Smoothwall - google games

[nispire]

Hi,

 

We've been in touch with customer support a few times regarding google games but they can't come up with a solution. Students are able to get access to google games, simply by searching "snake" etc. There was a knowledge article on how to block it, but it doesn't actually work - even with an engineers help, his professional diagnosis was "it's out of date". As a work around, we've blocked certain search terms but students can easily get round it using "s.n.a.k.e" etc...

 

Has anyone else came across this? If so, what did you do?

[AMLinington]

You'll probably find that the issue is because the games are hosted on multiple 'sub servers' like 'client5.google.com' or whatever. So short of redirecting Google to another search engine, your answer is going to be to run a packet a dump in wireshark and take a look at the handshake URLs. Of course this is what we might have done back in the old days of Smoothwall Support, I suspect you're a bit more on your own now, so you might need to enable inspection and media content blocking for the whole google or web search category....

 

I doubt it's insurmountable, but it's probably going to be a PITA.

[bossman]

@nispire

 

Seems like search terms are the only way of blocking it atm.....

 

I have various shades of the word "snake" in search terms and this seems to be easier than finding out the sub server listings using wireshark....

 

How many variations of the word "snake" can you make up?

[nispire]

@nispire

 

Seems like search terms are the only way of blocking it atm.....

 

I have various shades of the word "snake" in search terms and this seems to be easier than finding out the sub server listings using wireshark....

 

How many variations of the word "snake" can you make up?

When you take into account that they can add spaces, commas, hyphens and full stops in between characters, there's a hell of a alot of combinations they can make. Jonathan @ Smoothwall support just solved this issue for us!

[bossman]

@nispire

 

That's great...are you going to let us all know how?....

 

Or is Jonathan going to post the solution?.....

[georgeescott]

I'd be interested to see how Jonathan at Smoothwall's approached this! I've been doing some investigation in to this myself and blocking it is pretty tricky if the blocked search terms aren't cutting it for you.

 

To start with, when searching anything on Google, a request is made to the following url every time (the random strings in the url change over time - cache-busting or session related i'd assume):

https://www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.8bUBb2YLuBQ.O/m=sx,sb,cdos,cr,elog,hsm,jsa,r,d,csi/am=wCKyH_8A5P8vGBCFVjDCAtNgGBo/rt=j/d=1/rs=ACT90oHzQkypEaDR6gDYrv_ZSPICxJFoIQ

 

It looks like the "m=" parameter of the URL specifies the JavaScript modules to load and it then generates JavaScript on the fly. For example, searching for "Zerg Rush" will load in the following JavaScript files from the "google.co.uk" domain:

1. https://www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.8bUBb2YLuBQ.O/m=sx,sb,cdos,cr,elog,hsm,jsa,r,d,csi/am=wCKyH_8A5P8vGBCFVjDCAtNgGBo/rt=j/d=1/rs=ACT90oHzQkypEaDR6gDYrv_ZSPICxJFoIQ

2. https://www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.8bUBb2YLuBQ.O/m=aa,abd,aspn,async,dvl,foot,fpe,ipv6,lu,m,mpck,mu,sf,sonic,spch,tl,vs,zr,d3l,tnv,mrn,exdp,irq,iud,riu,udlg,me,atn/am=wCKyH_8A5P8vGBCFVjDCAtNgGBo/rt=j/d=1/exm=sx,sb,cdos,cr,elog,hsm,jsa,r,d,csi/ed=1/rs=ACT90oHzQkypEaDR6gDYrv_ZSPICxJFoIQ?xjs=s1.

 

You'll notice on JavaScript file #2 that a module listed is called "zr". Fiddling with the url, i managed to only request the "zr" module and as you may have guessed, it's the Zerg Rush module: https://www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.8bUBb2YLuBQ.O/m=zr/am=wCKyH_8A5P8vGBCFVjDCAtNgGBo/rs=ACT90oHzQkypEaDR6gDYrv_ZSPICxJFoIQ?xjs=s1.

