LONDON — In a backlash against the U.K. government’s plan to mandate Internet porn filtering systems, a U.K. hacker has created a firewall that only allows users to visit adult sites.
Although the proposed opt-in plan that would force users to choose that they want to view porn is aimed at protecting children and stamping out violent porn, some critics are complaining that the government is overstepping its bounds and the filters smack of censorship.
Most tech-types add that the systems fostered on the major ISPs would be ultimately ineffective as there are always technical workarounds.
So in what appears to be a protest against the recent filtering frenzy, hacker Sicksad has created “The Great Firewall of Porn” that turns the idea of porn filtering on its head and blocks any website that doesn’t have porn.
The software creator says on his website, “So i [sic] hear the UK government wants to make a porn filter. About bloody time i [sic] reckon. I’m fed up of happily browsing the Internet for boobs, only to have non-porn related subject matter thrust down my face hole.
“So taking inspiration from other great Internet filtering nations such as North Korea, China, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, Uzbekistan, Saudia Arabia and Vietnam I decided to help out the UK government and build an Internet filter that only allows pornographic material through.”
The renegade programmer lists all of the necessary code and a video to help those who want to install the firewall on their own.
Sicksad explains that the filter is a DNS server that checks all queries against the OpenDNS FamilySheild DNS server. Any request that is denied by OpenDNS is then allowed by his DNS server, and any request allowed by OpenDNS is then blocked.
"Nerd" tech jargon adds that the server itself it built using “the python Twisted framework that handles both the DNS requests and acts as a simple web-server to host the denial page.”
