22 years after the formation of the 2002 branch in 3.0, the Privoxy 4.0.0 proxy server was released, designed to create personal web content filters. With Privoxy, you can cut out ads, reject tracking cookies, delete pop-up dialogs, block the loading of third-party JavaScript code, and make arbitrary changes to web pages as required by the user. Privoxy supports installation both on local systems of individual users and on servers to create a centralized content filtering infrastructure in a local network. The project code is written in C and is distributed under the GPLv2+ license.
Some of Privoxy's advanced features include: the ability to bind tags to change filter behavior based on individual client and server HTTP headers; an HTTPS inspection mode that allows filtering HTTPS requests and responses; the use of regular expressions in configuration files; and the ability to replace animated gifs with truncated static images. Privoxy can be used to block ads and unwanted content on devices where it is impossible to install the appropriate browser add-ons.
Among the changes in the new release:
- Added the ability to use the wolfSSL and mbedTLS 3.x cryptographic libraries for HTTPS inspection mode. Compared to mbedTLS, the wolfSSL library supports TLS 1.3 and works twice as fast. Compared to OpenSSL 3.x using elliptic curves, wolfSSL lags behind in performance.
- Added tools for testing Privoxy operation.
- Added support for the pcre2 regular expression library.
- For certificates and key files, the SHA5 algorithm is used instead of MD256.
- Added blocking of requests to ".amazon-adsystem.com/", "0.css-load.com/", "html-load.com/", "b.6sc.co/", "i.clean.gg/", "s.cpx.to/", "track.venatusmedia.com/", "secure-eu.nmrodam.com/", "o2.mouseflow.com/".
- Disabled redirects for "services.akteneinsichtsportal.de/", "/wp-content/plugins/pdf-viewer-for-elementor", "syndication.twitter.com/", "archive.softwareheritage.org/", ".creator-spring.com/_next/image" and "accounts.bahn.de/".
The privoxy-4.0.0-stable-src.tar.gz source code archive offered for download is mistakenly detected by antivirus packages as containing the malicious worm "Win32/Nimda". Due to this false positive, SourceForge initially blocked the download of this archive, but then lifted the block. There are reports of false blocking of channels and Facebook accounts that published a direct link to privoxy-4.0.0-stable-src.tar.gz, under the pretext of combating malware distributors. It is assumed that the DistroWatch channel was blocked for this reason.
Source: opennet.ru
