[clug] Dialing Home

[Scott Ferguson]

On 16/08/15 13:23, Owen Cook wrote:
> 
> 
>> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2015 at 1:04 PM
>> From: "Scott Ferguson" <scott.ferguson.clug at gmail.com>
> 
> 
> 
>> Note: I've found privoxy phoning home in the past. An entry in
>> /etc/hosts stops that.
>>
>> lsof | tail -n +2 | awk '{print $1 " " $2}'
> 
> Hi, 
> 
> 
> I have a WD network drive and found it was "dialing Home" (129.253.8.107) chewing up about 400Kbytes/hour. 
> 
> Can I really put something in /etc/hosts that will stop that?

/etc/hosts is only effective when you want to change the real IP address
associated with a URL. i.e. facebook can be made 127.0.0.1
and even then, only when resolv.conf looks at /etc/hosts first.


> 
> Thought an iptables drop would sort that out but the limited debian distro in the network drive doesnt have iptables.

You could add it *if* the kernel supports netfilter (drop in a
statically linked version).


I prefer ipset (also requires netfilter support) for dealing with IP
addresses - it's quicker, easier to manage, uses less resources, and is
easy to configure for large blocks.


> 
> Thought a configuration change to my DLink router would fix it also, but the router seems to accept web addresses only.

Possibly for the same reason as /etc/hosts only works for URLs not IP
addresses? i.e. cheap modem "routers" are toys, it probably just adds
entries in it's /etc/hosts.

Solutions might be to: change the OS on your DLink modem[*1];make your
modem pass-through (it may only support bridging) and do your routing
and firewalling further back - which is always preferable IMO.

[*1] http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

> 
> 
> TIA
> 
> 
> Owen
> 


Kind regards