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#19282 Old WAF component blocking INTERNAL site access

Posted in ‘Pre-sales and Account Questions’
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Latest post by nicholas on Friday, 21 February 2014 12:26 CST

Friday, 21 February 2014 08:26 CST

user82914
 We are blocked from accessing our own website frontend (custom IP ban page), due to a component of an old version of Akeeba AdminTools, which we used to have installed on an old version of Joomla 1.6 on the site long ago. We have long since upgraded to Joomla 2.5, build a new site, and had installed Akeeba AdminTools (core), so naturally, when we found ourselves locked out, we purchased the subscription to the latest AdminTools, upgraded, but found no locks under the WAF, or automatic locking. It has now been 3 days, and the lock is still in place. How do we kill it?

<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff;padding: 10px 0px 0px 0px" align="center"><font color="#666666" size="1">Your IP address is xx.xx.xx.xx. If you believe this is an error, please contact the <a href="https://www.akeeba.com/mailto:adminEmail?Subject=Inquiry:%20Banned%20for%20suspicious%20hacking%20behaviour - IP: xx.xx.xx.xx - Violation"> Webmaster </a>.</font></div>

Friday, 21 February 2014 12:26 CST

nicholas
Admin Tools for Joomla! 1.6 was never able to report your IP address, so I am not sure this is actually caused by Admin Tools at all.

Let's make sure that the problem is indeed caused by Admin Tools. In order to do so, try the following:

1. Try setting the Error Reporting level in your Global Configuration to "None". Many errors are caused by harmless PHP Notices and Warnings being output to the browser, breaking anything which requires HTTP header manipulation such as Joomla!'s session management, AJAX calls and download systems.

2. Try to replicate the issue after disabling the "System - Admin Tools" plugin. If you can still replicate the issue, it is not caused by Admin Tools. Disabling that plugin means that Admin Tools code (including the Web Application Firewall) is not running on your site.

3. If you suspect an issue with the .htaccess file, replace its contents with the contents of the stock htaccess.txt file shipped with every version of Joomla!. If you are on GoDaddy please wait for 1-30 minutes for the changes to be effective. Then, retry loading the problem page. If you can still reproduce the error, then it is not caused by .htaccess Maker.

If doing any of the above resulted in the issue still occurring, it's not related with Admin Tools and we can't help you. If doing any of the above did stop the issue from occurring, we'll have to do some troubleshooting.

First go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Configure WAF. Make sure "Log security exceptions" is set to Yes; if it's not, set it to Yes and click on Save. Now try reproducing your issue. Immediately after that, please go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Security Exceptions Log. The latest log entry at the top should have the date and time of when the issue occurred. Please copy the Reason and Target URL here so that we can further help you.

If, however, you do not see a log entry, or the Date and/or IP address do not match your last access, this problem is not caused by Admin Tools' WAF. In this case, you will have to do some .htaccess troubleshooting. You may need to read the general .htaccess troubleshooting page, as well as the page on finding out necessary .htaccess exceptions.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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