[lug] monitoring kids

[Zan Lynx]

On 5/5/2020 11:38 AM, Davide Del Vento wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> For the series better late than never, I would like to track my kids use 
> of their computers which is supposedly be only "school" and for obvious 
> reasons has skyrocketed to a large amount of time.
> 
> The first kid works on a Linux box, where I am root and the kid is not, 
> so that may be easy. The second one has a BVSD-provided chromebook where 
> I don't even have an account (as far as I know) but I could "kindly ask" 
> the kid to lend me the machine so I can make sure everything is safe an 
> up to date. Alternatively, I could do something on the modem-router, 
> which is a combined device made by Motorola, model MG7540. At this point 
> I would only know where they are spending their time, not necessarily 
> block things (yet?)
> 
> I have no idea where to start for any of the three options. I fear both 
> https://xkcd.com/1445/ <https://xkcd.com/1445/> (or equivalently 
> https://xkcd.com/1801/ <https://xkcd.com/1801/>) as well as not 
> considering an option which may be the best one, simply because I do not 
> know about it. Any insight or suggestion?

The very simplest, but also easy to evade, is to replace the local DNS 
lookup server with one of your own, set to log all of the lookups.

I believe many people use a Raspberry Pi for this but anything will work 
really. I have seen it done with OpenWRT so if you want to get a new 
WiFi router and use that it would work too. I think that was someone 
else's suggestion already.

Anyway, set up the DNS server for logging, set a network log target to a 
remote syslog destination (rsyslog can do it), set the DHCP server 
(probably on your router) to use that DNS and let it rip.

That lets you see the names of the sites they look up. Easy to bypass if 
they explicitly set their own DNS or use the web browser settings to use 
a HTTPS DNS.

Way up there in difficulty is setting up your own SSL intercept proxy 
and using a firewall to deny any traffic it can't read.

-- 
                 Knowledge is Power -- Power Corrupts
                         Study Hard -- Be Evil