Teen Hacks $84 Million Porn Filter in 30 Minutes

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government's $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software's icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use."

b-b-b-but

[by Anonymous Coward]

They said it'd take at least 10 years because they used the same cryptography in Blu-Ray!!!

Re:b-b-b-but

[by Anonymous Coward]

That's why they are so reluctant of allowing porn in Blu-ray. While all we get from breaking the lame DRM is hollywood crapiest, no one will be interested. Once there's porn to be seen, behind DRM...

Re:b-b-b-but

[Jules Mercuri (921249)]

I realize this is mostly a joke but actually, 99% of porn DVDs have no region coding and some have no CSS copy-protection either.

Re:b-b-b-but

[notasheep (220779)]

Not sure if I should be in awe of your knowledge of so many of the porn DVDs, or somewhat disturbed... ;)

What an awesome photo on the news page

[Lt.Hawkins (17467)]

"We got Skynet by the balls now" sums it up quite nicely.

Motivated Youth

[Sponge Bath (413667)]

Keeping a teen from porn is like trying to keep Vervet monkeys out of the fields.
Unless you are willing to shoot them, it is a lost cause.

Re:Motivated Youth

[mulhollandj (807571)]

I strongly disagree. There are very effective ways to keep teens away from porn. They involve teaching a kid to respect themselves and others. It involves talking to your kids about these things. It involves teaching your kids correct principles when they are young and being a good parent. Is it possible to have your child never see porn? Probably not as there are many conspiring men who have their hearts set on addicting as many as they can but you can teach your kid never to go looking for it and what to do if he accidentally finds it.

Re:Motivated Youth

[gerbalblaste (882682)]

I do believe your confusing porn with something emotional and meaningfull, like say a relationship. Its a quick physical release, nothing more.

Re:Motivated Youth

[kennygraham (894697)]

So we should avoid something simply because it's pleasureful? Oh, wait, just saw your sig. That explains it. Carry on.

Re:Motivated Youth

[NMerriam (15122)]

Taking pleasure in something that was not meant solely for that (sex) is not a good thing because you devalue it.

I agree. That's why I force my children to eat nothing but pureed wheat germ. They should certainly never take pleasure in eating because doing so devalues the biological importance of proper nutrition.

Re:Motivated Youth

[DMadCat (643046)]

Too much pleasure is a bad thing if it means you are addicted to it (porn, money, etc.) and it affects your life and relationships.

Does this include taking pleasure in religious worship?

Re:Motivated Youth

[sethawoolley (1005201)]

I do believe your confusing porn with something emotional and meaningful, like say a relationship. Its a quick physical release, nothing more.

It's the hedonistic pleasure part of porn that is the problem. Teach children to not engage in materialistic pleasures and they won't be so interested in porn.

That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?

As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.

I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.

I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.

Just look at what you Christians cherish -- pity, guilt, sin -- not to mention guilt through inheritance, which no rational society anymore recognizes.

May Christianity be the last, dying Hellenistic Mystery Religion.

Re:Motivated Youth

[sethawoolley (1005201)]

That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?

I'll respond to your post since there is more to say and I can reply to yours and the other one at the same time for one of my answers. First, nothing nor no one (such as myself) says a person can't be happy. I only was talking about not getting pleasure from porn. Are you implying that you have no other source of pleasure? I feel bad for you.

In Christianity, pleasure is only good if it aligns with somebody else's pleasure for its their gain -- the religion's mythical (and surrogate) headmasters.

Any incidental pleasure is always denied because it takes joy away from life, and if joy can only be found within the fold, all the better for the psychological meme of religion.

As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.

There are so many other people who have the exact opposite feeling towards religion and Christianity in particular that I'll leave it up to you to realize that Nietzsche doesn't know what he is talking about and more likely has a biased opinion of something he knows nothing about.

Others have already pointed out that you must not know who Nietzsche was.

I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.

Hmm, seems you need to fix your reading comprehension problems. I never said that pleasure in and of itself is bad. I said pleasure from porn is bad.

Because it's pleasure not found in alignment with your religion. The pleasures are so small and so restricted to brainwashing, that ultimately the pleasures are very few. About the only acceptable pleasure is making future brainwashed offspring, and even then, religion has historically debated the merit of such pleasure.

