PeerGuardian 1.5.

1 User Guide
Brian Bergstrand March 8, 2009

Copyright c 2005-2009 Brian Bergstrand This document may be freely translated into other languages or media.

Contents
1 2 3 4 5 License About Credits Requirements Installation 5.1 5.2 5.3 6 First Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upgrading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upgrading from PeerProtector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 8 8 9 9 9 11 11 12 12 12 12

Conguration 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Internal PeerGuardian Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Creating a Custom List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editing a Lists Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exporting/Merging/Converting Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Temporarily Allowing an Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Finding the Address Associated with a Domain Name . . . . . . . Allow Standard Ports and Its Implications on Security . . . . . . .

7 8 9

Applescript Support Why is Apple.com Blocked? Uninstall

10 Components 10.1 PeerGuardian.kext . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 PeerGuardian.app . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4 10.3 pgagent.app . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 pploader.app . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 pplogger.app . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 PeerGuardian.wdgt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.7 pgstart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.8 pgmerge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.9 xxx.qnation.PeerGuardian.kextload.plist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.10PeerGuardian Uninstaller.app . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Release History 13 13 13 14 14 14 14 14 15

License

PeerGuardian for OS X Copyright c 2005-2009 Brian Bergstrand. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

About

PeerGuardian is Phoenix Labs premier IP blocker for OS X. PeerGuardian integrates support for multiple lists, list editing, automatic updates, and blocking all of IPv4 (TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc), making it the safest and easiest way to protect your privacy on the Internet.

Credits
Thanks to M. Uli Kusterer for UKKQueue: http://www.zathras.de/ programming/sourcecode.htm 7za binary from the p7zip project: http://p7zip.sourceforge.net/ S2DMGraphView from Snowmint Creative Solutions LLC: http://developer. snowmintcs.com/frameworks/sm2dgraphview/index.html Portions of Theodore Tsos uuid library: http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge. net/. Application icon from Phoenix Labs: http://www.phoenixlabs.org/

Requirements
Mac OS X 10.4.9 or greater (Intel or PPC) older versions will not be supported. Growl (http://growl.info) is required for the Temporary Allow feature. Beginning with version 1.4, PG is only supported when running from an Admin account.

5
5.1

Installation
First Install

1. Open the PeerGuardian installation package and complete the installation process. 2. Launch the PeerGuardian application. 3. Relaunch any running P2P applications so PeerGuardian is activated for their connections.

5.2

Upgrading

If you are upgrading from a previous version of PeerGuardian (not PeerProtector!), follow these steps: 1. Quit your P2P applications. 2. Launch PeerGuardian (if not already running) and select Quit Helpers from the PeerGuardian menu. 3. Quit PeerGuardian. 4. Open the PeerGuardian installation package and complete the installation process. This will install and activate the new kernel lter. 5. Launch the new version of PeerGuardian.

6. Relaunch your P2P applications so PeerGuardian is re-activated for their connections. There is no need to reboot your machine to activate the new version.

5.3

Upgrading from PeerProtector

1. Launch PeerProtector (if not already running) and select Quit Helpers from the PeerProtector menu. 2. Quit PeerProtector. 3. Quit your P2P applications. 4. Open the PeerGuardian installation package. This will remove all PeerProtector les that have been renamed. 5. Launch PeerGuardian. 6. Relaunch your P2P applications. There is no need to reboot your machine to activate the new version.

6
6.1

Conguration
Internal PeerGuardian Lists

PeerGuardian creates several automatically maintained internal lists and stores them in sub-folders created in the /Library folder. In addition internet list caches are stored in the Library folder. All of these lists and any folders created by PeerGuardian are considered a private implementation detail and you should not rely on their location or even their existence; especially when creating your own custom lists.

6.2

Creating a Custom List

To create a custom list, open the List Manager window and click the Add button. A sheet will appear allowing you to specify the list details. For an Allow list,

check Allow All. For a block list, uncheck both Allow All Ranges and Allow Standard Ports. Next, enter a description for the list. This is just to help you identify the list, so it can contain anything you like. Now you need to specify the list URL(s). If the list will be stored on your computer, you can click the Choose File button and select a location for the le using the standard OS X Save panel. For a le downloaded from the Internet, you must click the plus (+) button and then type the full URL (including the resource specier http://, ftp://, etc) into the URL text eld. Very Important: In order for the change to be recognized, you must hit the return key. Repeat this for every URL you want to add. For lists stored on your computer, you need to enter IP address ranges. To do this, click the Add button (in the editing sheet, not the List Manager) and enter a description for the range and the starting and ending IP addresses. If the ending IP address is left empty, the starting address will be used to ll it in thereby creating a range of one address. However, if the ending IP address is smaller than the starting address an error will occur. Repeat this for every range you want to add. To remove a range, select it and click the Remove button. Finally, click the OK button and your new custom list will be saved and automatically loaded into the lters.

