A whitelist, allowlist, or passlist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular privilege, service, mobility, or recognition i.e. it is a
list
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
of things allowed when everything is denied by default. It is the opposite of a
blacklist
Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...
, which is a list of things denied when everything is allowed by default.
Email whitelists
Spam filter
Email filtering is the processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. The term can apply to the intervention of human intelligence, but most often refers to the automatic processing of messages at an SMTP server, possibly appl ...
s often include the ability to "whitelist" certain sender IP addresses, email addresses or domain names to protect their email from being rejected or sent to a junk mail folder. These can be manually maintained by the user or system administrator - but can also refer to externally maintained whitelist services.
Non-commercial whitelists
Non-commercial whitelists are operated by various non-profit organisations, ISPs, and others interested in blocking spam. Rather than paying fees, the sender must pass a series of tests; for example, their email server must not be an
open relay
An open mail relay is a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send e-mail through it, not just mail destined to or originating from known users. This used to be the default con ...
and have a
static IP address
Static may refer to:
Places
*Static Nunatak, a nunatak in Antarctica
United States
*Static, Kentucky and Tennessee
*Static Peak, a mountain in Wyoming
**Static Peak Divide, a mountain pass near the peak
Science and technology Physics
*Static ele ...
. The operator of the whitelist may remove a server from the list if complaints are received.
Commercial whitelists
Commercial whitelists are a system by which an
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
allows someone to bypass
spam filter
Email filtering is the processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. The term can apply to the intervention of human intelligence, but most often refers to the automatic processing of messages at an SMTP server, possibly appl ...
s when sending
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
messages to its subscribers, in return for a pre-paid fee, either an annual or a per-message fee. A sender can then be more confident that their messages have reached recipients without being blocked, or having links or images stripped out of them, by spam filters. The purpose of commercial whitelists is to allow companies to reliably reach their customers by email.
Advertising whitelists
Many websites rely on ads as a source of revenue, but the use of
ad blockers is increasingly common. Websites that detect an adblocker in use often ask for it to be disabled - or their site to be "added to the whitelist" - a standard feature of most adblockers.
Network whitelists
Network Whitelisting can occur at different layers of the OSI model.
LAN whitelists
LAN whitelists are enforced at layer 2 of the OSI model. Another use for whitelists is in
local area network
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...
(LAN) security. Many network admins set up
MAC address
A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking techno ...
whitelists, or a MAC address filter, to control who is allowed on their networks. This is used when encryption is not a practical solution or in tandem with encryption. However, it's sometimes ineffective because a
MAC address can be faked
Firewall whitelists
Some firewalls can be configured to only allow data-traffic from/ to certain (ranges of) IP-addresses. A firewall generally works at layer 3 and 4 of the OSI model. Layer 3 is the Network Layer where IP works and Layer 4 is the Transport Layer, where TCP and UDP function.
Application whitelists
The application layer is layer 7 in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) seven-layer model and in the TCP/IP protocol suite. Whitelisting is commonly enforced by applications at this level.
One approach in combating viruses and malware is to whitelist software which is considered safe to run, blocking all others. This is particularly attractive in a corporate environment, where there are typically already restrictions on what software is approved.
Leading providers of application whitelisting technology include
Bit9,
Velox,
McAfee
McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company head ...
,
Lumension, ThreatLocker, Airlock Digital and SMAC
On Microsoft Windows, recent versions include
AppLocker
AppLocker is an application whitelisting technology introduced with Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. It allows restricting which programs users can execute based on the program's path, publisher, or hash, and in an enterprise can be configu ...
, which allows administrators to control which executable files are denied or allowed to execute. With AppLocker, administrators are able to create rules based on file names, publishers or file location that will allow certain files to execute. Rules can apply to individuals or groups. Policies are used to group users into different enforcement levels. For example, some users can be added to a report-only policy that will allow administrators to understand the impact before moving that user to a higher enforcement level.
Linux systems typically have
AppArmor
AppArmor ("Application Armor") is a Linux kernel security module that allows the system administrator to restrict programs' capabilities with per-program profiles. Profiles can allow capabilities like network access, raw socket access, and the ...
and
SE Linux
Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a Linux kernel security module that provides a mechanism for supporting access control security policies, including mandatory access controls (MAC).
SELinux is a set of kernel modifications and user-space t ...
features available which can be used to effectively block all applications which are not explicitly whitelisted, and commercial products are also available.
On HP-UX introduced a feature called "HP-UX Whitelisting" on 11iv3 version.
Controversy
In 2018, a journal commentary on a report on
predatory publishing
Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and withou ...
[Houghton, F., & Houghton, S. (2018)]
"'Blacklists' and 'whitelists': a salutary warning concerning the prevalence of racist language in discussions of predatory publishing."
/ref> was released making claims that "white" and "black" are racially charged terms that need to be avoided in instances such as "whitelist" and "blacklist". The journal became mainstream in Summer 2020 following the George Floyd protests
The George Floyd protests were a series of protests and civil unrest against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, and largely took place during 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of internati ...
in America wherein a black man was murdered by an officer, sparking protests on police brutality.
The premise of the journal is that "black" and "white" have negative and positive connotations respectively. It states that since "blacklisting" was first referred to during "the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas," the word is therefore related to race. There is no mention of "whitelist" and its origin or relation to race.
This issue is most widely disputed in computing industries where "whitelist" and "blacklist" are prevalent (e.g. IP whitelisting). Despite the commentary nature of the journal, some companies and individuals in others have taken to replacing "whitelist" and "blacklist" with new alternatives such as "allow list" and "deny list".
Those that oppose these changes question its attribution to race, citing the same etymology quote that the 2018 journal uses. According to the remark, the term "blacklist" evolved from the term "black book" about a century ago. The term "black book" does not appear to have any etymology or sources that support racial associations, instead originating in the 1400s as a reference to "a list of people who had committed crimes or fallen out of favor with leaders", and popularized by King Henry VIII's literal use of a black book. Others also note the prevalence of positive and negative connotations to "white" and "black" in the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
, predating attributions to skin tone and slavery. It wasn't until the 1960s Black Power movement that "Black" became a widespread word to refer to one's race as a person of color in America (alternate to African-American) lending itself to the argument that the negative connotation behind "black" and "blacklist" both predate attribution to race.
See also
* Blacklisting
*Blacklist (computing)
In computing, a blacklist, disallowlist, blocklist, or denylist is a basic access control mechanism that allows through all elements (email addresses, users, passwords, URLs, IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, etc.), except those explicit ...
*DNSWL A DNSWL (" DNS-based whitelist") is a "whitelist" of semi-trusted locations on the Internet. The locations consist of IP addresses which may be reputed with no or low occurrences of spamming.
Generic need for whitelisting
Natural language under ...
, whitelisting based on DNS
*Walled garden (technology)
A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This i ...
, a whitelist that a device's owner cannot control
References
{{Wiktionary, whitelisting, whitelist
Antivirus software
Blacklisting
Databases
Malware
Social privilege
Social status
Spamming