Wordfence blocking plugin

Hello @wealthy and thanks for reaching out to us!

We can try to switch the WAF into Learning Mode to resolve this issue. From the Wordfence Dashboard click on Manage WAF. Then you will see Basic Firewall Options > Web Application Firewall Status. Change the option to Learning Mode. Now perform the actions that were causing issues. This will help Wordfence learn that these actions are normal and it will allow them in the future. After you have finished performing the actions, switch the WAF from Learning Mode back to Enabled and Protecting. Now test to see if these actions work correctly.

https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/learning-mode/ is an amazing resource for learning more about the WAF and learning mode.

Let me know how it goes!

Thanks!

I switch to Learning Mode.
POS didnt log in.

Deactivated WF and could then log in to POS

Turned WF back on and now can not log into POS

WF is in learning mode
and even when I switch back to Enabled and Protecting still blocking me

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by wealthy.

This is also blocking another plugin from completeing its actions also..
I have just found this out

now these plugins have been there for a while and did work.
WF has also been there for a while.

So I guess an update has blocked it. So what do I do. Delete it and find something that doesnt cause problem or is there a fix.

Also remember in another post I am getting a msg that wont go away. Unless I deactivate WF (even tho I follow the instructions and do a manual update)

The last rules update for the Wordfence Web Application Firewall was unsuccessful. The last successful update check was January 28, 2021 3:09 pm, so this site may be missing new rules added since then. You may wait for the next automatic attempt at February 11, 2021 3:09 pm or try to Manually Update by clicking the “Manually Refresh Rules” button below the Rules list.

That message about the rules not updating might be due to our recent migration to a new server for the rules. Our noc4.wordfence.com might be blocked by your host or another firewall. Do you use Cloudflare or another CDN by chance?

Make sure these IPs arent being blocked:

44.239.130.172
44.238.191.15
35.155.126.231

At this point for your POS plugin, can you ask there support if there are IPs that we can add to the allowlist to have the WAF not block it.

Thanks!

As I have mentioned, when WF is deactivated, everything works well. so it has to be WF…
Their support has already told me that it totally works on my site and there is nothing that connects to their system etc etc

And no it is a plain shared hosting and does not use Cloudflare or another CDN by chance.

There must be a way ( other than deactivating it or deleting it entirely) to allow or reset it.

If I delete it and start again, will it pick up old files / rules, or will it start fresh like a new install.
If not how can I get it to start like a brand new plugin installed?

And no those IP’s are not blocked

Ok I ticked both of the Delete Wordfence tables and data on deactivation
and on the Login Security settings page.

I deactivated the plugin which cleared all settings.
Reactivated it and set it up.

The “The last rules update for the Wordfence Web Application Firewall was unsuccessful.” seems to be now gone.

But still have issues with my plugins. ( which I add again never had these problems)

So What I am after is HOW to allow these two plugins to work
One is the POS one and the other produces a report of items from Woo commerce ( its not related to Woo commerce, but a separate plugin)

You might want to reach out to the plugin support and see if there is a range of IPs that we can add to the allowlist to prevent this blocking. I know we usually have to do that for Paypal services within WordPress.

Let me know what you find!

Thanks!

so apart from IP addresses . there is no way to allow a plugin to work within WF. Is this correct??

ok both plugin supports sy they dont use any ip addresses

This is the reply from one of them.

it’s the first time we are noticed about a conflict with WordFence.
We use this great plugin ourselves in some of our own sites and never had any issue with it.
Perhaps it’s some kind of specific configuration you have that is blocking it somehow.
The export plugin does not connect to any external IP. Only to your own web server.

So back to the issue. Apart from IP addresses being blocked, is there some other way to clean this ALL out and start again???

I think I have fixed the POS plugin problem

Protection Level
Extended Protection: All PHP requests will be processed by the firewall prior to running.

I removed the Protection then put it back.
I am testing that now and will let you know for sure.

However there is still one not working ( as above)

this is more from the plugin support

Here are some things that I guess WordFence could be blocking because are not very common:

We are using a technique called SSE (Server Sent Events: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Server-sent_events) while an import is running
To download an exported file we inject a temporary iframe to the DOM to be able to download the generated file via Javascript. This iframe only has the file URL and the file is saved in your own web server.
Downloading CSV and JSON files should be allowed also.
You can try to ask WordFence support whether they could be blocking any of these and, if so, how to prevent this from happening.

Thanks for providing that information @wealthy

If you could, navigate to your Tools > Live Traffic page. When one of these requests go through for your POS, can you screenshot the block for me? You can either post it here or send it to wftest @ wordfence . com (if you send an email, make sure the subject is: WFADAM and your forum username).

We should be able to find the requests and see what we need to add to the Allowlist manually.

Thanks!

As mentioned above I believe I have fixed the POS plugin issue with the steps I outlined above.
So the issue is with the other plugin

Will this still apply for the internal use of the plugin I wrote about?

Are you still seeing issues with it?

I actually just helped another customer with a similar issue to yours. Their Rate-Limiting was causing the issue as it was set too strict for the POS crawler to connect back to the site.

Hope this helps!

Thanks!