[LINK] Internet filtering plan may extend to peer-to-peer traffic, says Stephen Conroy

Kim Holburn kim at holburn.net
Tue Dec 23 23:30:14 AEDT 2008


On 2008/Dec/23, at 1:48 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 12:43 AM 23/12/2008, Kim Holburn wrote:
>>> "Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does
>>> exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be
>>> tested in the live pilot trial," Senator Conroy said.
>
> Does anyone know if there are 'filters' per se that can do much more
> than block IP addresses or the full p2p protocol? Can filters do a
> discriminating blockage within the protocol?


I see be 2 ways of doing it - by deep inspection or by using an  
application firewall.  A full application firewall would have to  
understand each protocol and with p2p I just don't see it as  
possible.  Either would be prohibitively expensive and/or slow.  Also  
subject to the possibility of nasty attacks (see:
http://www.banthisurl.com/2008/12/exclusive-white-hat-hacker-tears-apart-flaws-in-aussie-net-filtering-scheme/
http://tinyurl.com/5n25vt )

ie it would subject almost all Australians to the possibility that  
their web traffic could be hijacked and their home computers being  
used to display child-pornography .

Kim

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request









More information about the Link mailing list