[9841] Hosts File Blocking

[9841] Hosts File Blocking

I block web ads using a hosts file.

Ever since I installed build 9841, instead of blank space being where the ad would have been, opera is displaying a message that says
Error!
Network not available. Contact your system administrator.

You tried to access the address http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/ibs.bay.news/national;kw=slideshow+square+15631768;ad=true;tile=2;pgtype=detail;sz=300x250;;ord=48747849?, which is currently unavailable. Please make sure that the Web address (URL) is correctly spelled and punctuated, then try reloading the page.

Is that caused by some recent change in Opera? Is there any way to disable this behaivor?

I've got the same issue here, and have been looking to see if it is a weird setting but can't find anything. Opera is simply ignoring the Hosts file...

Reported as Bug # 319164

I can confirm this bug and it's been in the last 2 or 3 weekly builds. Interestingly, when I clicked on the doubleclick link in this thread it opened in a new tab and Homer served up a little blue rectangle, but other pages (with loads of banner ads) give the 'Network not available' error.

At random times after fiddling with the settings or restarting Homer, its worked correctly for a bit, then stops working. At one point enabling netbios seemed to work, then it started failing again.

I've just tested Firefox 3 Beta 4 and Homer works fine. I saw that you filed a bug report Toadbee, this must affect other functionality apart from ad blocking so I hope they fix things soon. I'm using Win XP SP2.

Why haven't I ever seen this message? I use the urlfilter.ini in my tagline, along with the corresponding adblock css.

If you are using your hosts file to redirect to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) then you are encountering a new security feature that blocks public servers from loading content private servers as part of their documents.

Originally posted by yngve:

If you are using your hosts file to redirect to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) then you are encountering a new security feature that blocks public servers from loading content private servers as part of their documents.

So then are you going to find a way to still allow the hosts file to function as it always has while still activating your new security feature?

Originally posted by lexluthor5:

So then are you going to find a way to still allow the hosts file to function as it always has while still activating your new security feature?

Sorry, but that is not possible. The category is determined by the DNS resolved IP address, we have no information about the source of the resolved IP address so it could be provided by the public website as part of a malicious attack, and non-intereactive loading from a private server triggered by a public server is precisely the type of loading this new mechanism is intended to block.

Well, then I think you are going to wind up with a lot of annoyed Opera users who use the hosts file to block ads who now will wind up with "ugly" pages that have your new security feature warnings on them.

This is disappointing and I suppose using urlfilter.ini and adblock.css, as rseiler suggests, is the next best thing. However this filter method will not provide general protection from malware when not using Opera. I'm not an expert on this subject, but wouldn't your PC need to be already compromised by malware to be vulnerable to this attack scenario? I suppose a hostile server on one's computer could send someone to any number of fake websites (banks in particular) instead of blocking adverts.

Given that the average internet user isn't particularly security-conscious, this move might be for the greater good. But what might the cost be in terms of things like speed and functionality?

Originally posted by yngve:

Originally posted by lexluthor5:

So then are you going to find a way to still allow the hosts file to function as it always has while still activating your new security feature?

Sorry, but that is not possible. The category is determined by the DNS resolved IP address, we have no information about the source of the resolved IP address so it could be provided by the public website as part of a malicious attack, and non-intereactive loading from a private server triggered by a public server is precisely the type of loading this new mechanism is intended to block.

How about an option to disable this feature then?

I use Edexter together with the MVPS Hosts file - http://accs-net.com/hosts/eDexter.html - this sets up a local proxy on 127.0.0.1 which responds to the ad requests and replaces them with a little purple rectangle. I am not using the latest Beta (currently 9.27 but do have the 9,5 Beta release which works fine with eDexter). Also not sure how well eDexter works on Vista and it may cause problems if you have other programs on you machine which use a local proxy (eg your AV). Give it a try, it may solve your problems.

I do remember seeing this problem on earlier versions of Opera so it certainly isn't new.

