DNS based ad/abuse domain blocking

Description

A lot of people already use adblocker plugins within their desktop browsers, but what if you are using your (smart) phone, tablet, watch or any other (wlan) gadget!? Getting rid of annoying ads, trackers and other abuse sites (like facebook) is simple: block them with your router. When the DNS server on your router receives DNS requests, you will sort out queries that ask for the resource records of ad servers and return a simple 'NXDOMAIN'. This is nothing but Non-eXistent Internet or Intranet domain name, if domain name is unable to resolved using the DNS server, a condition called the 'NXDOMAIN' occurred.

Main Features

  • Support of the following fully pre-configured domain blocklist sources (free for private usage, for commercial use please check their individual licenses)
Source Enabled Size Focus Information
adaway x S mobile Link
adguard x L general Link
anti_ad L compilation Link
android_tracking S tracking Link
andryou L compilation Link
anudeep M compilation Link
bitcoin S mining Link
disconnect x S general Link
energized_blugo XL compilation Link
energized_blu XL compilation Link
energized_porn XXL compilation+porn Link
energized_ultimate XXL compilation Link
energized_unified XXL compilation Link
firetv_tracking S tracking Link
games_tracking S tracking Link
gaming S gaming Link
notracking XL tracking Link
oisd_nl XXL general Link
openphish S phishing Link
phishing_army S phishing Link
reg_cn M reg_china Link
reg_cz M reg_czech+slovak Link
reg_de M reg_germany Link
reg_es M reg_espania Link
reg_fi S reg_finland Link
reg_fr S reg_france Link
reg_id M reg_indonesia Link
reg_it M reg_italy Link
reg_kr S reg_korea Link
reg_nl M reg_netherlands Link
reg_pl1 S reg_poland Link
reg_pl2 S reg_poland Link
reg_ro M reg_romania Link
reg_ru M reg_russia Link
reg_vn S reg_vietnam Link
shallalist L general Link
shallalist_porn XXL general+porn Link
smarttv_tracking S tracking Link
spam404 S general Link
stevenblack L compilation Link
stevenblack_porn L compilation+porn Link
stopforumspam S spam Link
utcapitole L general Link
utcapitole_porn XXL general+porn Link
wally3k S compilation Link
whocares M general Link
winhelp S general Link
winspy S win_telemetry Link
yoyo x S general Link
  • List of supported and fully pre-configured adblock sources, already active sources are pre-selected.
    To avoid OOM errors, please do not select too many lists!
    List size information with the respective domain ranges as follows:
    S (-10k), M (10k-30k) and L (30k-80k) should work for 128 MByte devices,
    XL (80k-200k) should work for 256-512 MByte devices,
    XXL (200k-) needs more RAM and Multicore support, e.g. x86 or raspberry devices.
  • Zero-conf like automatic installation & setup, usually no manual changes needed
  • Simple but yet powerful adblock engine: adblock does not use error prone external iptables rulesets, http pixel server instances and things like that
  • Supports five different DNS backend formats: dnsmasq, unbound, named (bind), kresd or raw (e.g. used by dnscrypt-proxy)
  • Supports four different SSL-enabled download utilities: uclient-fetch, wget, curl or aria2c
  • Supports SafeSearch for google, bing, duckduckgo, yandex, youtube and pixabay
  • Fast downloads & list processing as they are handled in parallel running background jobs with multicore support
  • Supports a wide range of router modes, even AP modes are supported
  • Full IPv4 and IPv6 support
  • Provides top level domain compression ('tld compression'), this feature removes thousands of needless host entries from the blocklist and lowers the memory footprint for the DNS backend
  • Provides a 'DNS File Reset', where the generated DNS blocklist file will be purged after DNS backend loading to save storage space
  • Source parsing by fast & flexible regex rulesets, all rules and source information are placed in an external/compredd JSON file ('/etc/adblock/adblock.sources.gz')
  • Overall duplicate removal in generated blocklist file 'adb_list.overall'
  • Additional local blacklist for manual overrides, located in '/etc/adblock/adblock.blacklist'
  • Additional local whitelist for manual overrides, located in '/etc/adblock/adblock.whitelist'
  • Quality checks during blocklist update to ensure a reliable DNS backend service
  • Minimal status & error logging to syslog, enable debug logging to receive more output
  • Procd based init system support ('start', 'stop', 'restart', 'reload', 'enable', 'disable', 'running', 'status', 'suspend', 'resume', 'query', 'report', 'list', 'timer')
  • Auto-Startup via procd network interface trigger or via classic time based startup
  • Suspend & Resume adblock temporarily without blocklist reloading
  • Provides comprehensive runtime information
  • Provides a detailed DNS Query Report with DNS related information about client requests, top (blocked) domains and more
  • Provides a powerful query function to quickly find blocked (sub-)domains, e.g. for whitelisting
  • Provides an easily configurable blocklist update scheduler called 'Refresh Timer'
  • Includes an option to generate an additional, restrictive 'adb_list.jail' to block access to all domains except those listed in the whitelist file. You can use this restrictive blocklist manually e.g. for guest wifi or kidsafe configurations
  • Includes an option to force DNS requests to the local resolver
  • Automatic blocklist backup & restore, these backups will be used in case of download errors and during startup
  • Send notification E-Mails in case of a processing error or if the overall domain count is ≤ 0
  • Add new adblock sources on your own, see example below
  • Strong LuCI support, all relevant options are exposed to the web frontend

