Cyber Patrol

A software product that allows parents to restrict Internet access. Cyber Patrol has a "black list" of sites with various ratings for nudity, violence, coarse language, etc. Instead of blocking for the previously stated reasons though, this program has a history of banning sites that are not politically aligned with the company such as the National Organization for Women. Hell, a couple of the web sites I run are banned.

Cyber Patrol's earlier versions had list of blocked sites encrypted with fairly weak cipher. This of course meant that the site list was cracked pretty quickly.

Cyber Patrol 4 had "sophisticated anti-hacker security", which meant it had slightly better encryption, but that didn't stop Matthew Skala to break it (he did it mostly by analyzing the executables).

He made a document about break and his observations, and decided to put the document on web. Microsystems Software didn't exactly love the idea, and went for a law$uit.

Skala settled the matter by assigning the copyright of the documents to Microsystems. However, you can probably find a copy of the document anyway by searching for "cp4break" with the nearest web search engine...

It was the best of filters. It was the worst of filters. It blocked the troll's goatse links. It blocked Penny Arcade. It was CyberPatrol.

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CyberPatrol is a commercial web filter created by SurfControl, who calim they are "the #1 Web and E-mail filtering company", and may be right, thanks to misguided politicians.

On one hand, I am glad that such things exist. My little brother (8 at the time of writing) has some not-so-friendly friends, and it is a good thing that they can't pressure him into going to... innapropriate sites.

On the other, I am forced, because of my school's blatant disregard of the first amendment, to have my every move online tracked by some outside Evil dictatorship. Its not even Microsoft that's doing it!

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For what it does, block sites, it does a great job. It has problems, however, with NOT blocking sites. Have "Fuck" on the main page once, any you're banned for life. It also screws around with traffic that it shouldnt. On Battle.net, trying to enter a Starcraft game is hell, as the filter often delays the packets long enough that you are unable to connect. Even with filtering turned "Off", all packets are sent to the filter for aging. Not a good way to work things, I'm afraid.