Hi,

Is there a way, a script or a program that enables us to monitor what's being uploaded from our clients? We do not want our clients to upload mp3's or copy-righted mpg (As in full movies) etc.. So is there a way or a suggestion? We're using WHM!

Thanks

I don't have a technical answer for you, but it seems like if you start monitoring for copyrighted content, you completey lose plausible deniability.

And are you going to check with each client, to see if they own the copyright for the material? How are they going to prove it to you?

Okay, I do have a technical answer. Monitor the logs for your "upload" software. Most likely, this will be your FTP server's logs?

Or you could run a search based on extensions daily. But note that either logs or extensions or filename matching are so easy to defeat.

On top of that, it makes you liable if you miss any.

My advice is to rely on reports and then taking action

bitserve, I will not go on with each client checking if they have copyrighted materials and ask them to prove it.. lol... But if I see a file called "britney Spears - slave" well then I don't really need to argue to know that it's copy righted.. Or if I see a 1.3gig file saying "Austin Powers".. You know what I mean ?..

Sprintserve, that's what I'm doing now once or twice a week. If there are any scripts or any solutions, please feel free to share them :)

Thanks

You can install, for example, VSFTPD ftp server. It logs what files are being uploaded and downloaded. You can later view the log file or have a script parse it for you and send you results.
here's the link: http://vsftpd.beasts.org/

You can also explicitly deny certain file extensions from uploading. In proftpd you can apply this config option to /etc/proftpd.conf:

PathDenyFilter "(.*\.mp3)|(.*\.mpg)$"

and other extensions for your needs. The users will be getting Forbidden extension error when trying to upload files with them or renaming uploaded files to those extensions. However, this doesn't stop them from uploading these files through a web-based upload form.

Originally posted by phpdeveloper

You can also explicitly deny certain file extensions from uploading. In proftpd you can apply this config option to /etc/proftpd.conf:

PathDenyFilter "(.*\.mp3)|(.*\.mpg)$"

. [/B]

How about pure-ftp ?

Should have a similar option, need to check.

A command like this:

find '/' -iname *.rar | less

Will scour your machine for any and all rar files. Generally, warez people are smart enough to know that a 1.3GB file will get noticed rather quickly, so rar files aid in keeping the file sizes small and hidden from dumb administrators.

You can use that command with any extension, and infact, if you don't want to look for any specific extensions, you can find files that equal, or are larger than a specified size:

find '/' -size +50000k

Have fun :).

could always use proftpd and use the sql stuff to put username, filesize and filename/location into a database. then you could view it off the web in real time..