant surprise, finding an empty level1. And especially, finding out when I ran a check on my daily peerlist to see all kinds of unsavory connections. Just goes to show how ~many~ people are out there unaware they're wide open.

Anyhow, not your fault. No way to alert them. Come to think of it, some sort of centralized warning system would be nice to embed in next versions of proto and phoenixlab's peerguardian. You know, something like a pop up displaying a message. Like "Hey! Guess, what... Don't look now, but your fly's unzipped."

Anyhow, as I said, tough break. But there's nothing like a good kick in the head to get rid of complacency. Or a happy demeanor, come to think of it.

On the topic of server-space. I thought I might've given you access to mine. But then I did the math. Made me cry. Laughing. Your traffic would kill my monthly bandwidth in less than a day. Less than half a day.

How about EFF? They might be willing to host (some) of the lists.

Again, no crits. If bluetack received enough donations of those willing to use it, there wouldn't be such a problem.

Using BLM 2.6.5, I get the following in the log for both Ad Tracker and Level 1 lists:

:: Error in PG: File Line#: 1, Line Contents: This file has been deleted please use the zip file

I understand the problems that are going on with finding replacement servers, and I've made a suitable attempt to find the answer to my question without any results.

My question is where does one get the zip file (referenced in the log) to use it?

Thanks.

http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/ads-track...nd-bad-pr0n.zip

All zip files are in that folder.

http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/

from there you will get redirected to the server with it on.

firstaid

is the pipfilter.daz.gz a little short this week. Last week it was 11 mb this week its about 7 what happened?

http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=13947

answered my own question. That kind of sucks that there is no log now : (

Can't bluetrack upload stuff on radpidshare for free? maybe that would be a solution...

Rapidshare may be a ok free option , I find it very annoying though. Too many hoops to jump through just to get a file , and I think they add delays to the files once you use a certain amount of bandwidth to force people into buying a premium account.

By the way, anyone else that suggests blocklist org to me via PM as an alternative will be banned from this site .. It's not even funny as a joke.

I could help by using my website to mirror downloads.
My website gets few hits and the pages are all very small. I could host a blocklist as long as you impose a bandwith limit of 20GB/month. I can set up an FTP account for Bluetack. Specify the URL and scripting (PHP/MySQL,etc) needed and I'll supply it. Thanks for making Protowall and BLM

many thanks for the url for the lists

btw, when I tried getting the lists this morning, they all worked in the normal fashion, using BLM

I'm not an expert so I don't know if this is possible but why not impose a limit to daily blacklists download? I mean: each IP can download all lists "only" 5 times a day (just for example). The number can be smaller (3) but more than 1: users can have problems during download or with their computers, so they need to re-download lists again. In this way you can avoid hundreds (thousands) of hostile requests without wasting too much time banning each bad IP.
Is this possible?

The problem is when transparent proxies are used by ISPs. My ISP, for one, uses transparent proxies. So if such a limit is imposed, then essentailly most of us using this ISP would not be able to download any lists at all.

How much bandwidth a day does the site use for the blocklists?

There seems to be a new issue on the back of these problems regarding information displayed in Azureus "Safepeer" plugin being cut-off.

Where as a block used to quote sd cbs transit, it now gets displayed as "sd cbs tra"

10.05.2006 04:09:14] X 70.179.57.91 was in range sd cbs tra : 70.179.0.0 - 70.179.63.255

or

[10.05.2006 04:11:44] X 82.146.243.45 was in range educationa : 82.146.224.0 - 82.146.255.255

in short the descriptions are now being cut-off where as they never used to before?

Not sure if this is a problem with the format of the block lists or a change that safepeer will need to take into account? Thought it worth mentioning never the less. Look foward to any response.

Thx.

It would be also a good idea to updade Blocklist Manager's source list to something like this:
This is my modified source list, so you might want to edit it but i think the idea is clear. All zips are managed correctly in Blocklist Manager.

That would be us cutting off the comments to save bw and make the files upload faster. The comments are rather useless in most cases as they are merged adjacent now as well.

firstaid

why don't you guys distribute the lists as daily downloads through bit torrent? that could drastically reduce bandwidth costs.

Hi , I think we pretty much answered that here :
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=13991

Hi , thanks a lot for the offer .. If things with the current situation go bad we may be sending you an email, but at the moment everything is running a lot better now.

I'm not sure how we could force a download limit on the lists with what we have to work with. Anyone have some good ideas on that side of things. ?

could you, for my own sanitys sake (im confused) tell me what safepeer and dat.gz urls i should use now as none of tem are listed @ http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/ ?

They will never be in the config directory, never have.

