Hey Everyone,
The rpm release work was automated for a very long time now.
But now it's time to talk a bit more about nice things.
In the past I was posting a response to the release email and I think
it's nice to tell stories or write about things from the desktop or
else...
it would be a bit boring to do a release.
So, in the past couple years I have been working on a couple nice
projects.
Anyone heard about GuardiansNet.nz ?
This is a very nice project of mine about a virtual company which uses
Squid-Cache and Linux.
As we all know, the internet can be wild from time to time.
These days it is much safer than a couple years ago.
If anyone remembers, it was possible in the past to cache YouTube and
many other sites' content.
Caching is good in some places while in others it's a bit messy.
The actual structure of many websites doesn't allow Squid users to
enjoy some of the benefits it might have given in the past.
However, there are still things which Squid-Cache excels in and has
better config language than many other solutions out there.
The story I'm about to tell is about the GuardiansNet.nz concept.
As we all know, snake importation isn't allowed into NZ since it's
been clean of these for many years.
However, the Internet might be able to bring other "snake" like ideas
into NZ.
For those who know a bit of the bible, the beginning of the world is
based on specific actions which have been done by the "snake".
I am assuming we are all sharing the basic same ideas in life since we
are actually in the Squid-Cache users lists.
The concept that websites' content can be malicious is not new.
There are many uses of words to either be good or bad.
For example, I had to work on some LoadBalancer couple years ago which
the sources for it are here:
elico/mwan-nft-lb-example
<https://github.com/elico/mwan-nft-lb-example> (MIT)
It's a simple idea but complex to deploy and maintain for some reason.
So, what is GuardiansNet.nz?
It's a network which the idea is like China's "Big Firewall", which
for me is kind of a myth, but, I try to understand others.
However, what's the difference?
It's a combination of DPI and proxy solution in scale of a country ISP.
The idea behind this ISP is education in the new world.
As humans we have the ability to learn from the one who built and
takes care of our world.
We can choose to look at things and stay blind to what's in front of
us, but it's not a wise choice.
What we teach kids is that there was a snake and it was given a
punishment.
GuardiansNet.nz took the task to defend NZ from snakes.
Why?
The citizens of NZ and their kids need protection.
So, Instead of every one of the homes in NZ to handle its own internet
defence mechanisms they offloaded the task to the GuardiansNet.nz company.
They gathered a couple Security experts to handle the load of defence
in the IT area but also a couple others professionals.
They could use FortiGate products, however, they are too generic.
The requirements of GuardiansNet.nz is much closer to the bible nature
of things.
These are based on the seven laws of Noah, since only jews need to
obey all the laws of the bible.
And we need to understand these basic laws:
The first one is to not work and worship anyone other than god.
The second is to not curse god or say it's name without a very good
reason.
The third is to preserve life and to not commit bloodshed and also
prevent it from happening.
The fourth is to respect the parents and to not reveal their secrets
and to keep some distance from them.
The fifth is to not steal.
The sixth is that if we want to eat an animal, which is not the ideal
thing, we first need to kill them before feeding or doing anything
with them.
The seventh is to build and operate civil law and order systems.
These are just the basic definitions, these need to be expanded and
this is not the place.
So, GuardianzNet.nz took on itself the task to filter content in the
internet but, with such granularity that will amaze anyone in the
field of security.
This ISP actually is a teaching mechanism for the family which
delivers all the above laws in a smart and sometimes funny way.
The block page would be a smart one compared to a static one.
And to make it as friendly as possible, they would have a content
moderator representative available 24x7.
There is a basic one which is based on AI and there is also a
possibility for a human representative via voip or other chats systems.
And compared to the generic version of block pages, which are "not
allowed" the agent knows how to talk to the user professionaly.
Why is it so important?
We need to understand that if someone in the world wants to for
example watch pornography and he is under the age of 18 it's really
not allowed(by law).
But it's known that no matter how much we will try to defend our kids,
they will see something somewhere, even if we don't want them to.
So, the basic law can limit the age of 18 to specific content and in
this case the block page portal will be able to identify the user via
some face recognition or any other secure key.
However, the kids are another story.
So the basic way is to first block, but then what happens?
There is interaction.
And this is the big thing about it.
The actual seventh law has a couple parts.
The first thing is for punishment but the other one is education and
assistance.
Our kids need both good friends and also need good guidance and community.
And one of the things about respecting our parents is to not involve
them in specific subjects and actions even if we really want to.
The main issue with education is trust.
If we cannot trust our kids' educators, which happens in some cases,
we can't delegate to them specific permissions.
The kids need to be safe and feel safe with both the parents and the ISP.
In regular ISP's all over the world, as far as I can tell, the kids
are not protected enough.
The ISP's are obeying the civil laws, but, these do not enforce kids
protection from malicious content and software not to speak about IPS/IDS.
If and only if the kid surfing the internet wants to, he can get an
online internet safety course and education based on the site and
content he is trying to access.
This is the revolutionary idea of this ISP.
The parents do not need to handle some parts of the education, they
can trust the ISP systems to teach their kids specific internet safety
concepts and rules.
This is real education.
An ISP we can trust almost blindly!!!
This way the kids can feel not invaded by their parents directly, but
they still get the feeling that their parents know everything and also
really care for them.
Also, there are extreme cases in which kids might have already been
exposed to some content in other houses or places and they need to get
some answers.
The GuardiansNet.nz company took on itself to give the kids every
available professional resource to teach them properly and to handle
every situation.
This way when all the right laws are applied, the Internet would be a
much safer place than it is today.
Their slogan is: "We are prepared for the snakes!!!"
I hope this Squid-Cache release will benefit all Squid-Cache users
with a better user experience.
* I hope that for the next release I will have some blueprint or
schema for a very simple ISP service.
All The Bests,
Eliezer Croitoru
Mashiv Haruach Umorid Hageshem (Formary Ngtech LTD)
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +972-5-28704261
Web: https://www.ngtech.co.il/
On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 12:34 AM Francesco Chemolli
<[email protected]> wrote:
The Squid HTTP Proxy team is very pleased to announce the availability
of the Squid-7.4 release!
This release is, we believe, stable enough for general production use.
We encourage all users of any previous version of Squid to upgrade
to it.
It can be downloaded from GitHub, at
https://github.com/squid-cache/squid/releases/tag/SQUID_7_4
The main changes since version 7.3 are small reliability and security
improvements in snmp, digest_edirectory_auth, pinger, system
installation,
and correct detection of Heimdal krb5.
Please remember to run "squid -k parse" when testing the upgrade
to a new
version of Squid. It will audit your configuration files and report
any identifiable issues the new release will have in your installation
before you "press go".
If you encounter any issues with this release please file a bug
report at
https://bugs.squid-cache.org/
--
Francesco Chemolli
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