Is Antionline a security threat?

Hi all, stuck in the wonderful country that is the UK and our lack of broadband in rural areas im stuck on a 56K connection which at times can get dam slow. However at college they have a nice broadband connection which makes life fast. I pointed my browser over to Antionline.com which i have been visting regualry at home but never posted to. When i was stopped by the colleges filtering system controlled by a RM proxy. I was wondering if you considered Antionline.com and its content as threat to the integrity of a network or why RM or a system administrator would, is this supposed to act as obscurity as a method of security? Thanks :)

Your administrator has probably enabled a content filter which look for "hack" or "hacking" occurences in accessed websites and which block concerned sites.
It is very common and annoying in school networks.

Knowlege is power,
if you get too much power, colleges phear students with power..

hence you are only free to visit stupid sites ;)

j/k

yup, some filters (even commercial ones) consider AO as a dangerous place, perhaps that's caused (partialy) by the old download section :)

I don't know how they do things at colleges in the UK... but at my college... they dont' restrict us from anything.

You'd think that restricting what college students can see/view will inhibit their ability to learn and explore. More of a "you can learn this and only this" type of thing? I personally don't believe in censorship of college students. They are mostly over 18 yrs old and legally an adult. let them make their own choices on what they can and can't view.

Now, if it was high school... then yes. I'd agree with some censorship... at least till they get hom to their broadband connection where most parents don't even pay attention to what their kids are doing online.... let alone try to filter it.

But yes and no. It can be both. nihil pointed out the download section of archived files.
Antivirus will pick up mostly everything "bad" in there.

But I'd say no mostly. If you're asking for help hacking, you're most likey not going to get it. If your asking for help or reading how to be more safe in a digital world, then thats all the better.

You may want to speak with the admin for access.
Let him read the front page. (before login)
It tells you straight up what AO is and is not.

I think that its probably just being filtered. I think that AntiOnline is a great asset to the security community and that I am sorry to hear that you cannot get it at school.

If the school did purpously block it as a individual site, then they may have not read into it and fully understand what the AO communitee is really about, giving good information to help provide security.

Just my 2cents

Maybe you could present them with the facts, and try to change their mind? :D

AntiOnline is a website focussing on protection against hackers.

AntiOnline is owned and operated by JupiterMedia:

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Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), (www.jupitermedia.com) headquartered in Darien, CT, is a leading provider of global real-time news, information, research and media resources for information technology, Internet industry and graphics professionals. JupiterWeb, the online division of Jupitermedia is joined by Jupiter Research, a leading international research advisory organization specializing in business and technology market research in 18 business areas and 14 vertical markets and Jupiter Events, which produces offline conferences and trade shows focused on IT and business-specific topics, including Wi-Fi Planet, Search Engine Strategies and Internet Planet in serving the industry.

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AntiOnline offers a discussion board, where members can discuss the latest security-related topics, as well as join in discussions regarding technology, programming, software,... including but not limited to antivirus, firewalls, IDS, and cryptography.

blablabla blablabla... :)

Actually, it's probably the default of an old site blocker software. I know some used to block AO because of it's former reputation. I suspect that might be more the case. As was suggested, you might want to talk to your admin and ask them if they could remove AO off the list. :D

Look at the "Keywords" --Computer Security,Hacking,Hacker,Crackers,Virus,Virii,Webpages,DOS,Denial of Service,files,links,encryption,spoofing,news,texts,password,port monitors,key logger,phreaking,boxes,wardialers,patches,exploits,fixes,hot fixes,antionline,bugs,technology--

I would have to agree with I_T_G, as much as everyone else made good points. The keywords do cover the hit words most companies try to block. (schools also)

Description: AntiOnline's mission is to educate users about computer security related issues.

From Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...=Google+Search
Computer security educational site.

The keywords are bad though. I mentioned this before in another post about this subject. You also have to think about that keywords are not as powerfull as they used to be for SEP.

I thought this was funny though:

http://www.iis-resources.com/modules...link.php?lid=5

IIS Resources is punking us by sending us script kiddies. ;)

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AntiOnline Last Update: 10/04/2003 21:56
Description:
Hackers know the weaknesses in your system. Shouldn't You? An extensive collection of tools/exploits used by hackers to hack all sorts of OS's. Over 300 windows specific exploits.

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Hi all, stuck in the wonderful country that is the UK and our lack of broadband in rural areas im stuck on a 56K connection which at times can get dam slow. However at college they have a nice broadband connection which makes life fast. I pointed my browser over to Antionline.com which i have been visting regualry at home but never posted to. When i was stopped by the colleges filtering system controlled by a RM proxy. I was wondering if you considered Antionline.com and its content as threat to the integrity of a network or why RM or a system administrator would, is this supposed to act as obscurity as a method of security? Thanks

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Well all I can say is good luck. I to go to school in the UK and I'm also under RM restrictions. I've had massive arguments about getting them to do something about the fact that AntiOnline.com is filtered. They told me that they can't actually do it, as its built into the RM system.