Dave

Originally posted by davews:

I use Edexter together with the MVPS Hosts file - http://accs-net.com/hosts/eDexter.html - this sets up a local proxy on 127.0.0.1 which responds to the ad requests and replaces them with a little purple rectangle. I am not using the latest Beta (currently 9.27 but do have the 9,5 Beta release which works fine with eDexter). Also not sure how well eDexter works on Vista and it may cause problems if you have other programs on you machine which use a local proxy (eg your AV). Give it a try, it may solve your problems.

I tried one of the recent builds with edexter and a hosts file. Edexter does work on Vista. But with this new security feature, instead of the edexter boxes or whatever, you get big, ugly text telling you the site couldn't be reached or something like that.

There's got to be a way to disable this, there are way too many people using a hosts file to block ads.

An alternative is to use Privoxy and to put the addresses from the hosts file under the { +block-as-image } section in user.action. You load the hosts file into a text editor and replace each instance of 127.0.0.1 with nothing to get a pure list of URLs and then copy and past these into user.action.

All http and https requests go through a proxy server allowing this traffic to be filtered. It's a bit more complicated to set up than eDexter or Homer and it doesn't give the same level of protection as the hosts file as far as I know, but it will filter these addresses and banner ads.

That's a lot of work too. There should be an option to disable this new feature if someone who is using a hosts file wants to.

What would happen if I changed my hosts file entries to 0.0.0.0? Would it work the same way or would that resolve the problem?

FYI: Blocks of 127.0.0.1 will now (in upcoming versions) be handled the same as Connection Refused from a 127.0.0.1 host with a non-"localhost" name. They will then be handled as if the content-length is 0, for example resulting in blank frames.

Does anyone find that all the websites that are blocked by the HOSTS file, if they have cookies then a "download file" box appears for each cookie asking if you want to save the file "default.mod"?

This has only been happening since I upgraded to v9.25

Only thing working is changing all entries in the host file from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0
and change Proxy Host setting (Developer Tools) in opera:config from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0

It works but can someone smarter than me tell me if this is safe to do ? (I think it's safe )

GreetzZ

Originally posted by yngve:

FYI: Blocks of 127.0.0.1 will now (in upcoming versions) be handled the same as Connection Refused from a 127.0.0.1 host with a non-"localhost" name. They will then be handled as if the content-length is 0, for example resulting in blank frames.

I'm trying to clean my Opera profile by slimming down my urlfilter.ini file. I currently use HPHosts hosts file to do adblocking aswell, so using both is really overkill.

Does this mean hosts file adblocking will work properly again in future versions?

It seems this is already implemented in 9.50B2. Blocked images show as totally blank frames, and in my case without the little purple marker from edexter which used to replace them. However completed blocked whole sites still come up with an edexter purple rectangle. Guess this is a compromise I can live with, but it was always nice to have edexter tell me what was blocked....

Originally posted by davews:

It seems this is already implemented in 9.50B2. Blocked images show as totally blank frames, and in my case without the little purple marker from edexter which used to replace them. However completed blocked whole sites still come up with an edexter purple rectangle. Guess this is a compromise I can live with, but it was always nice to have edexter tell me what was blocked....

Relly? It doesn't seem to be working for me - well appearing as "totally blank frames". Using urlfilter.ini, Opera removes the whitespace left behind by the ads, does it does this with the hosts file?




Version
9.50 Beta 2
Build
1933
Platform
Linux

I'll complain one last time. People blocking with a hosts file want, and are in fact asking the connection to be directed to 127.0.0.1
For that very simple reason this should be an option. Security "features" should be able to be disabled especially when they alter the way TCP/IP connections are supposed to and assumed to work.

Originally posted by toadbee:

Security "features" should be able to be disabled especially when they alter the way TCP/IP connections are supposed to and assumed to work

I agree, this stubborn attitude of offering NO CHOICE, NO CHANCE is simply driving people away from OPERA browser, because some applications especially set up for easy functioning via HOSTS /localhost - address will not be able to be used any longer with OPERA...