6.3

Editing a Lists Properties

To edit a list, open the List Manager window and click the Edit button. A sheet will appear allowing you to change the list details. To edit a URL, select the URL from the drop down menu and make your changes. When done, make sure to hit the return key so the change is recognized. To remove a URL, select the URL from the drop down menu, and click the minus (-) button next to the URL text eld.

6.4

Exporting/Merging/Converting Lists

To export or merge one or more lists, open the List Manager window, select the list(s) you wish to merge and then choose Export from the File menu. In the resulting Save panel, you can select the new list format binary or text. The binary format results in smaller les at the expense of human readability. The

text format allows readability at the expense of larger le sizes. If you want to merge list les not managed by PeerGuardian, a command line tool, pgmerge, is included in the PeerGuardian bundle. If PeerGuardian is located in your Applications folder, you would access pgmerge as follows: /Applications/PeerGuardian.app/Contents/Resources/pgmerge

6.5

Temporarily Allowing an Address

This feature requires Growl. When an address is blocked, you can click on the corresponding Growl notication window and a PeerGuardian window will appear front and center permitting you to temporarily allow the address for a certain time period. You can also permanently allow the address if you have previously created a custom allow. Once allowed, it may take a couple of seconds for the address change to take effect (you will see a Growl notication that the Temporary Allow list has been loaded/reloaded) you can then access the previously blocked address. According to the Growl documentation, some themes do not support notication clicks, so be aware of that if it doesnt work for you.

6.6

Finding the Address Associated with a Domain Name

PeerGuardian includes an integrated name lookup utility. Simply select Name Lookup from the le menu, enter the name and press the return key. Addresses associated with the name will be displayed in the Addresses eld and can automatically be added to an existing allow/block list using the provided buttons.

6.7

Allow Standard Ports and Its Implications on Security

When Allow Standard Ports (HTTP and FTP) is turned on for any list and you use local server applications, you run the risk of companies getting through PeerGuardians lters. To allow the convenience of Allow Standard Ports (particularly when browsing the web) and still protect yourself from companies in the block lists, PeerGuardian provides a way to lter remote connections using any Standard Port based on the local port they are connecting to. Example:

10

You are downloading a Bit Torrent le (using the default local port 6881), and a peer at address 192.168.1.254 using port 80 (the HTTP port) tries to connect to your machine. This peer is run by a company in the block list. The peer is allowed to connect even though they are in the block list because port 80 is an allowed Standard Port. To prevent this problem, PeerGuardian offers a way to specify local ports that Standard Ports are not allowed to connect to without going through the normal lters rst. Open PeerGuardians preferences (cmd-,) and enter the local ports you wish to lter in the Filter remote std. port access to these local ports eld. You can enter individual ports and port ranges. Each port or range must be separated by a comma (,) and ranges are specied by a starting port and ending port separated by a dash (-). The ports do not have be in numerical order, and spaces are allowed. Negative numbers and numbers larger than 65535 are not allowed. Example: 4662,6881-6889,5534 This rule would apply PeerGuardians lters to any remote peer trying to connect using a Standard Port to any of the following local ports: 4662, 6881, 6882, 6883, 6884, 6885, 6886, 6887, 6888, 6889, and 5534. Now, going back to our initial example, when peer 192.168.1.254 using port 80 tries to connect to your Bit Torrent client (on port 6881), PeerGuardian applies the block list lters and the peer is blocked from connecting. It is up to you to nd out the local ports that your applications are using and enter them into PeerGuardians port list. In addition to the above, it is recommended that you use any port blocking feature of your applications to block connections initiated from your client to a peer using one of the standard ports. PeerGuardian can only apply the port lters when peers connect to you, not when you connect to other peers (which is less likely, but can still occur). For instance, the Azureus BitTorrent client can block incoming and outgoing connections to any peers using specied data ports (Preferences->Transfer->Ignore peers with these data ports). If your application offers this option, you should enter the following ports: 20, 21, 80, 443.

