Stop Being Cooked

StopBeingCooked is a system that blocks Instagram Reels and other Short Form Video content, it works on any device with theoretically any app.

The Setup

Create a VPN Server on a Linux device using wireguard-install.

Install the wiregurad-vpn app on your client device and connect to the server.

Running the app

An admin password will be requested

./run.sh

This assumes that:

1. You're on a Linux system that has iptables control
2. Your default interface is called br0 as set in interceptor.py
3. There is only 1 concurrent device connected to the VPN server

How does it work

StopBeingCooked works by cross-analyzing UDP packets with DNS WHOIS lookups. To be able to do so a VPN connection must be established between the device and a Linux server, giving the latter access to the raw network packets.

A local approach on iOS with the NetworkExtension was attempted, but discarded due to the complexity and no guarantee that such app would be approved on the App Store.

Components

interceptor.py taps into the network traffic with scapy, saves DNS queries and aggregates UDP packets into requests

detector.py analyzes UDP requests and DNS queries to decide whether a user is doomscrolling

notifications.py sends a notification to the device via expo notifications

firewall.py handles the temporary blacklisting of incoming packets using iptables

whois.py reverse DNS lookup based on past data

deploy.py deployment script for all the necessary components

Firewall Recovery

In case the program ends abruptly while a firewall blocking rule is present you may use the following procedure to reverse it.

Listing all rules

sudo iptables -S FORWARD

Deleting rule

sudo iptables -D FORWARD -s 76.10.130.224/32 -j DROP

git config --global commit.gpgSign true