Dynamic filtering: rule syntax

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Rule syntax

A dynamic filtering rule is made of four components: a source hostname, a destination hostname, a request type, and then a keyword which tells what to do with a request which happens to match the three former components.

source-hostname destination-hostname request-type action

Source hostname always corresponds to the hostname extracted from the URL of the web page in the browser.

The destination hostname corresponds to the hostname extracted from the URL of a remote resource which the web page is fetching (or trying to).

The rule always automatically propagates to all subdomains of the source hostname and all subdomains of the destination hostname -- unless the rule is overridden by a narrower rule in one of the subodmains.

The type is the type of the fetched resource.

A request can be blocked (block), allowed (allow), or ignored (noop). A noop rule will cause matching network requests to be ignored by the dynamic filtering engine, but those ignored network requests will still be subjected to static filtering.

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Type-based rules

Type-based rules are used to filter specific types of request on a web page. There currently exists seven types of request which can be dynamically filtered:

• *: any type of request
• image: images
• 3p: any request which 3rd-party to the web page
• inline-script: inline script tags, i.e. scripts embedded in the main document
• 1p-script: 1st-party scripts, i.e. scripts which are pulled from the same domain name of the current web page
• 3p-script: 3rd-party scripts, i.e. scripts which are pulled from a different domain name than that of the current web page
• 3p-frame: 3rd-party frames, i.e. frames elements which are pulled from a different domain name than that of current web page

These rules can apply everywhere, or be specific to a web site. For instance blocking 3rd-party frames is a very good habit security-wise: * * 3p-frame block. This rule translates into "globally block 3rd-party frames".

Another example: wired.com * image block, which means "block images from all origins when visiting a web page on wired.com".

Note that with type-based rules, the destination hostname is always *, meaning "from anywhere".

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Hostname-based rules

Hostname-based rules are used to filter network resources according to their origin, i.e. according to which remote server a resource is pulled. Hostname-based rules have a higher specificity than type-based rules, and thus hostname-based rules always override type-based rules whenever a network request end up matching both a type- and a hostname-based rule.

With hostname-based rule, the type is always *, meaning the rule will apply to any type of request.

For example, * disqus.com * block means "globally block all net requests to disqus.com".

Just like type-based rules, a hostname-based rule can apply only when visiting a specific web site, for example: wired.com disqus.com * noop, which means "do not apply dynamic filtering to net requests to disqus.com when visiting a web page on wired.com. Since this last rule is more specific than the previous one, it will override the global blocking of disqus.com everywhere.

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Actions

A matching rule can do one of three things:

• block: matching net request will be blocked.
  • block dynamic filter rules override any existing static exception filters.
  • Thus you can use them to block with 100% certainty (unless you set another overriding dynamic filter rule).
• allow: matching net request will be allowed.
  • allow dynamic filters rules override any existing static and dynamic block filters.
  • Thus they are most useful to create finer-grained exceptions, and to un-break web sites broken by some static filters somewhere.
• noop: prevent matching net requests from being subjected to dynamic filtering.
  • It cancels dynamic filtering, but it does not cancel static filtering.