µBlock for Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#71

Post by fpgaminer » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:24 PM UTC

It seems like, if one were an evil web developer, one could thwart blockers like these with a few nasty tricks. Server-side: on each request of a resource, salt all linked resource URIs and encrypt (after the host name) before sending the final document to the client. The resources can still be fetched, because the server can decrypt any requests, but the client has no way of knowing whether a particular resource is an ad or not. That thwarts URI based filtering. To thwart DOM filtering, randomize element classes and ids.

Though impractical, I thought it was an evil/funny idea.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#72

Post by edwintorok » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:26 PM UTC

mih wrote: post #67

__Joker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the filter list to modify /etc/host ? Or Is there a easier way to get the filter list from ABP or mu-block ?

Quite a few sources actually. Beware, some of them can be too restrictive. If the hosts file is too big, it can also impact performance. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip (too restrictive) http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip (ad-servers n tracking only) http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showi... http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://www.malwared…

http://adaway.org/hosts.txt

I also replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 and duplicate each entry to have it for IPV6 as well, as in this script except I don't do the iptables rules: https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#73

Post by JohnTHaller » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:27 PM UTC

jarcane wrote: post #59

whizzkid wrote: post #5

I have been using µBlock for 3 weeks now.(previously adblock plus). There is one irritating thing it has that almost makes me go back to adblock again. It is often blocking the false positives. So if developer has named one of their assets file with social media names like "twitter/facebook/etc", it blocks the file right away. Since it does not have custom configuration options for each site, you can either disable µ…

µBlock enables Fanboy's social blocking list by default. If you want your Twitter/FB buttons and so forth back, you can turn it off in the subscription options.

The problem is that it doesn't just block the buttons, it blocks assets that just happen to have those names that are unrelated to the buttons as well.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#74

Post by oe » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:28 PM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #7

From my experience of using this for a few weeks now on Chrome, I would recommend this over AdBlock Plus etc. I haven't done any specific performance tests and personally no numbers to back it up. However, I do have the subjective impression of improvement. I'm using it in combination with µMatrix.

On my slightly older MBP (2011) the plugin caused performance issues. Mainly hanging when opening a new tab and navigating somewhere. Other extensions have had same problems, so I might need to move into filtering ads at network level.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#75

Post by Drakim » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:30 PM UTC

fpgaminer wrote: post #71

It seems like, if one were an evil web developer, one could thwart blockers like these with a few nasty tricks. Server-side: on each request of a resource, salt all linked resource URIs and encrypt (after the host name) before sending the final document to the client. The resources can still be fetched, because the server can decrypt any requests, but the client has no way of knowing whether a particular resource is…

If the resource names are still "static" your resources can still be blocked. But if they are altered slightly every time, you may also thwart caching, right?

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#76

Post by Direct » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:30 PM UTC

This is awesome! I recently read this ticket[1] mentioning that porting of µBlock seems to be a starting point for gorhill to port µMatrix. In my perfect world, I would be using Firefox with nothing but µMatrix, as it is right now I'm having to use Chrome with µMatrix and sadly can't get rid of µBlock until µMatrix can hide blocked frames. Still, getting closer to that perfect world! The work done by gorhill is amazing.

[1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#77

Post by mziulu » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:35 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #64

mziulu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used uMatrix, since I use Firefox, but I can speak for RequestPolicy, which is kind of the same thing basically AFAICS. It's very very very rare that I end up whitelisting everything that's requested on a site. The more you use the extension, the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended, and this way you end up building your own whitelist: allo…

> the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended Sites using cloudflare are a major issue here, specifically their cryptic subdomains. If someone were to hide an ad network behind those they would be hard to tell apart from the rest, at least for humans.

Yes this is true. If a site is not working and the only reasonable domain to allow is something from cloudflare, I resort to allowing it temporarily. Not many ways around that, I think.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#78

Post by davidovitch » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:36 PM UTC

Beltiras wrote: post #66

davidovitch wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the December 2014 issue of Le Monde diplomatique there is an interesting article that investigates future possible press models within the French context: http://mondediplo.com/2014/12/13press (in English, but behind a pay wall). The authors argue that for public interest press (news, investigative journalism, etc), a shared publication and distribution institute/company should be funded by the government. In that…

I agree that journalism is a public good. Having the government fund it sends shivers through my spine. Recently where I live the public broadcasting corp. was threatened with cutbacks due to a perceived slant in coverage. The threats were then carried out after the politician in question was given chairmanship of the parliamentary committee on the budget. That to me is so troublesome I don't consider it viable.

I guess this discussion is way off-topic at this point :-) But I find it interesting enough to keep it going. The real challenge is obviously to have this government funded publication company stay free of direct government interference. The article mentions a sort of tax that is levied before the wage is paid out, and should be delivered directly to the join publication house. Much in the same way as some European social security contributions are collected today. That would keep the funding away from the yearly government budgeting rounds.

No matter what system we think of, the powers at be will always try to influence the press and information. We can also see that in the current system, where large stakeholders can pressure/influence journalists and publications. I don't think the state has a monopoly here, on the contrary.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#79

Post by UserRights » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:36 PM UTC

jkot wrote: post #47

Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.

Blocking at the DNS level produces a lot of requests to 127.0.0.1, which can be quite annoying e.g. if you are using a local webserver for development. Also if you do not have a local webserver on 127.0.0.1 the browser still will wait for answers to your request, what can be an annoying experience. Would be interesting to measure how much CPU and memory actually is wasted with many tabs waitung for elements from 127.0.0.1.

It is the better approach to not let these requests happen right in the browser, what this plugin does, if I get it right.

A warm and big THANK YOU to the developer of this great software, it is so important and good to see that many developers are helping users to protect against the morally challenged who are stealing the privacy of millions every day.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#80

Post by perlgeek » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 12:39 PM UTC

fpgaminer wrote: post #71

It seems like, if one were an evil web developer, one could thwart blockers like these with a few nasty tricks. Server-side: on each request of a resource, salt all linked resource URIs and encrypt (after the host name) before sending the final document to the client. The resources can still be fetched, because the server can decrypt any requests, but the client has no way of knowing whether a particular resource is…

Ad programs such as Google AdSense forbid modification of the ad code through their ToS. So sre, you could encrypt (and javascript-side decrypt) your ads, but Google would (or might) through you out.