PeerBlock Plus Portable has been released. PeerBlock is an IP firewall with support for blocklists and allow lists. PeerBlock Plus adds a freely sourced blocklist that is automatically updated daily. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Platform. And it's open source and completely free.
Update automatically or install from the portable app store in the PortableApps.com Platform.
Features
PeerBlock is an IP-based block and allowlist that lets you block communication with advertising, spyware, p2p monitoring, and other servers online. The included blocklist provider, iBlockList, allows users to update their lists once per week for free. Daily updates are available with a paid subscription. PeerBlock Plus Portable adds a freely sourced combined blocklist that is automatically updated daily when starting the app using a custom updater we created. The list provider accepts donations to fund their efforts. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions or the modern and legacy versions are included for maximum performance and compatibility.
PortableApps.com Installer / PortableApps.com Format
PeerBlock Plus Portable is packaged in a PortableApps.com Installer so it will automatically detect an existing PortableApps.com installation when your drive is plugged in. It supports upgrades by installing right over an existing copy, preserving all settings. And it's in PortableApps.com Format, so it automatically works with the PortableApps.com Platform including the Menu and Backup Utility.
Download
PeerBlock Plus Portable is available for immediate download from the PeerBlock Plus Portable homepage. Get it today!
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Comments
What's New?
I've updated PeerBlock with a custom updater to do daily updates of a freely available combined blocklist. This should make PeerBlock more useful to a wider arrary of folks.
Great, Thanks!
Better than manually deleting the lists.
PS. It was not updating (weekly) since a long time, not updating at all for free users.
Update lists
Hi John,
What is this "custom updater" exactly? A malicious IP list? Where do you get it from?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Detailed and Linked
It's detailed and linked above as well as on the app's homepage. You'll find a sources.txt that details all the sources the developer pulls from linked as well as a donation link to support them.
Links?
There was a great (huge) and free list curated by John at Bitsurge but his site has been down and he warned everyone that eventually he won't be providing it. Anyone has a link or suggestion on an alternative?
bongochong
Another large one I found is https://github.com/bongochong/CombinedPrivacyBlockLists but it was last updated 2 months ago. That's why it is not included.
Hello John!
Hey John! Just wanted to let you know that my PeerGuardian / PeerBlock / IPFilter lists are now regularly compiled from the same frequently updated sources that my CIDR lists use. It took me a bit longer than it should have to ditch those iBlockList sources, but I did, and it feels good.
Relevant lists are here:
https://github.com/bongochong/CombinedPrivacyBlockLists/blob/master/comb...
https://github.com/bongochong/CombinedPrivacyBlockLists/blob/master/comb...
P.S. Though most of my computing happens on Linux, I've used portable applications from your site quite frequently over the years in Windows environments. I find them to be immensely valuable when bulk-deploying Windows images to computer labs in schools and such (e.g. It makes managing third party software installations much easier when configuring base images). Thank you for your hard work!
Thanks, Differences?
Thanks for the heads up, John. And you're welcome for the portable apps.
What are the differences between your list and the divadsn list I'm currently bundling? https://mirror.codebucket.de/transmission/
One thing I like about that list is that it includes what the original list is in the P2P file (spamhaus_drop, alienvault_reputation, blocklist_de, etc). Would it make sense for your list to do the same? Have you thought about having it automatically GZipped to make downloads faster for users that update regularly?
Thanks!
Sources
I could probably make my documentation on github less dense, and I'm in the process of updating my readmes and such, but the current sources are as follows: Blocklist DE Brute Force; Blocklist DE FTP; Blocklist DE SSH; Cymru Full Bogons; DShield 30-day; DShield 7-day; DShield Top 20; Daniel Gerzo's Brute Force Blocker; Emerging Threats Botnet CC; NormShield High Brute Force; NormShield High Spam; NormShield High Worm Scan; PGL@Yoyo IP List; Spamhaus Drop; Spamhaus EDrop; CPBL Personal (my own small list hosted at the same github repo, which is mostly comprised of bruteforce attempts while running Shoutcast and Icecast servers for extended periods of time).
Also, each source list -- save for bogons, along with the ones from DShield and Spamhaus -- is individually piped through the command line aggregate utility, to help with reducing size. The final compiled list has overlapping ranges resolved (thanks to the output of IPConflict, in conjunction with a bunch of regex). They will continue to be updated again with at least the same frequency as all my other lists, and many of my backend scripts are shared as more user-friendly (I hope) variants on github as well.
P.S. These sources are also the basis of my CIDR lists for firewalls (though those have some traditional bogon ranges stripped, so users that run any kinds of server-client setups at home don't run into issues).
P.P.S. I will look into providing the lists gunzipped, and if I make any changes to the sources in the future, it will be mentioned in the docs at my repo. I suppose I could modify my scripts to insert the source name next to each line, so I will likely do that in the near future.
Edited for clarity and to take up less space on the screen.
Makes Sense
That all makes sense. I'm guessing that resolving the overlaps would make crediting specific lists in the P2P file pretty difficult. I don't think divadsn resolves the overlaps, so they can have entries like this in the file:
spamhaus_drop:223.254.0.0-223.254.255.255
alienvault_reputation:49.143.32.6-49.143.32.6
Do you know how much overlap vs unique there is in your list vs divadsn? I could release an update with both included with the updater.
Thank You
I always try to communicate coherently, but sometimes it's a bit difficult! I started resolving overlapping ranges because there was a bug a couple of years ago under Fedora (and probably some other Red Hat-related distributions) with firewalld, where it would either hang or crash when attempting to import entries that contained overlapping ranges. Now that I've synced up the p2p and dat lists with my CIDR list, they will benefit from those efforts. In regard to assigning the source name to entries, it may still be possible, because I'm piping each list into the aggregate utility individually, and I usually don't get a whole lot of overlapping ranges. It would certainly necessitate a bit of retooling and breaking some pipes (I'd also have to rethink how entries are sorted), so I'll only start attempting to implement that when I get a big wave of energy / drink too much caffeine.
I left my initial comment mainly to let you know that the list is no longer outdated / reliant on outdated sources, so can be safely included as an option, and in regard to shared entries between the two lists, I could do a diff and quickly run over it a little later then get back to you.
Please
Don't push it for the individual lines crediting. I think it'd only serve a handful of people for troubleshooting purposes.
For my own purposes, I'm more interested in whether there are uniques in both sufficient to include both in an updated version.
Unique Entries
As of the most recent update, according to the comm utility, my list has 4915 unique entries -- a good chunk of which are ranges -- when compared to the list on codebucket. I should note that mine is significantly smaller than the other list (by roughly 75%).
Source Refresh
I just did a source refresh (I did not notice how long the normshield lists had not been updated for until moments ago). The current list of sources is here: https://gist.github.com/bongochong/46a6b7ac6450d8df4b447432ee4159ad
After this update, the unique entry count for my list relative to the one on codebucket, now stands at 5,047. Have a good night!