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Admin Tools

#36371 IP Country Blocking

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by nicholas on Friday, 07 January 2022 14:48 CST

waboche

Hello,

how can i manage to block the IP's of a specific country ?

Thank you in advance

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

We have removed this feature from our software two years ago. Please read why and why it was a bad idea anyway in our announcement from back then: Removal of Geographic IP features from Akeeba Software 

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

waboche

Thank you very much for your reply.

I understand what i read.

I just have enough to see China spying on one of my website....

Cordially,

Fred...

Β 

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

It's just blind probing. The fact that it's being caught by Admin Tools means they don't go anywhere far; they just get an error page. Eventually they will give up and move on.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

waboche

Thank you for your answer Nicholas.

Actually i was talking about my traffic stats form Comodo.

They come so often on the website.

Many times per month.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

By using the verb β€œspy” you imply that someone is accessing information that is secret and they have no right to access. In the context of a support request for software that prevents this kind of activity it sounds an awful lot like an oblique accusation that our software doesn't do what it says.

I do understand that you were using this verb in exaggeration β€” if not casual Sinophobia β€” but someone reading this public ticket may not understand that and misconstrue it as a complaint about the software itself.

What is really happening is that there are search engines based in China, like Baidu, crawling your site. That's why they come like clockwork, many times a month. They are crawling your site to index its public content. This is neither spying nor unusual. My sites get crawled by Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia) as well. These markets rely on their regional search engines far more than they do on the Western search engines you and I use.

β€œIf you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” β€” Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

This was written 2500 years ago in the context of feudal warfare in ancient China but it applies to site security as well. When dealing with security you must have a level head and be objective in your threat assessment. To do that, there are two requirements. One, you need to understand what is really going on (knowing the enemy). Two, you need to know when you're veering away from objectivity, caught in your own prejudices or those of the society you live in (knowing yourself). If you fail to do either you will be chasing down red herrings and ignoring real threats. That's how you get hacked.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

waboche

What an awesome answer !

Β 

Thank you so much Nicholas !

Fred..

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Cheers :)

Have a great weekend!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Support Information

Working hours: We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Cyprus timezone (EET / EEST). Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. You can still file tickets outside of our working hours, but we cannot respond to them until we're back at the office.

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