I'll pause for a few seconds while you re-read my post now with that context in place......................back? Ok, good. Now, God gave us sex to not only enjoy but also procreate however those 2 goals are supposed to be done at the same time, not separate. We shouldn't take advantage of the procreation capability to just enjoy meaningless sex. That's where the issue of pleasure comes from. There are millions of things to take pleasure in but taking ONLY pleasure in something like sex is not it's intended purpose. Of course, we humans will mutate anything for our own pleasure (quite relevant in this case). How often we have watched horrific violence time and again because we find it entertaining? This particular topic of porn was in the context of children watching it on the Internet and not adults watching it to enhance their sex lives so with that said why would someone want to watch something alone and get pleasure out of it when they could enjoy it more if they could share it with someone? Again, humans are lazy so we take the easy way out. We'll pleasure ourselves because it is just too time consuming to find someone to enjoy it with. I can't imagine what will happen in 2029.

When children get sexual urges, you would have them restrict them for years. That's repression.

I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.

I do too but I also am not that interested in the materliastic aspects of this world to which you think exposure helps someone become unrepressed. They really aren't that great in the whole scheme of things. Sure, if you are a mindless drone you will take part in those things solely for their immediate rewards but more intelligent people will look past the immediate pleasure and see the greater good.

Again, materialism is by definition, anything not aligned with your religion, so you are implicitly being anti-worldly, and anti-pleasure of anything not "spiritual".

Re:Motivated Youth

[sethawoolley (1005201)]

If it makes you feel better, like many humans, I'm capable of quoting something somebody said before me that was a succinct example of a point I'm making without agreeing with everything else they said.

Quite aside from Nietzsche, although he agreed with me, Christianity started as a Greek Mystery Cult (although I called it a Hellenistic Mystery Religion, the technical, non-loaded term), and has since evolved, but it hasn't strayed too far from its roots since the Bible, while not a complete encapsulation of Christian thought, is fairly well accepted as the definer of Christianity. Yes, there have been lots of changes in Christianity, and modern Christianity looks nothing like it used to (at many points in its history -- although when I say "its", I know it's actually a large tree of denominations).

But ultimately, my point is valid in that its theological foundation still rests (unless you're a fringe Christian) quite squarely with the salvation theology developed by the Hellenistic Mystery Religions.

I don't think Christianity is capable of providing any tool for explaining rationally to or raising mentally sane children. Yes, some Christian denominations allow other things into their belief system that are not Christian in origin, but that is a non-Christian and secular aspect of their particular denomination. Liberal Christians, for example, follow many non-Christian ideological systems (Marxism/Liberation Theology isn't Christian) and American Evangelicals of the Right follow many non-Christian ideological systems, too (economic liberalism is definitely not Christian). They think it is, but they are deluding themselves. They're picking and choosing passages that are merely one part of myriad contradictions and conducting exegeses that aren't part of the theological core of their own religion. This is in fact, the major danger of catechisms that claim universal application (fundamentalism) like Christianity and Islam.

And yes, too, somebody is probably going to ask how I am morally/ethically/correctly able to arrogantly proclaim what is Christian since I'm not a Christian? I study Christianity and other religions very deeply, from an historical perspective. No, I don't believe them, but that doesn't diminish my ability to understand history -- in fact, my lack of faith gives me a more unbiased perspective into their evolutions and synchretisms than they will ever have. Most Christians are really simpletons who know very little about their religion, or, if they have a sophisticated understanding of their own religion, they have just been able to compartmentalize the passages that barely agree with their own world view, however created.

Re:Motivated Youth

[sqrt(2) (786011)]

You're starting all of your thoughts at the idea that teens shouldn't be seeing porn. And to the core of that idea is that teens seeing porn is bad for them. I don't believe there's harm with kids old enough to want to see porn, seeing porn. Don't take my words to mean we should be encouraging it, or that we should make it easy for them to do so, but 84 million to STOP it? That's a little off the deep end of the morality pool for me, that money could have been used in much better ways.

Your teenage children are going to see porn. They're going to look for it. The "Not MY kids!" mentality isn't helping either. Yes, even your perfect Christian soldier children are going to actively seek out and consume pornography at least once in their lives. Whether, and to the extent that they're able to repress that is determined by how much of your morality actually stuck when you were brainwashing them to feel guilty about perfectly natural and healthy things.

But hey, keep on rocking in the free world, I'm not a parent and it's not my job to tell anyone else how to be one. I think I do have a bit more common sense than a lot of the people who do end up raising kids though. Sometimes I think it's a shame I wont have any of my own.