 

Unfortunately, we cant just block https://www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.*.O/* as this breaks things like calculator, currency conversion and translate.

 

Games like Pacman and Solitaire load in additional JavaScript/iFrames (https://www.google.co.uk/logos/js/pacman10-hp.10.js, https://www.google.co.uk/logos/fnbx/solitaire/standalone.html) so you can block those which then breaks them.

 

I've created the below url patterns in Chrome Dev Tools Request Blocking which has successfully prevented the listed games from working without breaking calculator etc.:

 

Snake & PacMan: "www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.*.O/m=*,snek,*"

Solitaire: "www.google.co.uk/logos/fnbx/solitaire/*"

Zerg Rush: "www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.*.O/m=*,zr,*"

Atari Breakout: "www.google.co.uk/xjs/_/js/k=xjs.s.en_GB.*.O/m=*,boee,*"

 

The only side-effect I've found is that it breaks the dropdown buttons under the search input box when they search for a game as it's blocking other modules along with just the game one but i'll deem that an acceptable risk.

 

I'll test all of these on our Smoothwall tomorrow and hopefully get some promising results!

[junz]

Hi all,

 

On the topic of blocking things, does anyone know How i would go about blocking specific searches on Youtube.

 

The kids are obsessed with a game called fortnite but luckily they are unable to play the game but love to watch others play.

 

We use Lightspeed and Securly for our chromebooks

[AlanD]

...I have never quite understood this obsession with wanting to block block block. Students have always played games...yes in my days it was done by passing bits of paper around...and if you got caught there were disciple procedures...and you spent you lunch time sitting in a corridor or whatever. If students misuse the computer system...and attempt to play games...which we don’t block by the way...but can see the evidence in the logs...then they get disciplined. It’s simply not appropriate to play computer games in lessons. End of....

 

In fact there is danger of turning an obsession with blocking into a game itself and therefore encouraging it.

 

And in any case I bet you could go into most classes and find at least one with a phone between their knees and the desk.

 

Report it...and move on....but don’t turn it into a game...especially one you are likely to lose.

[Roberto]

...I have never quite understood this obsession with wanting to block block block. Students have always played games...yes in my days it was done by passing bits of paper around...and if you got caught there were disciple procedures...

 

It absolutely is a classroom discipline issue rather than a technological one, I agree 100%. I also think the main focus of dealing with it should be discipline-led rather than technology-led. That doesn't mean that some reasonable amount of applying technology to support the discipline process can't be useful.

 

So we block, as well as log, to make it difficult to just trip into playing online games and to clear to students that it's not welcome.

[nispire]

Hi All,

 

For our particular case, it was solved by adding the "Remove QUIC Header" under content modification policies. It may be worth reading the smoothwall article again as he did say they updated it recently as google changed their CSS.

[AMLinington]

...I have never quite understood this obsession with wanting to block block block. Students have always played games...yes in my days it was done by passing bits of paper around...and if you got caught there were disciple procedures...and you spent you lunch time sitting in a corridor or whatever. If students misuse the computer system...and attempt to play games...which we don’t block by the way...but can see the evidence in the logs...then they get disciplined. It’s simply not appropriate to play computer games in lessons. End of....

 

In fact there is danger of turning an obsession with blocking into a game itself and therefore encouraging it.

 

And in any case I bet you could go into most classes and find at least one with a phone between their knees and the desk.

 

Report it...and move on....but don’t turn it into a game...especially one you are likely to lose.

 

When I was at school and the internet was still barely even a thing, we had ONE internet-capable machine on a 56.6k connection and you had to queue for WEEKS to get a lunch hour on it.

 

But we had a whole room full of Acorn computers that we were allowed to play games on during lunch on the understanding that no games were permitted during lessons.

 

I don't think games should be totally banned, but it is better to 'control the narrative' so to speak by ensuring that students are only playing games during appropriate times.

[bossman]

We actually encourage good behaviour and work with the Teaching staff able to allow certain time on one particular games site which other Staff can block if they so wish...

