Nothing But Net

To the end user, the internet is only what you can browse to. So, we Nothing but Net built an "application" that ensures users only access a browser, reminding them when they forget.

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Inspiration

We were working on a more boring network monitoring project when, around midnight, inspiration struck. Jay thought of a new team name, "nothing but net." Then a silly idea came into our heads. What if we could ban a user from accessing anything but browser websites, playing a silly sound every time they tried to circumvent the firewall? They would be able to access nothing but the net. Jacob suggested that perhaps we could use IPtables to set up rules and update a log when the rules were violated. We were off!

What it does

The program blocks all traffic from anything but internet browsers. It mocks the user if they try to use anything but the net.

How we built it

We set up IPtables rules to block any interaction unless it comes from an HTTP URL or Google's DNS. We set up a log file that adds a warning every time the user attempts an interaction that violates the rules. Whenever the log is updated with one of the nothingButNet warnings, a Bash script plays the Jurassic Park "ah ah ah, you didn't say the magic word" sound.

Challenges we ran into

We had a hard time figuring out how to allow DNS from a browser but block other types of traffic. We ended up creating a workaround with the IP address of google, blocking everything except that.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were having trouble coming up with an interesting idea, but even after changing course halfway into the hackathon, we made something funny that works.

What we learned

Most of us have never used IPtables before, and two of us were inexperienced in Bash before this. We learned about using a raspberry pi, accessing it remotely, and using Linux. Our team is made up of people with a variety of coding experience, and we spent a lot of time just exploring things we hadn't done before. We learned a lot from each other's skill sets in the past 24 hours.

What's next for Nothing But Net

Perhaps Nothing But Net will troll more than just a raspberry pi someday. The team is thinking of making a desktop application or a browser extension out of our project. This would make a good April Fools joke!

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