11

Applescript Support

pploader (10.4) supports basic Applescript commands that can enable/disable the lters and update Internet based lists. Examples: -- Get the current filter state tell application "pploader" set fstate to filters enabled end tell -- Disable the filters -- use true to enable them tell application "pploader" set filters enabled to false end tell -- Check for Internet list updates tell application "pploader" to update lists

Why is Apple.com Blocked?

Since Apple is a software company and a member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the list maintainers include Apples address ranges in the block lists. However, PeerGuardian, ships with HTTP and FTP (PeerGuardian denes these as standard ports) access enabled for the P2P list (which is where the Apple range is dened). This should allow most Apple services to work (.Mac web services, Software Update, iCal updates, etc). There are a few services that are known not to work: 1. iChat Video behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) router. iChat needs to make a connection on a non-standard port to snatmap.mac.com in order to create a video connection through a NAT router. To allow iChat Video to work, you will have to create a custom allow list and and add the IP address(s) for snatmap.mac.com to the custom list. To nd the address(s) for any domain name and automatically add them to a custom list, use the method outlined in Section 6.6.

12

2. Network Time Protocol (NTP) time sync service. The default Mac OS X time server is time.apple.com and is blocked because it also relies on a nonstandard port. To get around this problem, it is recommended that you use an open access educational time server from this list: http://www. eecis.udel.edu/mills/ntp/clock2a.html Educational addresses are not blocked unless you have the EDU list active (which it should not be unless you are on a University network). Government and corporate addresses have a higher chance of being blocked by the P2P block list. You could also add the time.apple.com address to a custom allow list using the method dened in (6.6), but when an alternate address is available for a server, it should be preferred over a custom allow. 3. .Mac POP/IMAP access. While .Mac WebMail works, POP/IMAP access does not. You will have to follow the procedure outlined in (6.6) to create a custom allow entry for the .Mac mail servers.

Uninstall

Launch the PeerGuardian Uninstaller application and enter your admin password. The uninstaller will only remove PeerGuardian.app if its installed in /Applications. If you chose to install the application in a custom location, you will need to manually drag it to the Trash. Do not attempt to uninstall PeerGuardian by any other means.

10
10.1

Components
PeerGuardian.kext

The kernel extension that does the actual packet ltering. Located in /Library/Extensions.

10.2

PeerGuardian.app

The main application that you interact with. It allows you to view log entries, manage and create lists, view statistics and enable/disable the lters. This ap-

13

plication does not have to be running for normal operation of PeerGuardian, you may quit it at anytime. You may place this application anywhere you wish. Please note that the log window only shows events added while the application is running. If you wish to view older events, open /Library/Logs/PeerGuardian.log using Console or your favorite text editor. NOTE: Quitting the background applications must be done when upgrading PeerGuardian.app. Select Quit Helpers from the PeerGuardian menu. Alternatively, you may open Activity Viewer and quit pploader and pplogger using it. Using kill from the command line is not recommended, as the applications may not shutdown correctly. If you choose to use the latter method, make sure PeerGuardian.app has been quit rst, otherwise it will re-launch pploader. The background applications should be manually quit only when performing an upgrade, as they are vital to the proper operation of PeerGuardian.

10.3

pgagent.app

A background helper application that displays the statistics window and the PG global menu bar item. This application is contained within PeerGuardian.app and is added to your Login Items list the rst time PeerGuardian.app is launched.

10.4

pploader.app

A background helper application that handles list management, including updating lists from the Internet and loading them into the kernel lter. A check for list updates is performed every three hours. This application is contained within PeerGuardian.app and is added to your Login Items list the rst time PeerGuardian.app is launched. pploader caches lists it downloads in /Library/Caches/xxx.qnation.PeerGuardian. pploader loads these cache les rst and then looks for updates. That way you are protected even if the lists are not currently accessible via the Internet. File names in this folder may not correspond to URLs in the List Manager this is normal.

10.5

pplogger.app

A background helper application that handles logging events received from the kernel lter. All events are written to /Library/Logs/PeerGuardian.log

14

and the binary le /Library/Caches/xxx.qnation.pghistory (used for statistical graphing). The PeerGuardian.log le is automatically archived and rotated out when it reachs 128MB in size. The binary history le is automatically truncated to half its size when it reaches 512MB in size. In addition to logging, this application noties Growl when block and list events occur. This application is contained within PeerGuardian.app and is added to your Login Items list the rst time PeerGuardian.app is launched.

10.6

PeerGuardian.wdgt

A Dashboard widget that displays block/allow statistics.

10.7

pgstart

A utility used to load/unload the kernel extension as necessary. Located in /Library/Application Support/PeerGuardian/

10.8

pgmerge

A command line utility that can convert/merge lists. See the Export section (6.4) for more information.