 

Its classroom management problem and not ours but we do try to limit the games websites so that it makes it that little bit easier for the teaching staff to control through their IT classroom management tools...

 

Used as a carrot to encourage good standards from the students....

[AlanD]

Hi All,

 

For our particular case, it was solved by adding the "Remove QUIC Header" under content modification policies. It may be worth reading the smoothwall article again as he did say they updated it recently as google changed their CSS.

 

Short of reading every single item on smoothwall's support site how was I supposed to know about this? OK I knew about QUIC but when we bought our box last year - no one said - "Oh! by the way you will need to do this modification for QUIC"

 

..and why do we have to created the rules and patterns? Can they not push these down with new releases/updates and either apply them...or have them as a preset for us to select?

[nispire]

Short of reading every single item on smoothwall's support site how was I supposed to know about this? OK I knew about QUIC but when we bought our box last year - no one said - "Oh! by the way you will need to do this modification for QUIC"

 

..and why do we have to created the rules and patterns? Can they not push these down with new releases/updates and either apply them...or have them as a preset for us to select?

This is apparently fixed as of Leeds - 2 update, we haven't got round to updating yet though

[woolmer]

This is apparently fixed as of Leeds - 2 update, we haven't got round to updating yet though

 

When was Leeds-2 made available? its not available for me, and it supposed to fixe the facebook twitter problems they 'made' with leeds-1! Who can i chase at Smoothwall for the download to be available?

[ITGuyNW]

Sorry to drag this back up but does anyone know how to block Snake? I've had a look at some replies above and it's confused me a little bit...

[AlanD]

I still don’t quite understand fascination about wanting to block access to this game or that. What would be the procedure if they were kicking a ball around the classroom? Or playing on their mobile phone under the bench? Or caught playing hangman with their neighbour on the side of the back cover of their book (yes, I got done for that).

 

You are in danger of making computer lessons like a game of bat the rat encouraging students to find new ways of avoiding blocks. Catch them at it, and Put them in detention during the first part of lunchtime when their mates have gone for lunch. They soon loose enthusiasm for time wasting...although ususally find less obvious ways of wasting time.

[Mako]

Unless it's a game where they're blowing up babies with rocket launchers, I'm not out to play whack-a-mole in blocking games. Time wasting is a classroom management issue. It's up to other staff to ensure students are on-track. Passive monitoring and spot-checks are all that's needed, to ensure nobody is bypassing filters or accessing something harmful.

[ITGuyNW]

I was asking about the Snake issue. I am not particularly interested in comments about why or why it shouldn't be done.

[nispire]

I'll have to remind myself on Monday about how we went about blocking it...

[Bagpuss66]

It's a big problem for us when Supply teachers are in a computer room, we have to report this to the Cover Supervisor and we start issuing Warnings.

I've tried to block this in Palo Alto with no luck, so at the moment we are using Impero to block it as a Keyword. This is annoying as students use various ways of spelling Play Snake.

You can Imagine how many ways there are !!!

[AlanD]

You can create a game of snake in about 10 lines of javascript code (OK, maybe the graphics will be a bit limited)….and simply run it from your home drive. I suppose you could block web pages from local drives - but it wouldn't be convenient.

[tim88]

from memory we blocked it by blocking google.com/logos.

[Courtney_Impero]

Sorry to drag this back up but does anyone know how to block Snake? I've had a look at some replies above and it's confused me a little bit...

 

Hi @executiverocker,

 

Through Impero, one way in which you can block snake in google is by adding a block to*snake_arcade* on HTML content.

Hope this helps!

 

Many Thanks,

 

Courtney @ Impero

[Bagpuss66]

Hi @executiverocker,

 

Through Impero, one way in which you can block snake in google is by adding a block to*snake_arcade* on HTML content.

Hope this helps!

 

Many Thanks,

 

Courtney @ Impero

Hi, we have tried this in the advanced policies creating a policy named Block Snake but the game still works.

We ticked the website html block option, is there anything else we need to do ?