krisd32 Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 All installed and up and running. now to play around with the flash filtering ready for the kids in the morning.
tom_newton Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 If you find any flash games that get through do let us know, and we will make signatures to catch them. The rules are fairly immature at present. Indeed if you find any other uses of flash you'd like to see get banninated, let me know. 1
Ric_ Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Hmmm... the only problem I'm having is finding a Flash game that wasn't already blocked by Smoothie!!!
rob_f Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Hmmm... the only problem I'm having is finding a Flash game that wasn't already blocked by Smoothie!!! Yeah that was the problem I had too The existing "Online Gaming" category now includes the flash analysis signatures relevant to online gaming, so unblocking online games disables the flash filter's detection of games. Good to see it out there any hopefully doing some good, remember edugeek folks that this feature was exclusively announced at your very own educonf09 !
Edu-IT Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Just wondering how Smoothwall works with/alongside existing LA filtering etc? One would think you have to have an 'unfiltered' connection going into the Smoothie?
rob_f Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Just wondering how Smoothwall works with/alongside existing LA filtering etc? One would think you have to have an 'unfiltered' connection going into the Smoothie? Some people do this, others take a more "minimal" filtering policy (i.e. just blocking the absolute extreme stuff you would never want to allow) from the LA and supplement it with the local controls that the smoothie gives them. Some people use it to have an additional internet connection (ADSL etc) in combination with the LA connection... lots of different ways! Rob.
kmount Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Quick post just to commend Smoothwall (and the sheer number of team members who've turned up in this thread) on their attitude to pulling the release just to be sure whilst offering support to anyone who may have installed it. Fair play to you guys, it's no wonder Smoothwall continues to be an absolute success. Kim. 1
Ric_ Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Yeah that was the problem I had too The existing "Online Gaming" category now includes the flash analysis signatures relevant to online gaming, so unblocking online games disables the flash filter's detection of games. Good to see it out there any hopefully doing some good, remember edugeek folks that this feature was exclusively announced at your very own educonf09 ! We also spent time 'beefing up' the games filtering using regular expressions and more severe weighting on certain words and phrases. If you have a couple of example sites that we can use to test that the filtering is working it would be great... maybe a couple of demo Flash objects on your website?
spc-rocket Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Does this get around the kids bringing in flash games on memory sticks and pen drives? I know that you can ban the flash games. The problem is that flash can't be completely blocked either because its needed for DIDA courses etc. An application called GameKiller2 is a package that has been developed for this and so far its worked well. What we do at our place is block flash usage for students use using ISA server 2004 (Flash MIME extension) and whitelist any sites that they need to have flash and this is working well. What i like to have is some kind of host based app that kills the games on signature and the only one is gamekiller. Still if the smoothwall web filter can sort out the real-time access of flash games sites then this is bonus as well. Ash.
tom_newton Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Ric: great idea... let me work on it - don't want to infringe any game makers' copyright. Tom
tom_newton Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Does this get around the kids bringing in flash games on memory sticks and pen drives? I know that you can ban the flash games. The problem is that flash can't be completely blocked either because its needed for DIDA courses etc. An application called GameKiller2 is a package that has been developed for this and so far its worked well. What we do at our place is block flash usage for students use using ISA server 2004 (Flash MIME extension) and whitelist any sites that they need to have flash and this is working well. What i like to have is some kind of host based app that kills the games on signature and the only one is gamekiller. Still if the smoothwall web filter can sort out the real-time access of flash games sites then this is bonus as well. Ash. Eventually I would like to see our code incorporated into "something" client side. I have schemes. Just not enough devs to institute them yet. If this is something you would like to see (a "scan desktops and home areas" tool that flags/deletes flash games) then please let me know. If we get grass-roots support for this I can find the way if there's a will
Danielbarron Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 If anyone wants to try out the latest Guardian FP3 filtering, let me know and I can give you a free account on my hosted Network Guardian. Yes it's the same thing I posted a week ago in another thread but no one took me up on the offer yet.
Ric_ Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Ric: great idea... let me work on it - don't want to infringe any game makers' copyright. Tom I'm full of it... I mean them... aren't I? I'm pretty sure that all these game sites steal each others' games as it is so copyright information may be a little hard to track down. It needn't be an actual game... just a piece of Flash that the scanning engine can flag as nasty - a positive false as it were
john Posted November 4, 2009 Posted November 4, 2009 Got mine done and dusted Assume the Flash Gaming stuff (from this thread) is all built into the online gaming category?
tom_newton Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Got mine done and dusted Assume the Flash Gaming stuff (from this thread) is all built into the online gaming category? You assume right! 1
ssiruuk2 Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 John you have to go into "Per Group Settings" and enable flash filtering on that screen. Tom and all at Smoothwall - thanks very much this new feature is excellent. Its only 8:45 and already I have heard commnets that the kids are moaning like crazy that the russian and other spurious gaming sites that used to get through the smoothie have now been killed. Good work all! 4
tom_newton Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Thanks for pointing out the "per group" bits - I had forgotten all about that 1
krisd32 Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 All the kids are going mad this morning. Its brilliant. The flash blocking is working really well.
Simcfc73 Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Had to turn it off, had a couple of teachers tell me that legitimate animation isn't working and I can't see a way to get round it.. even with putting the page in the global allow section. Nice to have a manual for the new features too.. maybe I am looking in the wrong places but I can't see one. Logged a case, not happy.
Gatt Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Had to turn it off, had a couple of teachers tell me that legitimate animation isn't working and I can't see a way to get round it.. even with putting the page in the global allow section. Nice to have a manual for the new features too.. maybe I am looking in the wrong places but I can't see one. Logged a case, not happy. Same here - getting a big blue screen with "Blocked" in white writing Mainly affecting www.mathletics.co.uk How do we add an exception? added it to the custom allowed list but no joy
tom_newton Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Whitelisting the site should help - but we will look into these false positives immediately. Please send any improperly blocked URLs to support, or list hem here.
tom_newton Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Had to turn it off, had a couple of teachers tell me that legitimate animation isn't working and I can't see a way to get round it.. even with putting the page in the global allow section. Nice to have a manual for the new features too.. maybe I am looking in the wrong places but I can't see one. Logged a case, not happy. The online manual should have been updated simultaneously. Manuals available here: SmoothWall | Support » Manuals and Downloads also
cookie_monster Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Same here - getting a big blue screen with "Blocked" in white writing Mainly affecting www.mathletics.co.uk How do we add an exception? added it to the custom allowed list but no joy What part of Mathletics doesn't work it seems to work for me? Do you actually have to login and start playing games for it to fail?
Gatt Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 @cookie_monster - the entire site - as soon as you type in Mathletics.co.uk - Mathletics - Inspiring Better Results you get a light blue page (flash) with "BLOCKED" in the middle
cookie_monster Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 @cookie_monster - the entire site - as soon as you type in Mathletics.co.uk - Mathletics - Inspiring Better Results you get a light blue page (flash) with "BLOCKED" in the middle If I go onto the Mathletics home page I can see all of the flash animations. I'm sure i've got the new settings enabled but i'll double check.
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