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Websense blocks Geocaching.com

Kit Fox

By Kit Fox
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Happy Humphrey

+Happy Humphrey

Posted
Posted (edited)

So, it's not malicious. :lol:

Whe I do a similar enquiry, it's classified as "Travel". I'd guess that the reason for blocking is not because of the classification, but due to some "malicious" code that it's detecting on a web page. Out of interest, I checked with a colleague and he can see the site no problem (even though he's using the same network at work, sits a few feet away and is supposed to have the same configuration). Very confusing. I'll check tomorrow whether it's now unblocked.

 

(edit to note that I can't see geocaching.com at all now as it's "too busy").

Edited by Happy Humphrey
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admo1972

+admo1972

Posted
Posted

I just tried to log into the site today and got a malicious code block from our network. So I don't know how you guys got it back. Any suggestions?

 

Give it a day. When this topic popped up, geocaching.com was fine for me. It wasn't until the next day that it was blocked. My uninformed guess is that websense has many servers, and any changes to it's database takes a while to propagate through all of them. Your company may be using a server that hadn't received the updated black list. Hopefuly you will have access soon.

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MarcusArelius

MarcusArelius

Posted
Posted

I just tried to log into the site today and got a malicious code block from our network. So I don't know how you guys got it back. Any suggestions?

 

It depends on the method and schedule that your proxy server uses to load the black list from WebSense. Like admo1972 said give it a day for your proxy to get the updated blacklist without GC.com included.

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Vinny & Sue Team

+Vinny & Sue Team

Posted
Posted

So, it's not malicious. <_<

Whe I do a similar enquiry, it's classified as "Travel". I'd guess that the reason for blocking is not because of the classification, but due to some "malicious" code that it's detecting on a web page. Out of interest, I checked with a colleague and he can see the site no problem (even though he's using the same network at work, sits a few feet away and is supposed to have the same configuration). Very confusing. I'll check tomorrow whether it's now unblocked.

 

(edit to note that I can't see geocaching.com at all now as it's "too busy").

Just to clarify, since there has been some confusion engendered by some posters on this thread, the Websense classification of www.geocaching.com as a baddie was NOT due to site content (i.e., the sport or hobby of geocaching) but rather due to executable code contained in some website pages which could be used to attempt to take over some web browsers such as IE 6. If and when geocaching.com IT staffers remove the code, then the site will no longer run the risk of being so classified by Websense. As other posters have noted earlier, it is not a matter that the code IS malicious, but rather that it COULD be malicious, and thus this only poses a problem because there are indeed some malicious websites out there on the web which really do employ such executable code to attempt to take over client PCs. So, it does not make any sense to blame your jobsite IT folks or to blame Wensense, as this phenomenon is simply a necessary concomitant of the heightened security measures in place on the web nowadays due to the very real proliferation of malicious websites.

 

And, if the site-blocking policies of your employer continue to bug you, do what Sue and I do: work for yourself from your home office, and in that way YOU get to act as the IT Site Admin and to set your own rules for what sites are blacklisted or not! :)

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MarcusArelius

MarcusArelius

Posted
Posted

Just to clarify, since there has been some confusion engendered by some posters on this thread, the Websense classification of www.geocaching.com as a baddie was NOT due to site content (i.e., the sport or hobby of geocaching) but rather due to executable code contained in some website pages which could be used to attempt to take over some web browsers such as IE 6. If and when geocaching.com IT staffers remove the code, then the site will no longer run the risk of being so classified by Websense. As other posters have noted earlier, it is not a matter that the code IS malicious, but rather that it COULD be malicious, and thus this only poses a problem because there are indeed some malicious websites out there on the web which really do employ such executable code to attempt to take over client PCs. So, it does not make any sense to blame your jobsite IT folks or to blame Wensense, as this phenomenon is simply a necessary concomitant of the heightened security measures in place on the web nowadays due to the very real proliferation of malicious websites.

 

For the teckies that care:

 

Nowadays corporations, at a minimum, have to protect themselves against hostile workplace lawsuits and to try to prevent pornography form being downloaded onto their computers. Many also want to keep their computers operational and their data confidential so they have to address malicious code coming from the web. The next level is trying to limit employee productivity loss by limiting web access to business use only.

 

Since it is expensive to maintain the filters used to this end companies out-source the filter list management to firms like Websense. Websense categorizes web sites as best they can and sell the lists to corporations.

 

The corporation then decides which categories to block. I think most will block the Malicious site category. Like Vinny said GC.com got into this category because Websense somehow detected it contained some exploitable code and Elias was going to check into it.

 

So Websense must have re-checked the site and put it back into it's normal category.

 

I don't think it will matter much if that category is hobby, game, sport , or travel since most companies do not take filtering to that level.

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rstefano52

+rstefano52

Posted
Posted

I just have to add my "two cents" - right now, I have some "extra time" on my hands at work and I know a lot of the other people here are frequent web surfers so I didn't think too much about going to GC.com once in a while to check out the location of a newly published cashe. As of today, the site is still blocked through our Websense application. I checked with one of the guys in IT (who I was trying to get into GC) and he said he wasn't aware that the company was intentionally blocking the site. So I guess, this is still an issue with Websense. I hope this changes some day but in the meantime, I'll have to use the wap site and maybe a combination of google maps or something like that to tell me where the cache is. OR, I can just wait until I get home and any chances of an FTF are out of the question. I've been caching since April and I still don't have one but I'm still alive and healthy and employed so that's saying a lot! Happy caching.

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