Blocklists

A collection of DNS blocklists used by rethinkdns/configure for use with any DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS client, like the RethinkDNS + Firewall app for Android. As of Dec 2022, 194 blocklists are ingested with ~13.5 million domain names.

Adding a new blocklist

Fork and edit config.json. Then, add a new entry (if not already present) at the bottom of the json file, as its last entry:

    {
      "vname": "Combined Privacy Block Lists: Light (bongochong)",

      "group": "Privacy",
      "subg": "CPBL",

      "format": "wildcard",
      "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bongochong/CombinedPrivacyBlockLists/master/MiniLists/NoFormatting/mini-cpbl-wildcard-blacklist.txt",

      "pack": ["liteprivacy", "recommended"],
      "level": [0, 0]
    }

where,

1. Name
   1. vname
      • a string, human-readable name of the blocklist.
      • may be empty, but preferably not.
2. Qualifiers
   1. group
      • a non-empty string, buckets blocklists into a group.
      • current in-use groups are: Privacy, Security, ParentalControl.
   2. subg
      • a string, usually the blocklist project itself (like 1Hosts, RPi, StevenBlack etc).
      • may be empty.
3. Files
   1. format
      • a non-empty string or a list of strings, identifies the file-format of blocklists (as defined in the url field).
      • supported file-formats: domains, hosts, abp, wildcards.
   2. url
      • a non-empty string or a list of strings, points to urls where the blocklists exists.
      • should be a well-formed http url; example: https://fanboy.co.nz/r/fanboy-ultimate.txt, or a list of well-formed http urls ["https://url1...", "https://url2..."].
4. Characteristics
   1. pack
      • an array of strings, tags the blocklists into an overarching category.
      • some of the categories are spam, spyware, malware, scams & phishing, adult, drugs, gambling, social-media, smart-tv, games, shopping, dating, vanity, facebook, google, amazon, vpn & proxies, url-shorteners, privacy etc.
      • may be empty.
   2. level
      • an array of numbers, one per pack.
      • denotes an arbitrary calibration of the severity of the blocklist for a given pack, that is (0 for lite, 1 for aggressive, 2 for extreme); for example, NSO + others (Amnesty) blocklist for Security is 2 (extreme) on spyware blocks, but 0 (lite) on privacy blocks.
      • empty only if pack is empty.

Submit a pull-request of your changes to have it considered for an inclusion in the default Rethink DNS implementation of both the client and the resolver.

Developing

If you're a developer looking to experiment with the code-base or generate your own compressed blocklist:

1. Download blocklists.

   # parses `config.json` and downloads blocklists in to 'blocklistfiles' dir
   pip3 install aiohttp
   python3 download.py
   

2. Build a compressed, succinct radix-trie of all domains in downloaded blocklists.

   # parses downloaded files in the ./blocklistfiles directory to create
   # a compressed, compact radix-trie and related files in the ./result directory.
   node --max-old-space-size=16384 ./src/build.js
   

3. Upload the radix-trie and associated files to S3 / R2.

   # set aws environment variables for ubuntu/mac, like so:
   export AWS_ACCESS_KEY = "access-key"
   export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = "secret-key"
   export AWS_BUCKET_NAME = "bucket-name"
   npm i
   # uploads files in the 'result' dir to S3 / R2.
   node ./src/upload.js