I'm sensing a karma burn here, but what good is having it if you don't use it :P

Re:Motivated Youth

[Rabbit Time! (807699)]

Honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with teens looking at porn. But there are a couple important things to keep in mind, IMO:

a) being exposed to too much porn without any actual, real sexual relationships to compare it to totally screws up your view of what actual sexual relationships are like. This is a good reason to try to limit young teens' porn consumption until they're a little older and have a little more experience. I know some people with seriously f-ed up ideas of how sex should be, or what they expect their partner to be cool with doing...simply because they watch too much porn and don't talk to enough actual women. Fantasy, people. It's fantasy.

b) Weird, violent or just kind of sick porn is getting a lot easier to find and a lot more mainstream. While I, personally, think its totally fine for teens to look at pictures of naked people having sex in moderation, I think that its probably not that healthy for them to be looking at crazy-ass fetish stuff before they have the necessary experience to put it in context. This is not to say that I'm particularly opposed to porn that caters to various fetishes as long as they're made safely with consenting and not coerced performers...just that you need to take the basic class before you move to the advanced level, you know?

This, actually...is why I kind of support making it harder for teens to look at porn, even though I don't really have an issue with it. Because that way, you know they'll figure out some way to get it anyway, but it will hopefully limit their consumption. Its like how when I got older I found out neither of my parents gave a crap about me smoking pot, and knew that I was, but fear of getting caught kept me from smoking too much of it or doing anything really dumb as a teenager. Maybe that's sort of hypocritical viewpoint, but I think its probably fairly practical, since trying to explain to a teenage boy why he should voluntarily control his porn consumption is just not going to work.

Re:Motivated Youth

[NMerriam (15122)]

being exposed to too much porn without any actual, real sexual relationships to compare it to totally screws up your view of what actual sexual relationships are like. This is a good reason to try to limit young teens' porn consumption until they're a little older and have a little more experience. I know some people with seriously f-ed up ideas of how sex should be, or what they expect their partner to be cool with doing...simply because they watch too much porn and don't talk to enough actual women. Fantasy, people. It's fantasy.

Except, I'd say in my experience and those I've know, that romantic movies do FAR more damage to young people's expectations of how real life relationships and sex work. The idea that sex is always some beautifully choreographed, slow-motion event ending in simultaneous orgasm makes LOTS of people think they're doing something "wrong" when they first have sex.

And the vast majority of romance movies, if looked at objectively, basically encourage the notion of relentless pursuit through any means of trickery and illegal activity, no matter how many times the object of your affection says no. Because if you just stalk her enough, eventually she'll realize you're her perfect man! in terms of danger, I'd say that's a MUCH worse idea to put in kids' heads than the idea that maybe they'll meet a girl who likes to blow horses.

Of course I'm not saying we should censor Meg Ryan films so that kids don't get an inappropriate view of romance, just that in real-life relationship terms it is pretty easy for most self-aware teens to understand what is unrealistic about porn.

Re:Motivated Youth

[name*censored* (884880)]

MODERATORS MOD THIS GUY UP - if I had any meta mod points they'd all go to you.

Up until about 12 years old, I was horribly confused as to how on earth millions of people ended up actually meeting, loving, and BEING LOVED IN RETURN by "Mr/Mrs Right". These (disney/romantic/etc) movies had misled me so much that I literally thought that there was only one person you would ever actually possibly fall in love with. I thought it ridiculously improbable that they would also fall in love with you in return (seemed to be more likely that their "one" person could be a different, third person, and the third persons' "one" could be a fourth, etc etc). As in porn, there was no realistic alternate view offered, but unlike porn, these movies were not presented as blatantly 'fantastic'.

Re:Motivated Youth

[feepness (543479)]

Probably not as there are many conspiring men who have their hearts set on addicting as many as they can but you can teach your kid never to go looking for it and what to do if he accidentally finds it.

And if you can't teach your child not to go looking for it, at least teach them to be smart enough to never have to pay for it. I mean, sheesh, this is 2007 people.

Surely you don't mean...

[mutube (981006)]

...but you can teach your kid never to go looking for it and what to do if he accidentally finds it.

Masturbate?

Re:Surely you don't mean...

[Antique Geekmeister (740220)]

Go confess to their priest, who will explain that they should become choirboys and learn about the "eighthth sacrament" that only the most special choirboys get?

Re:Motivated Youth

[UnrefinedLayman (185512)]

Reminds me of Family Guy, when Meg learned some boys she liked were eunuchs:

Boy 1: Hey, do you think that girl is hot?

Boy 2: No!

Boy 1: Me neither.

(high five)

Castrate your kids; save them from Internet porn.

Cheapest Solution...

[arthurpaliden (939626)]

The simplest and cheapest way to stop / reduce a kids ability / opportunity to access porn, an other such nefarious sites, on the Internet is to put the computer in a well traveled place in the home, say beside the kitchen and not up in there room where they cannot be supervised directly.

