Teen cracks AU$84 million porn filter in 30 minutes
Summary: A 16-year-old Melbourne schoolboy has taken just 30 minutes to crack the federal government's AU$84 million dollar Internet porn filter software.
A Melbourne schoolboy claims to have cracked the AU$84 million Internet filtering software which the government is giving away to schools, libraries and families across the country.
Tom Wood, 16, claims to have broken the filters, which were released as part of the government's Net Alert scheme earlier this month, within half an hour.
The ease with which the filter can be broken came as a surprise to Wood, he told Channel Seven. "For that money, I thought it must have been unbreakable." After circumventing the filter in half an hour, Wood claims to have broken a second version of the porn-blocking software released on Friday, within 40 minutes.
Under Watts' workaround, the filtering software will, to a parent's untrained eye, appear fully functional, with the software status bar untouched.
"AU$84 million is a horrible waste of money," he told the Sunrise show. "I'm willing to work with the government if they like." Watts denied he disabled the software so he could look at porn.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan said the government had anticipated children would find ways to get around the NetAlert filters. Suppliers were contracted to provide updates, Senator Coonan said.
"The vendor is investigating the matter as a priority.
"Unfortunately, no single measure can protect children from online harm and ... traditional parenting skills have never been more important," said Coonan.
The government has already piloted Web filtering technology three times in the past. Following the most recent trial, in 2005, Coonan acknowledged problems with the concept saying: "Each report has found significant problems with content filter products operating at the ISP-level ... The Australian trials have also found the effect on performance of the Internet by ISP filtering to be substantial and a lack of scalability of the filters to larger ISPs."
The Internet filtering scheme comes as part of a wider AU$189 million package of measures announced by the government earlier this month. The NetAlert -- Protecting Australian Families Online program will also see publicity campaigns stepped up, including a AU$22 million awareness scheme to "inform parents and carers of children about online safety issues and provide information about where they can go to receive support and assistance", and 10 new ACMA Internet safety officers who will visit schools to talk about online dangers.
AAP contributed to this story.
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Talkback
did he crack it first or just read about it?
http://www.boredomistan.com/2007/august/lets_ban_the_internet/
(BTW mediaconnect ran this last week as well ;))
Who would have thought.....
I thought the internet only provided accurate information that the government wanted us to know. ; )
He's not a hacker
There various method of bypassing proxy filters. The most common these days is using Web based Proxy sites that run on CGIproxy and PHProxy. Either you find them using google or download the software packages and upload it to your own web server
Using google cache can be limited
Correct
I mean, it did take him 30 minutes to find out how to bypass it, and 40 minutes the second time around.
I know I am repeating alot of what people already know, but the trouble with Third-Party and Client side filters is there is no direct server to block traffic. The only way I can see a way kids cannot use these simple strategies to break security is to block at the ISP end, but as this article already suggests - the performance issue would be phenominal. The second option is to install home servers (nothing a simple change of modem wouldn't fix, but it's an idea).
Good luck to the government in fixing the issues hehehe... and no offense to the kid or anything, but the government hiring him to hack the software will do no justice. What needs to be employed are security experts to attempt breaking the software.
Ciao
What a joke....
Honestly!
If true, he has to be know as a god when it come's to the breaking of top level program.
I say good on you tom, teach the old ones how to do it. :-)
ISP Filtering
I am also very familiar with the controversy between PC Based Filter products and ISP based filer products currently being debated by the Australian Government.
With that said, I have been working with a third party development company for well over a year to develop a best-of-breed ISP / Managed Services web filtering product that more than meets the requirements of Australia's National PC Filter Tender.
While we have been very successful in this endeavor, it is unfortunate that we are unable to find anyone in the Australian Government who is interested in speaking with us, much less taking a look at our solution, (approximately 10 minutes).
Any parent can install the Client in less than 2 minutes. During the initial configuration the parent is required to create a User ID and an administrator password, which allows them to easily change and or disable the access profile for themselves or others who use the same computer.
Without the administrator password the Client cannot be installed, uninstalled, reconfigured or bypassed. On computers where two or more users log in with their own username and password, only the Named Administrator (i.e., the parent who installs the Client) can make such changes.
All currently supported Windows operating systems are fully supported by the Client and Macintosh support will be available soon.
The small footprint, scalable, easily installed client, is very efficient and the backend URL database is a very effective scalable ISP web filtering solution.
Once the Client is installed on a Laptop, the profile is always there, no matter where the laptop might go, (home, friends home, library, school, even other countries) the child is always protected when using that laptop.
When and if the Australian Government ever gets serious about protecting the children of Australia, we will be waiting to demonstrate the best solution currently available to protect all of the children in Australia.
84 Million?
84 Million
Can be broken
As i'm sure you know, no client-side authorization software is safe whatsoever.
did he try hex
Hi
hi
Kevin07 soon to release version_08 :)
I work online so am half savvy, my wife is computer illiterate. Today she was told by an alarmed mother that my son (10) had given her son the url of a porn site. I tried to explain to my wife (now also an alarmed mother) that there was probably little in it.
To show her i googled serena and sure enough two clicks and we could see Miss Williams' nipples.
Kevin Rudd soon releases his next statement on this ($84m++) filter, I ask him how will I be able to convince Junko (my wife) to keep the internet connected. What happens if one passover she searches for an image of a donkey?
the enemy
btw you from Dtex?
Proxy LOL