Prerequisites

  • OpenWrt, tested with the stable release series (19.07.x) and with the latest rolling snapshot releases. On turris devices it has been successfully tested with TurrisOS 5.1.x
    Please note: Older OpenWrt releases like 18.06.x or 17.01.x are not supported!
    Please note: Devices with less than 128 MByte RAM are not supported!
  • A usual setup with an enabled DNS backend at minimum - dump AP modes without a working DNS backend are not supported
  • A download utility with SSL support: 'wget', 'uclient-fetch' with one of the 'libustream-*' ssl libraries, 'aria2c' or 'curl' is required
  • A certificate store such as 'ca-bundle' or 'ca-certificates', as adblock checks the validity of the SSL certificates of all download sites by default
  • Optional E-Mail notification support: for E-Mail notifications you need to install the additional 'msmtp' package
  • Optional DNS Query Report support: for DNS reporting you need to install the additional package 'tcpdump-mini' or 'tcpdump'
  • Optional support for gnu awk as alternative to the busybox default, install the additional package 'gawk'

Installation & Usage

  • Update your local opkg repository (opkg update)
  • Install 'adblock' (opkg install adblock). The adblock service is enabled by default
  • Install the LuCI companion package 'luci-app-adblock' (opkg install luci-app-adblock)
  • It's strongly recommended to use the LuCI frontend to easily configure all aspects of adblock, the application is located in LuCI under the 'Services' menu
  • Update from a former adblock version is easy. During the update a backup is made of the old configuration '/etc/config/adblock-backup' and replaced by the new config - that's all

Adblock CLI Options

  • All important adblock functions are accessible via CLI as well.
    Please note: The 'status' command in 19.07.x and TurrisOS is only available via 'status_service'