I know from some customers of mine, who had 'mirrored' some external websites (especially data sheet servers for certified electronics parts) locally by using this technique...
... they simply added the external IP-addresses to the HOSTS file and replaced it by /localhost...

Now what shall they do?
Dump that simple solution, set up everything differently...
Sure that could be done.

But almost certainly they will force people back to IE or any other browser NOT being restricted - because it's that how that "feature" will get perceived - people which slowly have been using OPERA more and more lately!

Whoops, I tried again and what I said about O9.5B2 is not true. I get those annoying 'Network not available' messages...... Using MVPS hosts file blocking with eDexter.

I tend to agree. I don't use 9.5 very much as there are a few annoying things like this - dropping the cache extensions, problems with threading of newsgroups and others. Apart from a bit of increase in speed there is currently very little which causes me to move from 9.27. Except my internet banking, which works in 9.5 but not 9.27...

Hosts is working for me in 9.5 build 10048 on XP SP3 - I'm not getting the 'Network not available' messages like I did before.

I think if you're using Homer or eDexter then it's a good idea to change the Proxy Port value to 80 under [Developer Tools] in opera:config. Image insertion is working so far, but it was temperamental previously so I'll have to keep an eye on it!

Thanks, I will try the latest version. I found the annoying 'Network not available' message so annoying rather than the warming little ticks from eDexter so annoying that I have avoided 9.5 entirely. It really would have been a show stopper to release the final with this glaring problem.

I just downloaded 9.50 and am having some really annoying issues with addresses which are being set to 127.0.0.1 through the hosts file. It seems to be related to the issues described here, so I'm posting here as a follow up.

I have several addresses in the hosts file such like;

127.0.0.1 betaforums.domain1.com
127.0.0.1 betaforums.domain2.com
127.0.0.1 betaforums.domain3.com
127.0.0.1 betaforums.domain4.com

I'm a webdev and work on an application which displays data based upon the hostname used to visit the application/site. This works fine on the previous version of Opera, but not on 9.50. When I attempt to visit these pages I simply get a blank frame, no source, no information. I also cant help but wonder if something is hardcoded. If I try to set 'betaforums.(anything).(anytld)' I get the same result.

For whatever reason, this seems to be hit or miss. I have some addresses which are pointed locally in the same manner which seem to work fine, others throw the same issue with the blank frame. Has anyone else run across issues like this? Is there a resolution? I'm running this on XP SP2.

Yeah, thankfully hosts-blocking is working again for me in 9.51. Now I'm looking for a decent way of removing the whitespace left behind... I'm using Fanboys CSS element hider, but there is still a fair lot left behind

Originally posted by davews:

Whoops, I tried again and what I said about O9.5B2 is not true. I get those annoying 'Network not available' messages...... Using MVPS hosts file blocking with eDexter.

I tend to agree. I don't use 9.5 very much as there are a few annoying things like this - dropping the cache extensions, problems with threading of newsgroups and others. Apart from a bit of increase in speed there is currently very little which causes me to move from 9.27. Except my internet banking, which works in 9.5 but not 9.27...

I got a massive speed increase from 9.27 to 9.50, and I mean big.

Loading pages on 9.27 even a light page would result in 100% cpu usage and a 1-3s pause whilst opera processed data, larger pages the pause could be longer 5s plus. In addition if I right clicked the page and changed some per site settings, this pause happened again whilst it saved and 100% cpu usage.
9.50 - Both problems fixed, I am led to believe the decision to remove extensions from cache files is to thank for this and I am extremely grateful as was very annoying.

Do lots of people really load files from a large cache dir?

Originally posted by Chrysalis:

Do lots of people really load files from a large cache dir?

My hypothesis is yes, given the large amount of requests for the extensions to return. Such as:
cache file extentions
File extensions in Opera's cache are no longer there and I miss them! (over 200 posts!)