They are on every page of the forum and homepage though, in the "other lists" box. on the lefthand side of the forum.

look for a block that looks like this below.

---------------------------
Paranoid pipfilter.dat.gz:
(all lists) only use if you
know what you are doing!!
pipfilter.dat.gz: May 12
Normal nipfilter.dat.gz:
nipfilter.dat.gz: May 12
---------------------------
Safepeer URL lists
---------------------------
*New*
*Now only 1 zipped list
for each file with few
comments*
Normal safepeer list:
spconfig.txt: May 12
(paranoid safepeer list):
(all lists) only use if you
know what you are doing!!
pspconfig.txt: May 12
---------------------------

Would someone please straighten up some confusion on my part concerning the BLM sources? Everything is working fine, it's just that I'm not exactly sure how.

Firstaid posted a list of changes to the Bogons that I wanted to examine. To compare it to the list the BLM downloaded this morning I went to open it from the C:\Program Files\Bluetack\Blocklist Manager\Cache file. I realized it was a zipped file and I would have to decompress it somewhere to read it.

As someone here (SecTa) has suggested I changed my sources to get .zip files. And I've also did the lock and hide trick to the http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_sources.txt file to modify the sources the BLM uses.

All the .zip files in my BLM cache folder are "corrupted," because they are actually text files with .zip extensions. A check of the MSIE Internet Temporary Files folder shows I actually downloaded .zip files, however. (Good. Much less strain on Bluetack's servers.)

Some of the source files are coming from unfamiliar (to me) places
[]
[]
[]
I'll come back to that.

Apparently the BLM is processing the zipped files fine but saving them with the wrong extensions. No big deal.

First line of http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_sources.txt if the BLM does it (also "sources.txt"):
PG,http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n.txt,Ad Trackers,0,Ads Ad-Trackers and Bad Porn

First line of my "locked and hidden" http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_sources.txt:
PG,http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n.zip,Ad Trackers,0,Ads Ad-Trackers and Bad Porn

Actual source of processed file

So it would appear that the BLM is obtaining the file from [] and it is a compressed file, but the BLM is saving the file as a text file with a .zip extension because my "locked and hidden" http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_sources.txt file specifies a zip extension. My bad, perhaps.

Flushing cached files from the BLM doesn't clean out the MSIE Internet Temporary Files folder. So I do that manually.

A test with "ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n":
PG,http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n.txt,Ad Trackers,0,Ads Ad-Trackers and Bad Porn
gets
http://.../bluetack/ad...rs-and-bad-pr0n.txt
and it ISN'T compressed in the Temporary Internet Files folder!
ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n[1].txt (Windows renames it when you save it elsewhere).

So it may be that the Bluetack server version of "sources.txt" should be modified to list .zip extensions? Most people aren't specifying .zip files in a modified http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_sources.txt file made outside the BLM in a text editor. It would appear the BLM is forcing the download of text files by default?

When this change is made it will break everyone's BLM until they update their sources? Until this change is made most people are still using excessive bandwidth by downloading the text files by default?

Is this something that should also be changed in the BLM application that new people download from Bluetack? Although the most "bang for the buck" would be to immediately change the sources on the server that affected the installed base worldwide.

With the recent security issue with Lavasoft's Ad-Aware updates I am concerned that I am only getting files from Bluetack-approved servers. Would it be possible for a 3rd party to spoof the BLM into downloading **AA-"approved" files instead? Are [] dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/pipexdsl/s/ashu56/bluetack, and [] legit sources?

When www.bluetack.co.uk/config gets redirected can a checksum or some way of validating the file be done?

How about posting verification info somewhere on the website? The downloaded files could then be run thru FileAlyzer FileAlyzer 1.4.0.0 product description or some other program to obtain the details. Maybe somebody even knows of a different way to automate this?

********************************************************************
FileAlyzer © 2003-2005 Patrick M. Kolla. All Rights Reserved.
********************************************************************


File: C:\Program Files\Bluetack\Blocklist Manager\Cache\http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n.txt
Date: 14-May-06 4:23:14 PM


***** General ******************************************************
Location: C:\Program Files\Bluetack\Blocklist Manager\Cache\
Size: 90521
Version:
CRC-32: 78FD9DCF
MD5: D9AAFE2DE2444416E613DA3BEEE8CC97
SHA1: 935F93D3D78202E5EAC8935ABC859EA1530D59CF
Read only: No
Hidden: No
System file: No
Directory: No
Archive: Yes
Symbolic link: No
Time stamp: Sunday, May 14, 2006 12:54:48 PM
Creation: Sunday, May 14, 2006 12:54:48 PM
Last access: Sunday, May 14, 2006 12:54:48 PM
Last write: Sunday, May 14, 2006 12:54:48 PM

My summary:

Using a "locked and hidden" http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_sources.txt file that specifies a zip extension reduces bandwidth, but the BLM is writing the wrong extension to it's cached files. No big thing.