Its called 'parenting' and it really works.

Rebuttals featuring 'special cases' will be ignored.

Re:Cheapest Solution...

[CastrTroy (595695)]

That's probably the best idea. Don't try to filter stuff, because you're either not filter everything, or filter too much. Just either put your computer in a room where you would be likely to walk by at any time, or put in some kind of proxy machine so that you can monitor what's going on. Even if they use HTTPs, you can see what IPs they are connecting to. This can help determine what they are looking at. Also, once they start looking for it, don't assume the internet is the only place they will find it. We all got a hold of it somehow when we were kids without the internet, and we all turned out pretty normal (by we, I mean just about everybody in society). For the most part, I'd just put the computer in a well travelled room. All this proxy/filter/nanny stuff is too much, and just shows a lot of distrust in your children, and probably won't stop them from seeing porn anyway.

Re:Motivated Youth

[FatSean (18753)]

I'm prepared to shoot moralizers for the sake of teens!

Re:Motivated Youth

[thanatos_x (1086171)]

"I'd be prepared to shoot teens for the sake of morality."

Yes! I mean, Who will think of the children?!

Wait a minu...

And the only reason it took 30 minutes...

[Southpaw018 (793465)]

...was because all the other people were typing one-handed?

84 million dollars?

[gozar (39392)]

Give me half that and I'll re-do their filter so some 15 year old can't get around it....

Seriously, if you're going to spend that amount of money, you'd be farther ahead putting in a router that the government controls that can be continually updated. You also get cross-platform compatibility as a bonus!

Re:84 million dollars?

[jonwil (467024)]

Isn't that what the chinese do?

Re:84 million dollars?

[sumdumass (711423)]

I agree.

I don't know why this kid is even allowed on the Internet. I mean, in my day if we did something against our parents wishes, we got our asses beat with a switch. This kid goes against their wishes to the point they have to install extremely expensive software and then watch him brag about rendering it useless. If there was ever a situation that warranted an ass beating this would be it. If I was his dad, not only would the Internet be pulled from his access, he would get his ass beat and grounded for a couple months. And if he wanted to defy our wishes again, he would get more of the same with some forced labor around the house.

Re:84 million dollars?

[sumdumass (711423)]

Well, why I agree with your sentiment, I don't see why this case of a kid not listening and bragging about getting around things is being diverted from he facts that the kid doesn't listen.

And of course the parents are just as much to blame as the kid is. I guess my outrage started before finding out that someone spent 84 mil on crap. It started when someone though spending 84 mil to work around the kid not listening was the solution. This should never happen. Like it or not, this entire post is unnecessary if the parents would have raise the kid properly. And proper discipline is part of raising a kid.

Re:84 million dollars?

[ketamine-bp (586203)]

hmm, that smells like the great (fire)wall.

Re:84 million dollars?

[statusbar (314703)]

You fail 21st century business.

I used to think this way when I heard about the Canadian Government budgeting $120 million dollars on a database and website for their Gun Registry [wikipedia.org], which ended up costing almost $2 billion. At the point where they spent half a billion dollars on the IT infrastructure alone it still did not work. Phones were not answered, web sites crashed, FAX lines busy.

I then thought "Oh hey I could have built them a distributed database and front end that would work for only about $20 million!"

But that is not what they wanted... They wanted to spend more and they didn't care if it worked. It's all about the kickbacks.

--jeffk++

Tom Wood

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

Tom Wood sounds more like a porn star's screen name.

More Money, More Problems

[by Anonymous Coward]

Could it be that throwing tax dollars at moral problems when not everyone agrees on whether or not said act is immoral is not the best idea?

those poor teens

[icepick72 (834363)]

So now we find out the government has been secretly using teen workers as hackers. Not only is "teen workers" an irony but this could be constituted slave labor. They are faced with the proposed fear of work and so crack the filter as fast as they can. Oh wait ... it's a porn filter ... okay added incentive I admit.

Fucking morons.

[scenestar (828656)]

When are people going to accept that teenagers are sexual beings too.

According to wikipedia he should be around the age of 15/16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Australi a#Secondary [wikipedia.org]

When I was 15 I remember becoming sexually active with girls and having "needs"

No filter can stop teens from getting off, no matter how many millions of dollars you throw at it.

Re:Fucking morons.

[c (8461)]

> When are people going to accept that teenagers are sexual beings too.

Seeing as how these same lunatics haven't accepted that adults are sexual beings, I'm thinking "never".

c.

Re:Fucking morons.

