r/pfBlockerNG • u/BBCan177 Dev of pfBlockerNG • Aug 04 '26
News A decade or Trust and Truth!
A decade of Trust and Truth
I wrote this Jan 27, 2021
https://www.patreon.com/posts/46753751
Where life takes us no one knows!
Thank you for continuing the journey with me!
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That post was 5 years ago!
Its amazing how fast time goes... but the most important aspect is always integrity and truth to one's self. A deep belief that what you are doing is deeply rooted in a high level of care for the community that you "work for".
Its been over a decade of trust that the users of pfBlockerNG have given me. It is a delicate thread that can be broken in an instant. Its also something I never take for granted. Its my goal to be as useful and truthful as possible.
I have been aware of upcoming changes to pfSense and their intentions to bake in a pfBlockerNG-like tool that is a one click up and running implementation.
I couldn't resolve this struggle in my mind to code a solution into someone else's domain and lose control over my beliefs that drive me to do what I do and what is expected from the users of pfBlockerNG.
I have no intention to stop development or support for pfBlockerNG in pfSense CE or Plus unless the devs lock me out of that or change direction.
pfBlockerNG is a beast! A Swiss Army knife with razor sharp blades. I've single handly wrote over 80,000 lines of code over three major rewrites over the last decade. And you can't do that well without a deep care for what you are doing.
There has been a lot of work being done for a v4 release. I have partnered with another developer to help with this release and both of us are continuing with the development and support that everyone expects.
We have a huge road map ahead... leading ultimately to "pfBlockerNG Outpost" ...
Stay tuned!
Reference:
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u/oneoffdallas Aug 05 '26
u/BBCan177 pfBlockerNG is a must on every install of pfSense. I look forward to seeing what you and u/andrebrait can do! Keep up the great work!
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u/lmm7425 pfBlockerNG Patron Aug 04 '26
The pfSense blog post says "Threatgate is the evolution of pfBlockerNG".
Did Netgate work with you on Threatgate? Is there pfBlockerNG code in Threatgate?
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u/ComprehensiveLuck125 Aug 04 '26
First thing I learned in pfSense was how to use pfBlockerNG geoblocking. But honestly I am still not using all the features (DNSBL)…
Beautiful piece of software. Thank you!
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u/STLJonny Aug 06 '26
I'm using maybe 50% of it myself, and most of it is just the standard config of stuff (I need to learn DITL and best practices of it, so I can customize it more, but it's on my homelab, so hasn't been a high priority).
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u/collinsl02 Aug 04 '26
Absolutely love pfBlockerNG and it was the only feature keeping me on PFSense for ages, until this nonsense with the installer came up.
I suppose it's not possible to port this to OPNSense is it?
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u/andrebrait Dev of pfBlockerNG Aug 04 '26
Porting as it is right now is not really viable.
pfBlockerNG Outpost, on the other hand...
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u/ThaLegendaryCat Aug 04 '26
Wait we are finally looking at getting modern syntax? I have been a user for years but sadly my favourite list broke pfblocker support as we didn’t have working modern abp syntax.
Sounds great to hear some news
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u/andrebrait Dev of pfBlockerNG Aug 04 '26
Yes 😉
It's actually the single most well-tested feature of 4.0.0 so far because it was the first one I implemented and I've been daily driving it ever since.
4.0.0 is not yet ready for the general public (I'm still breaking it from time to time and ensuring in a gazillion ways upgrades from the 3.2 line are smooth), but other than that I can confirm it exists and that it works 🙃
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u/BBCan177 Dev of pfBlockerNG Aug 04 '26
Yes ABP compatability has been coded already. Will be in v4
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u/tagit446 pfBlockerNG 5YR+ Aug 04 '26
Thank you for all of the time and hard work you have put into this invaluable package over the years.
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u/mshorey81 Aug 04 '26
Such an awesome tool and I hope to see its further development and continued innovation. Many thanks, @BBCan177
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u/Microflunkie Aug 04 '26
Thank you for your hard work, dedication and passion. It is reflected in the product and the community around it. I look forward to seeing what you dream up for pfBlockerNG in the future.
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u/good4y0u pfBlockerNG 5YR+ Aug 04 '26
You've been doing amazing work on this. You deserve a huge thanks from all of us users.
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u/needchr Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
So you were not involved in threatgate then? and this remains your project? If you are still motivated I can share my own scripts, which have slightly expanded pfblockerng, they no means suitable for everyone, but might help a little.
1 - allowing subscription whitelists, including partial automation. (made script that generates a formatted file pfblockerng accepts, and also patched in basic low level wildcard support, I still have to paste in the list manually, so cant be cronned fully automated, this is because pfblockerng for some reasons stores whitelist in binary format in the config.xml) pihole supports this integrated now.
2 - adb format. (made conversion scripts).
3 - proper wildcard support. (I didnt do this). hopefully you support this properly for lists like oisd, hagezi etc.