I would like some way to verify that the base files I'm downloading are Bluetack sanctioned.
--CF


---[]snipped by moore []

Ok lets see if I can answer all that

The newer and current versions of the BLM downloads .zip automatically and only attempts to download the text files if the zips are not available for some reason.. All the large text files were removed so all people will get is a msg that they should use the zip file instead.

I dont see why we need to edit the sources file , everything seems to be working properly for people that dont mess with things as far as I know right now. It may be that following Secta's advice is a bad idea and is why you have text files as zip extensions and maybe you should stick with the normal way ?

yes those servers are our list servers , we have had dialspace for over a year but it's on it's way out , the other two are our new temporary replacements.




It is impossible for someone to add a fake server to host our lists since we control where each list can be downloaded from. Even if it was somehow possible , I'm sure we would notice pretty quickly.

I also removed the list server links by request, sorry about that , I know you are simply trying to work this out.


I have no problems downloading the lists as zips with BLM 2.5.3 ,without editing my sources file or making any files locked.

The force is still with us young skywalker

: but watch out for the darkside

firstaid

I'll suggest this yet again... Coralize your filter URLs

So did this ever get sorted?

This has been resolved for the time being, we are always looking for a good server for the lists though

firstaid

I would say it's temporarily sorted. As long as things work everyone's happy.

The lists server we have at the moment though could go out at anytime really and then we'll be back to looking for a new one again.

hmmmm...well I read the whole thread and saw ideas, but no solution??

I still can't automatically dload the lists. I have to go grab each one manually, rename them, and overwrite the older files in the "cache" folder.

I'm still using BLM 2.5.3 because the only other option is still in beta.

Is it ever coming out of beta? Will it resolve the issue with BLM always bitching that file xyz.txt was not found during the dload process?

TIA for any assistance

Cheers

Solution to what ?

The lists are working fine at the moment , I can download them with version BLM 2.53 ok. As to when the cuurrent BLM beta will beta final , no date yet.

If you are having problems please post in the Blocklist Manager technical support section so we can help you work out what's going wrong.

I think Bit Torrent is more feasible than you guys thought, going way back in the thread. I had issues downloading the lists a few times this past month, though not bad. Retrying in 5-10 minutes did the trick.Think about it, a tracker announce with no passkey is a few bytes. A few KB for each torrent, which can hash all the lists and people select download with their client. What I'm getting at is run your own legal tracker for the lists. You can then remove the torrents if a list is bad, which I assume is a rarity. You then have control. You could almost do this from a home connection(not quite but almost). You could live with a business isp account from your homes though that offer fairly low bandwidth but no caps. Think about it. Far more reliable than current system. Takes seconds to ftp up that tiny torrent file and begin seeding. Well that's my view. Feel free to comment more on this.

Well, I would say it's no good, here are the reasons I can think of quickly - I guess more will come up if You start doing it actually:
- the torrent file has to be updated and downloaded over and over again (on a daily basis if You want to stay up-to-date), and version management will be a nightmare, too.
- BlockListManager (and other 3rd party apps) would have to implement a complete torrent engine instead of a simple HTTP get; this not only introduces incompatility with existing 3rd party apps, but the rewrite of the BlockListManage would take a long long time as well.
- networks can block torrent traffic, while a simple HTTP get works in every network (well, almost all anyway).
- with torrents, Bluetack will have no control on access to the list files, and the source could not be verified either.
- torrent would require Bluetack to run a torrent server - which is not as simple as one might think.
My suggestion would be to compress files with a more efficient algorythm: RAR or 7ZIP (these also support solid compression so if all files were compressed into a single package, the compression ratio will be better). But of course an algorythm specifically designed for blocklists would be the best: we know it's always IP ranges, comments and a little extra - any math experts here?

I don't think we have fully written off using BitTorrent yet , but I'm not really interested in making blocklists available via BitTorrent through a tracker/website that we don't have any/full control over.

The original source needs to be reliable and that can only happen if we run the tracker ourselves or if it's run by someone we can trust not to screw people around. Otherwise anyone could put up their own version of the lists on any BT site , with any kind of additions or removals and many people wouldn't know the difference or bother to look.

So yeah we'll see what happens .. It's something we will keep in mind.

