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#253304 08/07/2013 12:27 AM
Joined: Oct 2006
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enthusiast
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I'm still suffering from hackers hitting our UBB forum. We've managed to keep them out, but they consume cyles from us that cause a SLOWDOWN nearly every day. I've seen 80-140 login attempts per minute!! The majority of these are from China.

I added an htacces file blocking thousands of IP addresses. It seems to work, but now I get hundreds (thousands) of failed attempts to login.

My question is - does anyone have experience with managing the firewall services on Linux? It seems that that would be a better place to block these hack attempts.

Maybe you can couch your response as a "Recommended Suggestion for ALL Linux-Hosted UBB's". Thanks.


--BIll B
Joined: Jun 2006
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UBB.threads Developer
UBB.threads Developer
Joined: Jun 2006
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A CDN such as www.cloudflare.com would filter abusive users out; it's actually what it's designed to do, and you can set how anal retentive you'd like it to be and it does it on it's own automatically.

Cloudflare has a free version, which I use on all of my UBB sites, that works just fine.


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Thanks Giz. I installed CloudFlare about 5 or 6 weeks ago. We noticed an immediate and significant improvement in performance.

But lately, the brute-force attacks are still clogging our Error log files - and once or twice a day, NO ONE can log on to our forum. Everyone is completely blocked for 30 - 90 minutes.

The error logs for those times show 80-140 failed attempts (per minute) from a single overseas IP address.

So, I'm trying to stop them BEFORE they get to my domain process. I want to filter them at the firewall. CloudFlare has been good, but it's still got leaks.

Having said that, maybe I need to look at "tightening up" the CloudFlare settings some more. I'll look at that too.


--BIll B
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 16,292
Likes: 116
UBB.threads Developer
UBB.threads Developer
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 16,292
Likes: 116
Yeah there's a bunch of different security options (and some of their paid options add a lot of features to the mix too)


I am a Web Development Contractor, I do not work for UBBCentral. I have provided free User to User Support since the beginning of these support forums.
Do you need Forum Install or Upgrade Services?
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So besides adding CloudFlare, does it make sense to add a lot of effort into building up the Linux firewall? For example adding thousands of IP addresses to it?

I'm asking since this is probably something that I'd hire out. I haven't done it before and I'm probably better at keeping my nose in PHP and MySQL development for our club features.


--BIll B
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 16,292
Likes: 116
UBB.threads Developer
UBB.threads Developer
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Likes: 116
Well, the way dynamic ip's work it'd be kind of pointless; if you could figure out what tool they're using you could attempt to block it, but if they're smart enough they're on a dynamic ip and using proxy servers and you'd still ultimately be screwed...

Have you asked your webhost for some advice on the issue?


I am a Web Development Contractor, I do not work for UBBCentral. I have provided free User to User Support since the beginning of these support forums.
Do you need Forum Install or Upgrade Services?
Forums: A Gardeners Forum, Scouters World
UBB.threads: UBBWiki, UBB Styles, UBB.Sitemaps
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Yeh... they're the ones that told me (Sunday night) that I should hire someone to install (and manage) a firewall. But they did add a list of banned IP's to the iptables file for me.



--BIll B
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 358
enthusiast
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Does anyone understand the difference between the FREE and PRO versions of CloudFlare? I'm ready to pay them but I can't see where it is going to add any additional help in stopping aggressive hackers. The firewall that they add only seems targeted towards static html pages - not the UBB forum.

Any thoughts on this?


--BIll B
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 16,292
Likes: 116
UBB.threads Developer
UBB.threads Developer
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 16,292
Likes: 116
They have a comparison here but other than that I suppose you could go through google searches to find 3rd party comparison's...

Personally, I think the free version is pretty good for most sites, let me know if you find it useful if you go paid.


I am a Web Development Contractor, I do not work for UBBCentral. I have provided free User to User Support since the beginning of these support forums.
Do you need Forum Install or Upgrade Services?
Forums: A Gardeners Forum, Scouters World
UBB.threads: UBBWiki, UBB Styles, UBB.Sitemaps
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Last edited by UBBSystems; 08/16/2013 2:29 PM.
Joined: Oct 2006
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Thanks. I have PLESK installed by default. I'd have to see whether I can get cPanel instead.


--BIll B

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