Have had a few people ask me about this recently so thought it was about time I write up a guide on the installation and use of this software. About a year after I got here I received an email from my ISP saying that a movie company that will remain nameless had tracked my IP address from a torrent I was seeding. The email reminded me that this was a breach in copyright and that I should cease the activity ASAP. Of course, I did that:heh_heh: but I also took steps to make it a little tougher to access my computer. I found Peerguardian to be the best way of doing this.

Downloadable here, Peerblock (formerly Peerguardian 2) is an IP address blocker, supporting multiple IP address blocklists as well as blocking all IPv4. The lists can also be edited so that if you find a site that is recorded as a false positive, you can remove it from your blocklist and access the site. While it does work for Windows 7 and Vista, I haven’t had experience with it and have only played around with it for XP. Rarely have any issues with it and it’s very interesting to see who is accessing your computer. But either way, if you use torrents or any peer-to-peer software it’s a great little piece of software to give you that added protection.

Once you install it you’ll get a screen a little like this:

My first advice would be to click on the “Settings” button and set up your computer like you can see in the 2 pictures below:

The software is just half of the protection system; with it you’ll need some blocklists to tell Peerblock what IP addresses to block. There are a few places to get IP address blocklists but the best place I have found is here:

http://iblocklist.com/lists.php

This is a collection of the best blocklists and is updated as much as the lists are. I personally use the Bluetack blocklists as they seem to be updated frequently and should lock down your computer like it’s 2008. There is a guide to the blocklists available at the bottom of this post. Once you’ve found a blocklist you want, copy the update link and go back to Peerblock. Click on “List Manager” and then “Add”. You can then type in a description and paste in the URL, and also specify whether it’s a list of IP addresses to block or to allow. Once you’re done the List Manager page will look a little like this:

When you go back to the main screen the Peerblock software will update itself with the new blocklists and you’ll start to see IP addresses come up on the screen. IP addresses in black are incoming (ones that are trying to access your computer); those in blue are outgoing (addresses your computer are trying to access).
You should remember that even with just the Level 1 list downloaded (and especially with the Level 2 list), you might find a few sites become unavailable. If this happens you have 2 options. You can just click the “Disable” button on the front Peerblock screen and then re-enable it when you’ve finished accessing the site. Alternatively, you can right click on the address in question (it will be one in blue) and select “Allow xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx permanently). That will add the IP address you selected to your allow list so you can always access it. This might be a bit of a pain to start with but happens much less as you go along.

And that should be about it. Your computer will update the blocklists every day and keep your computer as safe as possible. Remember this isn’t a 100% guarantee that nobody will be able to access your computer, but it certainly makes things a bit more watertight. Let me know if you’ve any comments or questions about it all.

Here’s the list of blocklists and what they actually block:

LEVEL 1 BLOCKLIST
Companies or organizations who are clearly involved with trying to stop filesharing (e.g. Baytsp, MediaDefender, Mediasentry a.o.).
Companies which anti-p2p activity has been seen from.
Companies that produce or have a strong financial interest in copyrighted material (e.g. music, movie, software industries a.o.).
Government ranges or companies that have a strong financial interest in doing work for governments. Legal industry ranges.
IPs or ranges of ISPs from which anti-p2p activity has been observed. Basically this list will block all kinds of internet connections that most people would rather not have during their internet travels.

For more information on this list check the Anti-P2P & Fake Files Research Section on the forum.

PLEASE NOTE: The Level1 list is recommended for general P2P users, but it all comes down to your personal choice.

Have a look through each of the lists and decide if you want to use them or not.
Please do not blame us if something like your favourite website is blocked, because we will rarely remove something unless it is classified incorrectly.

LEVEL 2 BLOCKLIST
General corporate ranges.
Ranges used by labs or researchers.
Proxies.

LEVEL 3 BLOCKLIST
Many suspicious portal-type websites.
ISP ranges that may be dodgy for some reason, or media owned / related.
Anti P2P friendly web hosts.
Ranges that belong to an individual, but which have not been determined to be used by a particular company.
Ranges for things that are unusual in some way. The L3 list is aka the paranoid list.