Adblock Config Options

  • Usually the auto pre-configured adblock setup works quite well and no manual overrides are needed
Option Default Description/Valid Values
adb_enabled 1, enabled set to 0 to disable the adblock service
adb_srcarc -, /etc/adblock/adblock.sources.gz full path to the used adblock source archive
adb_srcfile -, /tmp/adb_sources.json full path to the used adblock source file, which has a higher precedence than the archive file
adb_dns -, auto-detected 'dnsmasq', 'unbound', 'named', 'kresd' or 'raw'
adb_fetchutil -, auto-detected 'uclient-fetch', 'wget', 'curl' or 'aria2c'
adb_fetchparm -, auto-detected config options for the selected download utility, e.g. to disable the certificate check
adb_trigger -, not set trigger network interface or 'not set' to use a time-based startup
adb_triggerdelay 2 additional trigger delay in seconds before adblock processing begins
adb_debug 0, disabled set to 1 to enable the debug output
adb_nice 0, standard prio. valid nice level range 0-19 of the adblock processes
adb_forcedns 0, disabled set to 1 to force DNS requests to the local resolver
adb_maxqueue 4 size of the download queue to handle downloads & list processing in parallel
adb_dnsdir -, auto-detected path for the generated blocklist file 'adb_list.overall'
adb_dnstimeout 10 timeout in seconds to wait for a successful DNS backend restart
adb_dnsinstance 0, first instance set to the relevant dns backend instance used by adblock (dnsmasq only)
adb_dnsfilereset 0, disabled set to 1 to purge the final DNS blocklist file after DNS backend loading
adb_dnsflush 0, disabled set to 1 to flush the DNS Cache before & after adblock processing
adb_dnsinotify -, not set set to 1 to prevent adblock triggered restarts for DNS backends with autoload functions
adb_dnsallow -, not set set to 1 to disable selective DNS whitelisting (RPZ pass through)
adb_lookupdomain example.com external domain to check for a successful DNS backend restart or 'false' to disable this check
adb_portlist 53 853 5353 space separated list of firewall ports which should be redirected locally
adb_report 0, disabled set to 1 to enable the background tcpdump gathering process for reporting
adb_reportdir /tmp path for DNS related report files
adb_repiface -, auto-detected name of the reporting interface or 'any' used by tcpdump
adb_replisten 53 space separated list of reporting port(s) used by tcpdump
adb_repchunkcnt 5 report chunk count used by tcpdump
adb_repchunksize 1 report chunk size used by tcpdump in MB
adb_backup 1, enabled set to 0 to disable the backup function
adb_backupdir /tmp path for adblock backups
adb_tmpbase /tmp path for all adblock related runtime operations, e.g. downloading, sorting, merging etc.
adb_safesearch 0, disabled set to 1 to enforce SafeSearch for google, bing, duckduckgo, yandex, youtube and pixabay
adb_safesearchlist -, not set Limit SafeSearch to certain provider (see above)
adb_safesearchmod 0, disabled set to 1 to enable moderate SafeSearch filters for youtube
adb_mail 0, disabled set to 1 to enable notification E-Mails in case of a processing errors
adb_mailreceiver -, not set receiver address for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailsender no-reply@adblock sender address for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailtopic adblock notification topic for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailprofile adb_notify mail profile used in 'msmtp' for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailcnt 0 minimum domain count to trigger E-Mail notifications
adb_jail 0 set to 1 to enable the additional, restrictive 'adb_list.jail' creation
adb_jaildir /tmp path for the generated jail list

Examples

Change the DNS backend to 'unbound':
No further configuration is needed, adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/var/lib/unbound' by default.

Change the DNS backend to 'named' (bind):
Adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/var/lib/bind'.
To preserve the DNS cache after adblock processing you need to install & configure 'bind-rdnc'.
To use the blocklist please modify '/etc/bind/named.conf':

Change the DNS backend to 'kresd':
Adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/etc/kresd', no further configuration needed.
Please note: The knot-resolver (kresd) is only available on Turris devices and does not support the SafeSearch functionality yet.

Enable E-Mail notification via 'msmtp':
To use the email notification you have to install & configure the package 'msmtp'.
Modify the file '/etc/msmtprc':

Finally enable E-Mail support and add a valid E-Mail receiver address in LuCI.

Service status output:
In LuCI you'll see the realtime status in the 'Runtime' section on the overview page.
To get the status in the CLI, just call /etc/init.d/adblock status or /etc/init.d/adblock status_service (in 19.07 and TurrisOS):

The 'last_run' line includes the used start type, the run duration, the memory footprint after DNS backend loading (total/free/available) and the date/time of the last run.

Edit, add new adblock sources:
The adblock blocklist sources are stored in an external, compressed JSON file '/etc/adblock/adblock.sources.gz'. This file is directly parsed in LuCI and accessible via CLI, just call /etc/init.d/adblock list:

To add new or edit existing sources extract the compressed JSON file gunzip /etc/adblock/adblock.sources.gz.
A valid JSON source object contains the following required information, e.g.:

Add an unique object name, make the required changes to 'url', 'rule', 'size' and 'descurl' and finally compress the changed JSON file gzip /etc/adblock/adblock.sources.gz to use the new source object in adblock.
Please note: if you're going to add new sources on your own, please make a copy of the default file and work with that copy further on, cause the default will be overwritten with every adblock update. To reference your copy set the option 'adb_srcarc' which points by default to '/etc/adblock/adblock.sources.gz'
Please note: when adblock starts, it looks for the uncompressed 'adb_srcfile', only if this file is not found the archive 'adb_srcarc' is unpacked once and then the uncompressed file is used

Support

Please join the adblock discussion in this forum thread or contact me by mail dev@brenken.org

Have fun!
Dirk