Try using something like altavista translator in order to avoid having AntiOnline writen straight into the address bar. At our school we used to use mastersquad.com before it was taken down in order to avoid the filtering system as all it does is read the header of the outgoing information and looks for a combination (yes, you heard me, not word, not sentence, but combination) of letters which could spell something naughty. So you could have a perfectly innocent word that might have the combination of 's', 'e', and 'x' in it somewhere. This site would therefore be blocked.
Its rediculus but thats the way it is :)

I seem to recall that AO was on some older IP blacklists?

Sounds as if they need to update ?

Cheers

I think its become a sad case of media paranoia and jumped up sometimes ignorant administrators that has lead to our schools and colleges using obscurity as their form of security instead of patching and penetration testing, obscurity is been used which i find quite disturbing in our 'free society'. I understand there are cases were websites should be blocked due to the mass of scriptkiddie style attacks which normally involve unintelligent teens reading information of a website or downloading a program to go and have a bit of fun without any background knowledge. But in the case of Antionline i see no apparent reason why an administrator should block this content to typically 16-19yr olds some of legal age to vote, buy alcohol and lead their own lives. Its been intressting to get some responses back from what i see as our next threat to our freedom. 'The ignorant, misinformed and paranoid'.

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I seem to recall that AO was on some older IP blacklists?

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Yup. Which is one of my suspicions for a specific privacy software (I haven't had a chance to analyzer the data and will hopefully get to it early next week since it's study break).

Funny that I run into this discussion now...

I'm in an Information Warfare class here in the US, and next weeks topic is titled Computer Hacking. Among the list of recommended references is a link to AO's web site, which is categorized as a "hacking" site. I happen to appreciate what AO is truely all about...getting security minded individuals from around the world together (so to speak) to discuss various security topics and current events and to share their knowledge. If anyone trys to describe it as otherwise, I'm going to raise one hell of a stink in class.

Oh well, my $.02...

alpha

Teachers (read:IT staff) do fear students with knowlege, I know for a fact that my School account is monitord because I know alot more than they'd like me to, mostly because they don't do their bloody job but ok. Having a laptop makes life easy, even tho, I'm not allowed to plug it in, theres no way for them to detect me :D

My advice; Act dumb to your IT staff....they will ignore you and keep thinking their surperior as opposed to taking control of your desktop at regular intervals.

I know that many of us our in IT but I'm going to say this anyways. IT professionals are very insecure. They have to be the most knowledgeable person around, or they are very unhappy... especially if it's some snot-nosed little punk that shows them up.

I'm working at the college I attend on a co-op term. I applied to both Network Services and Student Support. I'm working doing student support because Network Service happened to label me a hacker. Some of the activities I had done at my high school were done for the administration, but they were done without the IT dept knowing, and the Network Services Manager here used to be in the IT Dept at my HS, so he's heard through the grape vine about it and hates me for it. I also know they used to have insecure routers (no passwords on them).. from when my cousin was a student here and because of that they labelled me a hacker. Since then, I do half the work that the co-op students they hired should be doing. Knowledge may be power, but it's also one of your greatest weaknesses.

Peace,

HT

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Originally posted here by Noia
Teachers (read:IT staff) do fear students with knowlege, I know for a fact that my School account is monitord because I know alot more than they'd like me to, mostly because they don't do their bloody job but ok. Having a laptop makes life easy, even tho, I'm not allowed to plug it in, theres no way for them to detect me :D

My advice; Act dumb to your IT staff....they will ignore you and keep thinking their surperior as opposed to taking control of your desktop at regular intervals.

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Slight correction...IT staff (those that work with/in/on the computers/network/systems administration differ from those that are the actual teachers of a class. There might be a bit of a correlation as the teachers will more than likely know who their IT staff is, but not by much.

I don't fear students with knowledge at all. Give them all the whitepapers to read, they'll ignore them. Give them an entire T-3 and they'll download porn, mp3s, and the like. It's not that they know more than anyone else, it's that they're the ones who think it's funny (more than not) to download the latest "hack" or "virus" and exploit a friend's laptop which is connected to the college campus and the next thing you know, the IT staff has to shut everything off because Netsky is now everywhere (example, not a real live case). Unfortunately, because of the rampant many, the select few who DO want to learn more and actually educate themselves, everyone's screwed.

For those in IT who do act "superior" or whatnot, chances are, they're the ones who are fearing those who may know more. I have a few guys at work who are like that. However, don't think that those like me who play video games all day are behind the times or not up to par. People that do that tend to get shut down, hehe...

IMHO, let all the college students just drink themselves into oblivion and hold toga parties all night, frats messing with sororities, and keep them off my lines. It's less of a headache for me in the morning, hehe...for those who do want to learn, I'll gladly help out any way shape or form.

Never underestimate your opponent and never overestimate your own skill.

Yeah,

Don't forget. Antionline wasn't always an anti hacker site. I used to come here as a boy to get my latest virii and trojan downloads.

It also used to have a sister site of anticode.com funny that URL brings you here eh.