[Sique (173459)]

That's what sexual education is for. There is a direct relationship between the quality of sexual education in school and the number of teens who make it through puberty without causing pregnancy or getting pregnant.

Preaching "True love waits" has a proven effect of NIL.

Here's a link to a real news article...

[stoicfaux (466273)]

The header links to a ad-laden, news light article. Here's a link to a better story with a tad more facts: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-421, 00.html [news.com.au]

If you have physical access

[nurb432 (527695)]

Then it can be broken.

The only way that could even have a prayer to work is at the ISP level.

Re:If you have physical access

[ucblockhead (63650)]

What I plan to do: "Hi Son! I'm not going to filter your access. However, I have access to the router logs, so I suggest you don't go anywhere you don't want me to know about."

Here is the actual story, not blogger's article

[Kaptain Kruton (854928)]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-421, 00.html [news.com.au]
The summary: A 16 year old student wanted porn. He got it in 30 minutes. The government tried to fix the filter. The 16 year old student wanted more porn. He got more in 40 minutes. 16 year old says the porn filter is waste of money.

Re:Here is the actual story, not blogger's article

[Xemu (50595)]

The summary: A 16 year old student wanted porn. He got it in 30 minutes. The government tried to fix the filter. The 16 year old student wanted more porn. He got more in 40 minutes. 16 year old says the porn filter is waste of money.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the government programmers are slashdot readers and are secretly supporting the teen's cause for free pr0n, so they aren't really making the filter hard to break. Just enough of a mental challenge for a horny 16 year old. (This may be why there are so few girl programmers. They don't have the right motivation.)

Dr. Cox quote....

[ZiakII (829432)]

I'm fairly sure that if they took all the porn off the Internet, there'd only be 1 website left, and it would be called Bring Back The Porn.

Filter Schmilter.

[Organic Brain Damage (863655)]

The problem of teen access to internet porn is self-limiting. The boy will eventually go blind and then what's he gonna do? Digitized braille porn?

I'm of two minds on this.....

[Stanislav_J (947290)]

(....although some would say that's 2 minds more than I actually possess. But I digress...)

I applaud any successful circumvention of anything that restricts information to those who want to see it. But at the same time I'm starting to think that we shouldn't be shouting from the housetops about it -- this kind of publicly announced hack is just fuel for the fire to the folks that would ban all even remotely sexually material from the Net. It just gives them the chance to say "well, see, filters don't work worth a damn -- therefore, we must make it illegal for any explicit material to be on the Internet." Can't you hackers just keep your little mouths shut, let the moralists THINK that the filters work (while you quietly and discreetly circulate the hack), and let their ignorance be our bliss?

A Parent's Perspective

[CrankyOldBastard (945508)]

A few years back I found my eldest son (12 at the time( was using the small dark hours to view various kinds of porn. Some was 'normal' but there were many sites that were et the more extreme end of human sexuality.

I set up a transparent proxy with Dansguardian. Do I think it's impossible for my kids to find porn (or other content I'm uncomfortable for my kids to see) ? No. But I do know that it's unlikely for them to stumble across it accidentally. If they set to work to find and view porn, they'll find a way around the filters.

I also took a few of the images C. had looked at, and by zooming and playing with palettes showed him the scars of self-mutilation, the scars from slashed wrists, the track marks, the rotting teeth and the sores. He now knows that many of the girls have pretty nasty problems, as well as nasty habits. He also can see that many of the girls are being exploited, and that porn denigrates humans, unlike art which glorifies the body or casts these girls onto the canvas of our own life to challenge our our nice safe prejudices.

I know if my kids view porn. They know that I know. I also know that they have at least a glimmering of some of the moral and social issues involved. Hopefully I've also provided some guidance about what constitutes 'normal' and what the difference is between sex as an act of love and sex as exploitation for purposes of ego stroking.

So my approach as a parent is (1) make it less likely that they'll find porn by accident (2) make sure they're game to talk to me about it (3) make sure they see woman as more than a set of orifices in a warm bundle (4) make sure they know that their dreams and urges are normal and (5) that they are the only ones who can decide whether they treat Human Beings with respect as Divine Creatures deserve.

I figure that if (however unlikely) I can make some headway on all these points, I'll have got some wins, and their chances of happy future relationships are (slightly?) improved. I think thats my job - the rest is up to them.

Re:I would like a porn filter...

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

A national database of naked children, duh!

Re:Perception

[IANAAC (692242)]

Isn't this what's important to parents? They only need to feel good, other technical details are useless.

Spoken like someone who is not a parent.