hpHosts has been discontinued

[emanruse]

Hi,

I notice that in Chromium "hpHosts’ Ad and tracking servers" always shows as​ "outdated" no matter how many times I refresh it (and "38,900 used out of 45,737") but in Tor browser it updates fine. The same list in uBO works fine in both browsers.

Trying to find the reason myself I notice that:

1. Chromium doesn't like the HTTPS URL of the list (but can open the HTTP one if told explicitly to). The reason for this may be because I am running it with weak ciphers explicitly disabled through command line options (Tor browser supports weak ciphers).

2. The hpHosts list has 2 URLs in uBO's code: both the HTTP and the HTTPS version. Perhaps that's why Chromium falls back to the HTTP one when updating the list through uBO. That is not the case for uMatrix though: in assets.json "hphosts" is only with the HTTPS URL and obviously that's why it fails to update in Chromium.

3. For some reason I cannot "import" manually the HTTP URL in uMatrix assets (even after disabling/unchecking the original asset)

I realize this may be an "upstream/list issue" due to the fact that their server uses weak ciphers. Still I thought it might be worth to report it here as it is an issue with an asset which ships with uMatrix itself.

*I tried to find a way to report this to the site owners but all I find is a "contact us" link which leads to a 403 page and a "contact me" link which leads to a time out page. If this report is considered inappropriate to share here: please kindly excuse me. Perhaps someone who can contact the site owners may want to do it. Otherwise a workaround may be to add the HTTP URL to assets?

Your environment

• uMatrix version: 1.4.0
• Browser Name and version: ungoogled-chromium-80.0.3987.106-1.1
• Operating System and version: openSUSE Leap 15.1

[kentfredric]

It looks like the hosting location for this file is now gone.

The link to the hosts file in assets.json 404's:

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/blob/57eb9fc150a39813a5ece232e026f161b25f601a/assets/assets.json#L48-L56

	"hphosts": {
		"content": "filters",
		"updateAfter": 11,
		"title": "hpHosts’ Ad and tracking servers",
		"contentURL": [
			"https://hosts-file.net/.%5Cad_servers.txt",
			"assets/thirdparties/hosts-file.net/ad_servers.txt"
		],
		"supportURL": "https://hosts-file.net/"
},

https://hosts-file.net/.%5Cad_servers.txt redirects to https://www.malwarebytes.com/browserguard./ad_servers.txt , which 404's.

And the support-url https://hosts-file.net/ redirects to https://www.malwarebytes.com/browserguard

So by the look of it, the only way to fix this now is to kill it :/

(and that's when it works, but the IP address for hosts-file.net randomly times out establishing a connection)

[uBlock-user]

hpHosts has been discontinued.

[gwarser]

It looks like the hosting location for this file is now gone.

Info on official forum: https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/256701-what-happened-to-hphosts-website/?tab=comments#comment-1370003

We are currently restructuring hpHosts and it will no longer be updated. You could however check out our browser extension product...

[uBlock-user]

restructuring is PR spin, see the second response --

Yes, we can understand but unfortunately we're no longer able to support that service

[gorhill]

I meant to comment here, not at uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues#971:

Closing since hpHosts has been removed form stock assets.

[gwarser]

List removed: gorhill/uMatrix@ba0dfe5
Reverted: gorhill/uMatrix@89b7e02
Issue fixed: gorhill/uMatrix@0bcb766

---

New release is required.

[levicki]

I would like to add that I found out that this list is also blocking legitimate non-ad domains -- for example www.fleshlight.com (adult toys shop, NSFW), so even if it wasn't discontinued it should have been removed for misrepresenting of what it does.

@gorhill the domain https://hosts-file.net/ now redirects to https://www.malwarebytes.com/browserguard so you might want to consider pushing an update to remove it as soon as possible. That's really disgusting tactics from those guys.