DansGuardian, written by SmoothWall Ltd

SmoothWall

Smoothwall is a Linux distribution designed to be used as an open source firewall. Designed for ease of use, Smoothwall is configured via a web-based GUI, and requires little or no knowledge of Linux to install or use....

 and others, is content-control software

Content-control software

Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...

: software designed to control which websites users can access. It also includes virus filtering and usage monitoring features. DansGuardian must be installed on a Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 or GNU/Linux computer, such as a server computer; its filtering extends to all computers in an organization, including Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Macintosh

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 computers. DansGuardian is used by schools, businesses, value-added Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

s, and others.

Virus filtering

DansGuardian can use ClamAV to scan for, and block, viruses

Computer virus

A computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...

, in the files that users download.

Usage monitoring

DansGuardian saves log files showing who has visited which webpage. These files can be reviewed manually or with the help of log analysis

Log analysis

Log analysis is an art and science seeking to make sense out of computer-generated records...

 software.

Open source

DansGuardian is one of the few widely used content control systems that makes its source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 available, thus avoiding some of the criticisms associated with content control system proxies being "black box" systems.

Technical details

DansGuardian is distributed under the GPLv2 free software license, and written using the C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 programming language. It primarily runs in GNU/Linux and other Unixes. It is entirely command line and web-based, and meant to be used in conjunction with a web proxy such as Squid

Squid cache

Squid is a proxy server and web cache daemon. It has a wide variety of uses, from speeding up a web server by caching repeated requests; to caching web, DNS and other computer network lookups for a group of people sharing network resources; to aiding security by filtering traffic...

. The Ubuntu Christian Edition GNU/Linux distribution includes a graphical user interface (GUI) tool for configuring DansGuardian, but the tool does not work as well as the configuration tools included with SmoothWall

SmoothWall

Smoothwall is a Linux distribution designed to be used as an open source firewall. Designed for ease of use, Smoothwall is configured via a web-based GUI, and requires little or no knowledge of Linux to install or use....

 Guardian, and other web filters. Although there is a graphical user interface available for Ubuntu, called WebContentControl, which installs and configures DansGuardian, FireHol

FireHOL

FireHOL is a firewall application designed to work with a lower level firewall utility for the Linux kernel, iptables.FireHOL does not use a GUI, but is configured through an easy to understand plain text configuration file....

 and TinyProxy

Tinyproxy

Tinyproxy is a HTTP proxy server daemon for POSIX operating systems. Designed to be fast and small, it is useful when an HTTP/HTTPS proxy is required, but the system resources for a larger proxy are unavailable. Because of this reason, it has been put to uses such as a tether on the iPhone, and on...

 easily.

Legal details

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, DansGuardian satisfies the requirements of Children's Internet Protection Act

Children's Internet Protection Act

The Children's Internet Protection Act requires that K-12 schools and libraries in the United States use Internet filters and implement other measures to protect children from harmful online content as a condition for the receipt of certain federal funding...

.

Proprietary versions

Two proprietary versions of DansGuardian exist; SmoothGuardian is a module for SmoothWall

SmoothWall

Smoothwall is a Linux distribution designed to be used as an open source firewall. Designed for ease of use, Smoothwall is configured via a web-based GUI, and requires little or no knowledge of Linux to install or use....

 Limited Firewalls, and SmoothWall Network Guardian is a stand-alone product. The SmoothWall implementation of DansGuardian represents a Becta

Becta

Becta was a non-departmental public body ] funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, in the UK It was a charity and a company limited by guarantee. In the post-election spending review in May 2010, it was announced that Becta was to be abolished...

certified web filtering system.

Forks

There is now a fork of Dansguardian Project called MinD. Its name is a recursive acronym for MinD is not Dansguardian. The "Toy" version of MinD is a fork of Dansguardian Project version 2.10.1.1 with some improvements.

External links

• DansGuardian Website
• DansGuardian Wiki
• squidGuard Website
• URLBlacklist
• Matt Villano, "What Are We Protecting Them From?," T.H.E. Journal, 5/1/2008, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22573
• MinD Project