When I truy to d/l a list I get a page that says I don't have permission to get it. Have I been blocked?
I haven't hammered the servers or anything.
Please help......I cant use peerguarian or safepeer.
Could someone please make the level 1 list available to me.
Thanks for any help
rottenrobin

deny from (your IP)

Yes, you are blocked for abuse.

OrgName: Road Runner HoldCo LLC
OrgID: RRNY
Address: 13241 Woodland Park Road
City: Herndon
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 20171
Country: US


firstaid

What the hell is wrong with this board??

I posted back on August 15th and there have been several posts since....I just now received my only notification that new posts have been made.

Speaking as a programmer....something just ain't right....obviously others have had MAJOR issues with the block list dloads and the makers of BLM and ProtoWall are totally unresponsive....this board doesn't even work.

I gave up back in August and swithced to PeerGuardian. It's SOOOO much easier to maintain...self-updates without the need for BLM....so nice...so easy.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had crappy customer service everywhere lately (yes I know this is free software...and I do appreciate it when people put in their own time for this stuff....but only when it works....so I'm a little bitter right now).

Anyways....Merry Ho-Ho...rock on PeerGuardian!

Cheers

ColdFusion2, even as a programmer you have no legit complaint here, you were using an old version of blm. The .txts have been removed completely and the same lists you use in pg2 are going through the same channels that blm lists are. Did you ever wonder why email notifications were not working? Seems simple enough to figure out for me, they prolly should be disabled again.

I could realy care less about this rant, everyone seems to know it all suddenly. If you are depending on email notifications on any forum you are not doing yourself a service.

"something just ain't right", is what programmers say ??
Most programmers/ipb admins I know would have came in asking why the Notifications are turned off.

firstaid

What would you suggest I do?
To either get unblocked or get the list?
Thanks
robin

I can't download level3 blocklist. All I get is an html-document:



Any reason why?

Looks like that server is dead at the moment skipo, we'll probably have to change the redirects for the lists hosted there if it doesnt come back online soon.

I redirected the lists from that server to others, it should work now.

firstaid

It's working perfectly. Thanks!

Come on guys......throw me a bone here ok?
I didn't know I did anything wrong. Help me make it right, please.

Can I at least get the info needed to connect to the irc channel to request unbanning?

Thanks,
robin

If I'm not gonna get any help here....can someone please at least tell me where I might find some help.
Just need info to connect to IRC channel. I would like to get unblocked.
Thanks,
robin

rottenrobin, you are out, but if your ip goes over our limit in a day in the future, you will be back in.

firstaid

Thank you thank you thank you.
robin

Issue on 26 March 2007

The errors (below) occurred when Blocklist Manager tried to access the level2 file.

Work-around: Download level2.zip from http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/,
unzip, import (generic), use Process to collect & merge other lists.

Is there an alternative?

Error results follow:

Getting 'Level 2 Corp' Blocklist file: http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/level2.txt
...Cached file dated: 3/26/2007 3:57:10 AM used.
... C:\Program Files\Blocklist Manager\Cache\http___www.bluetack.co.uk_config_level2.txt
330 bytes opened from local cached file...
Decoding and Adding...
Loading data... 11 lines.
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 1, Line Contents: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 2, Line Contents: <HTML><HEAD>
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 3, Line Contents: <TITLE>403 Forbidden</TITLE>
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 4, Line Contents: </HEAD><BODY>
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 5, Line Contents: <H1>Forbidden</H1>
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 6, Line Contents: You don't have permission to access /config/level2.txt
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 7, Line Contents: on this server.<P>
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 8, Line Contents: <P>Additionally, a 404 Not Found
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 9, Line Contents: error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
:: Error in PG: File Line#: 10, Line Contents: </BODY></HTML>
0 rules added.

I use Azureus & SafePeer & recently many delays/problems in downlaoding the SafePeer list(s). Az will hang after getting a trickle ...... then has to be either killed or the network connection disabled ....

I also use PeerGuardian with three lists:
ads
p2p
spy

Can anyone tell me:

1. Why Azureus currentlly has problems accessing SafePeer listing(s)?

2. Whether PeerGuardian lists as above are identical (or cover more IPs) than SafePeer.

3. I'll have to post on Az wiki I guess to find out why Az inssists on loading SafePeer every blasted restart ...

Ta,
Nico N

This concerns me, cos my IP address is now in the range "70.179.xx.xx" - When I SamSpade the thing it comes up that it is COX, but Protowall is blocking it and saying that it is that "SD CBS TRANSIT"

What gives... Is this an IP address Hijack?

My DNS are all in the ranges "68.6.xx.xx" and "68.2.xx.xx" - So why is my IP addy in the range of this Transit thing?

Yesterday my IP address was in the range 68.6.xx.xx something.