SPYWARE BLOCKLIST
This list is a regularly updated compilation of known malicious MALWARE, SPYWARE and ADWARE IP Address ranges.
It is compiled from our own research and various other sources.
The SPYWARE blocklist may include data from other available Spyware Blacklists, HOSTS files, from research found at Anti-Spyware support forums, logs of Spyware victims and also from the Malware Research Section here at BISS.
For more information on this list check our Malware IP Research Section on the forum.

DShield Recommended BlockList
This list contains known Hackers and such people in it.
More information can be found at the DShield Website

Microsoft List
This list covers the known Microsoft Corp ranges that are not on Level1, as well as their known associated IP ranges from around the world.

AD TRACKERS BLOCKLIST
This list is constructed to block connections from advertising – marketing research data tracking sites, bad pop-ups…
For more information check out the General IP Research Section on our forum.

Educational Institution Ranges – EDU BLOCKLIST
This list contains known Educational Institutions – University IP ranges – Educational Networks – School Districts a.o..

Tor / Proxy BlockList
This list has been compiled from a list of Tor servers and various other proxy servers.

SPIDERS BLOCKLIST
Automated software programs also known as spiders or bots, survey the Web and build their databases for search engines and some are used to track people down to automatically serve them with copyright violation notices. This list is intended to be used by webmasters to block hostile spiders from their web sites.
For more information on this list check out the Webspiders and Bots Sticky

PLEASE NOTE: Google and other less harmful search engines are also blocked by this list.

Master Exclusions
This is a list of websites and other IP’s some people may not want to block.

Range Testing Blocklist
This list contains addresses of suspicious IP’s that are under investigation. If you see hits that looks suspicious, please report it to the Range Testing Report Section of the forum please.

IANA – Bogon – Hijacked – Non-LAN lists
Concerned Lists
IANA Multicast List
IANA Private List
IANA Reserved List
Bogon List
Hijacked List
Non-LAN List

Below is a short description of what is in these lists:

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) List

These are the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority lists. They are for reserved listings and IP addresses that are supposedly not in use as of yet. This list (IANA Private) and possibly the other IANA lists contain IP Ranges that will conflict with your connection if you are one a home network or a company network. You should add the IPs or Ranges that belong to your network to your Exclusions list in the Blocklist Manager.

More information on IANA can be found in the Bluetack IANA FAQ
Another important post for additional information about common IP ranges you may have trouble with and need to unblock to prevent internet connection issues is our IANA Sticky

Bogon List
Contains known Bogon IP-Blocks.
What is a bogon and why should it be blocked?
Note: We do not use the completeWhois bogons list any longer we have switched to:
http://www.cidr-report.org/bogons/freespace-prefix.txt

From CompleteWhois:

Bogons is the name used to describe IP blocks not allocated by IANA and RIRs to ISPs and organizations plus all other IP blocks that are reserved for private or special use by RFCs (the actual term bogons comes from word bogus, as in bogus IP announcements). As these IP blocks are not allocated or specially reserved, such IP blocks should not be routable and used on the internet, however some of these IP blocks do appear on the net primarily used by those individuals and organizations that are often specifically trying to avoid being identified and are often involved in such activities as DoS attacks, email abuse, hacking and other security problems. These activities obviously pose great danger to everyone and ISPs should try to filter all these bad IP routes and we are trying to help in that by working to create complete detailed list of unassigned bogon ips based on whois data.

In other words, if you get hit by an IP address from this range, then they have spoofed their IP address and they, most likely, are trying to do something untoward.

Hijacked List
Contains hijacked IP-Blocks and known IP-Blocks that are used to deliver Spam.
This list is a combination of lists with hijacked IP-Blocks
What is a Hijacked IP Block and why would I want to block it?

From CompleteWhois:

Hijacked IP space are IP blocks that are being used without permission by organizations that have no relation to original organization (or its legal successor) that received the IP block. In essence it’s stealing of somebody else’s IP resources.

These ranges are being used illegally and are most likely being used for illegal activities. They should not be being used and should therefore be blocked.

Non-LAN List
This list blocks LAN [Local Area Network] IP ranges. It is only recommended for use by people that do not have home networks and want to block the IANA Private address ranges which should not be used on the internet.

Bad Peers [ Previously known as Templist ]
This is a list of people who have been reported for sending corrupt data on p2p, sharing files that contain viruses etc.

Tags: featured, file sharing, p2p, peer-to-peer, peerblock, peerguardian 2

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