10.9

xxx.qnation.PeerGuardian.kextload.plist

The Launchd conguration le used to auto-load the kernel extension at boot time. Auto-loading the extension before login prevents pploader.app from asking for your password. Located in /Library/LaunchDaemons/

10.10

PeerGuardian Uninstaller.app

See section the Uninstall section (9) for details. This application is part of the distribution archive only.

15

11
1.5.1

Release History

Bug Fix: Missing lists in global status app and/or the main GUI app. Bug Fix: possibility of allow lists to being ignored in the kernel lter (dependent on load order). Other minor bug xes.

1.5
Historical and Real-Time graphing of all connections. New global status item that allows quick access to Enable/Disable global and per-list lters. Auto-allow of local network conguration addresses, including DNS servers, routers and assigned interface addresses. Any changes made to the system are automatically detected. Stats now update once per second. Increased size of kernel log buffer for large memory machines. More text list parsing enhancements to recognize more badly formatted entries in the Bluetack lists. Removed blocklist.org lists from the list defaults as the domain no longer belongs to Phoenix Labs. Leopard compatibility. GUI uninstaller. Bug Fix: Files that downloaded correctly but were actually corrupted were being cached locally. If the same le was corrupted the next time it was downloaded, then the corrupted local cache le also failed and so a huge range of addresses could be lost. Corrupted les are no longer cached locally. Bug Fix: OS 9 binary names were not being logged properly on Leopard.

16 Bug Fix: Allowed native IPv6 addresses would be logged with junk for the (name:list) portion of the log entry. Bug Fix: Rare memory leak in pplogger when detaching from the kernel. Bug Fix: Corrupt editing session if a list updated while editing another list.

1.4.2
Text list parsing enhancements to recognize some badly formatted entries in the Bluetack lists. Bug Fix: (Regression) The text list parser would always set the ending address to the start address, thus severely truncating the number of addresses that were actually loaded.

1.4.1
The PG version checker now veries the hash of any downloaded updates. Bug Fix: (Regression) Inability of pploader to load KEXT. Bug Fix: Spurious Installer error for new installs.

1.4
Intel Macs are now fully supported. New statistics: Connections / Blocks per second. Internet based lists support multiple URLs per list. These are combined into one list before loading. Security: Only the user (or root) who originally loaded a list can unload/reload it. Removed delay (by design) that could occur when creating a new temporary allow. The List Manager window now displays extra list info in place of the URL.

17 Blocklist.org lists are back, along with all new list denitions (new installs only). Bluetack lists changed to zip variants. pplogger will try to log the real name of CFM (OS 9 format) apps instead of the wrapper used to launch them (LaunchCFMApp). Bug Fix: pplogger crash if the application involved in the log event was no longer running when the event was processed. Bug Fix: Address 255.255.255.255 was treated as invalid in some circumstances. Bug Fix: (Intel Only) Wrong port numbers in the log le. Bug Fix: (Intel Only) Backwards IP addresses displayed in the PG range editor window. Bug Fix: Multiple unnecessary list reloads after a restart.

1.3.2
Added version checker. Bug Fix: Another possible panic when disabling the lters. Bug Fix: pploader crash when adding a custom Internet based list. Bug Fix: Error merging lists that contained an empty range description. Bug Fix: The Name Lookup window replaced (instead of merging) existing entries with the found addresses. Bug Fix: A click on OK in the prefs window with an empty port rule caused a spurious error.

1.3.1
Integrated name lookup utility with the ability to automatically add found addresses to a custom allow/block list. Automatic list updates can be disabled.

18 pplogger limits Growl notications to ve (5) per second. Bug Fix: Possible kernel panic when disabling the lters (most likely on a dual-cpu when the network was very busy). Bug Fix: Errant error 22 when merging some lists (such as bogon). Bug Fix: Ranges that had a starting address of 0 were being ignored.

1.3
PeerGuardian supports list export/merge/conversion. A comand line tool, pgmerge, is also included in the PeerGuardian bundle. pplogger coalesces duplicate entries. Growl notications for list load/unload/reload. The icon for Growl block notications contains a disabled badge symbol. pplogger will compress the current log le and create a new one whenever the le becomes larger than 128MB. This is a hard runtime limit and does not affect the (smaller) launch time compression limit. pplogger throttles Growl notications if Growl stops responding in a timely manner. Related to the above, log le entries are now near real time even if Growl becomes stalled. In previous versions, a Growl stall would also stall writing events to the log le. The Temporary Address Action window buttons respond to keyboard shortcuts. The Display Blocked Addresses With Growl option has been removed due to Growl being required for temp allow. If you dont want to see blocked notications, you can still turn them off in Growl itself. Reduced shared memory usage for p2p and p2b(v2) lists. Bug Fix: Parsing bug that could allow invalid ranges from text les, which in turn could block 90% of the IP4 address space. Bug Fix: Blocked address count was lower than the actual number being blocked (cosmetic only).

