Hosts: beacon.dropbox.com

[luispuerto]

Hey!

Why is this beacon.dropbox.com is blocked? seem to be part of the Word/office plugin for macOS.

Thanks!

[StevenBlack]

Thanks Luis @luispuerto.

Ping Daniel @lightswitch05.

[Atavic]

Users can add Dropbox integration in Office 365 for Mac OSX, then create and eventually share files.
The URL in this issue appears as one of the Dropbox URLs used to host user data.

[StevenBlack]

@Atavic that's a very nice list. Props to Dropbox for publishing it. And hopefully maintaining it.

[Atavic]

The files can only be in Word, Access or Excel format. If the files are personal there's no issues; but office files can actually hide some malicious macro actions. There are various cases: a tool like this may help in mitigating non-hardened systems.

[lightswitch05]

@Atavic maybe I'm blind - but I do not see beacon.dropbox.com anywhere in that list.

@luispuerto are you experiencing trouble with that host being blocked? I have dropbox on my mac and I haven't noticed any problems with it being blocked. Could you provide steps to reproduce the issue so that I can verify it causing issues?

[StevenBlack]

@lightswitch05

$ ack -l beacon.dropbox.com
alternates/fakenews/hosts
alternates/fakenews-gambling/hosts
alternates/fakenews-gambling-porn/hosts
alternates/fakenews-gambling-porn-social/hosts
alternates/fakenews-gambling-social/hosts
alternates/fakenews-porn/hosts
alternates/fakenews-porn-social/hosts
alternates/fakenews-social/hosts
alternates/gambling/hosts
alternates/gambling-porn/hosts
alternates/gambling-porn-social/hosts
alternates/gambling-social/hosts
alternates/porn/hosts
alternates/porn-social/hosts
alternates/social/hosts
data/lightswitch05/hosts    <----------
hosts

[lightswitch05]

Sorry Steven, yes it is in my list, I meant to say that I do not see it anywhere in URLs used to host user data.

[luispuerto]

@lightswitch05 I started to experience the issue yesterday and it continued this morning. Every time beacon.dropbox.com was blocked dropbox app disconnected and reconnected after 20” or so. I had Word open with the Dropbox plugin. I’ve closed it and the issue stopped. I have to investigate further.

[luispuerto]

I opened word again and problem is there again.

[luispuerto]

I opened a different word document (I created a new one and put it in dropbox).

Every time it tries to connect to beacon.dropbox.com dropbox disconnects for 20-30 segs. It tries to connect every 5-4 mins.

[StevenBlack]

@lightswitch05 there are service providers I'm willing to trust by default.

Github is certainly one of them.

Dropbox is another.

[luispuerto]

@lightswitch05 there are service providers I'm willing to trust by default. ...

@StevenBlack yeah I think the same. For that reason I was asking why in particular is that sub domain blocked.

[lightswitch05]

@luispuerto thank you for the detailed explanation. A lot of beacon domains are used for tracking, looks like this one is being used for connectivity checking. I’ll remove it as soon as I have time. I’m sorry for my delayed responses, I’ve been having some difficulty with my email provider- not related to hosts blocking 😆

[Atavic]

@lightswitch05 Maybe it falls under one of these:

*.dropbox.com/content_link/*
*.dropbox.com/content_link_zip/*
*.dropbox.com/content_link_htmlify/*
*.dropbox.com/content_link_preview/*

[StevenBlack]

This is fixed in the latest release which is live and online now.

Thanks everybody!

Closing.