Automatically Block IP Address

  • Resolved Sigor

    (@sigor)


    9 years, 8 months ago

    Hi there,
    I’ve made few tests with ‘GoodBye Captcha’ and your plugin seems good. I’ve only one concern. Your plugin is able to block IP address. It sounds good to me because your plugin could be the one I use instead of two others, one for the captcha, another one to avoid Brute Force Attack (BFA).
    My concern is what is this one: happening when one IP address is blocked? I’ve sees that in another topic here:

    “The Block Ip Feature works like this:
    1. Whenever GoodBye Captcha detects a spam attempt, it gets the IP address of that request and stores it into database. Of course this happens if the plugin is activated for these forms.
    2. If this IP is marked as blocked by the site admin, then next time when that IP will perform a form submission, that submission gets rejected.”

    It seems you can unblock IP address if a user made some mistakes with his login datas. But it seems you have to unblock only manually.
    Another famous plugin is useful to avoid BFA and allows to block IP address only few minutes or hours (admin decides). I think it’s a very good idea. Do you think it’s relevant for ‘GoodBye Captcha’ to enable the ability to block IP addresses only for example one hour ou whatever the admin wants ?

    Best regards
    Sigor

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/goodbye-captcha/

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author MihChe

    (@mihche)

    At this time GoodBye Captcha automatically blocks the IP address (of course if this option is enabled by admin) only if it detects attempts sent by bots, not if a user made some mistakes with his login credentials.
    For example: if you set Maximum Attempts per Minute to 5 and an user enters 6 times wrong login credentials GoodBye Captcha will not block his/her IP address.

    On the other hand, when an web site is under Brute Force Attack, the requests (from same IP or different ones) are coming almost every second. That’s why GoodBye Captcha automatically blocks the IP address only if the number of maximum attempts per minute is reached. Getting 2-5 spam attempts every… let’s say… 5 minutes doesn’t mean the site is under attack, and for this type of attempts the admin has the option to manually block the IP address.

    Another famous plugin is useful to avoid BFA and allows to block IP address only few minutes or hours (admin decides). I think it’s a very good idea.

    My opinion is that if a Brute Force Attack was ever initiated from an IP address, that IP should be blocked forever, by adding it directly in .htaccess. For me, there is no reason to whitelist it after a certain period of time. This will encourage the bots to come back and try again, right?

    Do you think it’s relevant for ‘GoodBye Captcha’ to enable the ability to block IP addresses only for example one hour or whatever the admin wants?

    Yes, I will add this option but not for BFAs. This option will be relevant when GoodBye Captcha will lockdown users for failed login attempts. By lockdown users I mean blocking by username/ip for a certain period of time.
    Stay tuned! This is already in my TO DO list and will be available shortly!

    Regards,
    Mihai

    Thread Starter Sigor

    (@sigor)

    Hi there MihChe,
    Thank you so much for your answers. They are very relevant. I didn’t know the exact GoodBye Captcha IP blocking process. My opinion is your way of thinking is very smart. Thank you for all the information you have been given. As you said, I think it’s very relevant to make a difference between Brute Force Attack (BFA) and users who make some mistakes.
    I’am staying tune.
    Warm regards

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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