19

1.2
Re-branded to PeerGuardian. First ofcial PhoenixLabs release. Temporary Allow support. Requires Growl. See the Temporarily Allowing an Address section. The lters can now be enabled/disabled from the PeerGuardian dock menu. PeerGuardian widget (statistics only). The log format now includes both the port number and port name (where possible) instead of one or the other. New application icon. PeerGuardian.app now displays a disabled symbol in its dock icon when the lters are disabled.

1.1
Added new port rules support. See the Allow Standard Ports Security section. Added AppleScript support to pploader. The lters can now be enabled/disabled with an AppleScript. The checkboxes in the List Manager window are now disabled to provide visual feedback that they are for status purposes only. Renamed Block Standard Ports to Allow Standard Ports. This is more inline with PG2s Allow HTTP. This is just a name change, there is no need to change the actual setting. Removed port 8080 (alternate HTTP) from the Standard Ports list. Its rarely used by actual HTTP servers and is more likely to be used by AntiP2P companies. The log format has changed to put the year after the month/day and include a timezone. Included PeerProtectorUninstall.sh script. Bug Fix: UDP sockets that did not connect were not being ltered.

20 Bug Fix: Another parsing bug that could cause some addresses to slip through the lter. Bug Fix: pplogger hang during quit when upgrading from a previous version, you will have to Force Quit pplogger using Activity Monitor. Bug Fix: In certain situations, it was possible for list changes to be lost when pploader was quit.

1.0
Unloading the kernel lter is now possible on 10.4.3. pploader will automatically recognize when a new version is installed and unload the current version then load the new one there is no longer a need to reboot. Since there is still a bug preventing unloading on 10.4.2, it is no longer supported. When possible, log entries now contain the process name and process id of the application that attempted the connection. Bug Fix: Kernel panic that occurred when the internal log event buffer became full (which would only occur if pplogger was not running). Bug Fix: Possible innite loop during le parsing (specically if PP somehow tried to parse a binary le). Bug Fix: On wake from sleep, pploader would continually attempt to download the active lists causing high CPU usage. Bug Fix: Rare hang during loading of lists that would cause all connection attempts to be blocked. Bug Fix: pplogger memory leak and two cases of lost entries (both occurring only when the kernel msg buffer was full which is quite rare). Bug Fix: Possible permanent reduction of kernel log buffer.

0.3.5
Added Display Blocked Addresses Only pref to PeerProtectors log window. If checked, allow events will no longer be displayed in the log window. They will still be in the log le though.

21 Minor change in the way pplogger caches port names to reduce memory usage. Fixed bug in pplogger that caused the log le to be compressed and recreated every time pplogger was launched instead of waiting for the size to reach 2MB. Bug Fix: If a list is deactivated, it will now be unloaded from the kernel lter list, this was not done in previous versions. Bug Fix: If you deactivate the lters, quit PeerProtector and re-launch it, PeerProtector will now have the correct state instead of assuming the lters are enabled. Bug Fix: Parsing bug with Bluetack lists that caused some blocked ranges to be ignored (about 500 out of the 86000 in the level1 list).

0.3
Filter events are now logged with the names of ports where it makes sense (e.g., http instead of 80). Block HTTP has been changed to Block Standard Ports as FTP is now included in the ports to allow/block. pplogger will create a new log le during launch if the current one is 2MB or larger. The old le is moved to a date based name and then compressed with bzip2. Fixed a bug in PeerProtector that caused a new entry to be added to your Login Items for both pploader and pplogger every time PeerProtector was launched. You should open your Login Items and remove all of the duplicate entries.

0.2
All new GUI, including support for custom lists (allow or block), Growl block display and other goodies. The kernel lter now blocks ICMP in addition to UDP and TCP.

22 PP can now parse p2p text les in the following format (Bluetack.co.uk uses this): name/description:ipstart-ipend\n Substituted Bluetack.co.uk lists for blocklist.org ones until the whole methlabs incident is resolved.

0.1
First release.