BotBanish Firewall Client

[Randem]

Hi, I got a notification this time 

In the .htaccess file the ErrorDocument statements will show you where the file is expected to be.
Check the error log to see if the condition is logged. Even if the file is not replaced, it will be logged that the condition existed and where the file (favicon.ico) was stated to be.

[Randem]

Had to remove some troubling code that used SSI.php and caused issues. Really should not have been there in the first place.

[Randem]

BotBanish v4.1.02 has been released - Update History.

[Dblog]

while trying to view botbanish analytics or logs as admin, i get 403 error !!

It says
'The image "https://url.../BotBanish/bot/Analytics/BotBanishAnalytics.php" cannot be displayed because it contain errors.

how is .php file an image ?

while trying to view logs

403 - Permission Denied

    You do not have permission to retrieve the URL or link you requested,

[Randem]

Hi Dblog,

I will need some details in order to help.

What version of BotBanish are you using?
Did you attempt to paste the erred url into a browser?
What is the complete url in question?

[Dblog]

I tried all available options i could
.... /BotBanish/bot/Subs/BotBanish_RegisterAccount.php this file causes 403
In settings,
BotBanish APIKEY - Free
where should i register account if it is free

sent you more details in DM

[Randem]

I replied in PM. I will need more information. I could not access your forum site so it seems there is a permissions issue. Check you folder access permissions and .htaccess that may be denying access. I just get a blank page , which usually means something has failed.

[Dave J]

I have an error which I cannot find where it's coming from


SMF2.1.4
Maria DB10
PHP8.0.30

The mod installed with no errors. At first I though it was because I added a domain to the blacklist but since then I have deleted all of them and the error still remains.

Any idea which domain that might be?

I should add that this only happens when I access the Blacklist Domains, it doesn't happen with any other settings

As it's a test site there is no guest access if you want admin access please let me know.

[Randem]

Aloha Dave J,

That is an oversight on our part while converting to a new release we changed some items in our language text files that did not filter all the way thru other files. I will give you 3 ways to correct this

1 - Copy the attached English Language text file (BotBanishLanguage.english.php) into /BotBanish/bot/Languages/ and in SMF /Themes/default/languages/BotBanish/

2 - If you are using a different language file than English, add these two lines to the end of that BotBanish language file. in both the same locations as #1

$txt['id_domain'] = 'Domain ID';
$txt['domain'] = 'Domain Name';

3 - Copy the attached files to the proper location in BotBanish / SMF. You do not need to do either 1 or 2 and is the simplest way to work in all languages.

Copy BotBanish_BlackWhiteLists_Manage.php to BotBanish/bot/Subs/

Copy BotBanishBlackWhiteDomainList.template.php to /BotBanish/bot/Templates/ and in SMF to /Themes/default/

This will suffice until we update those files in our next release.

Thank you for reporting this error.

[Dave J]

 Hi Randem

I've uninstalled the current installation. I extracted the original files from the download, relaced the original files with the new ones you posted and then recompressed it. I then installed it and at present there seems to be no issues.

Thank you for the fix.

If there are any other issues I'll let you know

[Randem]

Hi Dave J,

Yes, that is the 4th way of getting it done    You did not need to use the language file in the replacement if you replaced the other 2 files. Thanks for reporting the issue and allowing us to fix it!

[Dave J]

Hi Randem,

Unfortunately the mod keeps:

1: locking out some members (seems more to be those with IPv6 addresses) and
2: crashes the site (after a long while of buffering gives the a white page error with the text 'The site has gone away')

This, I might add, is sporadic but I have now tried so may times to stop it from messing things up, even to the point of deleting the whole of the spider list.

I have made sure that

Code Select Expand

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.+)$ is not in the .htaccess file.

I have now again uninstalled the mod and the site is back to normal with no issues except of course the 100's of facebook bots that are currenly plaguing my site.

As it does mess with the site I cannot re-install it as I don't want to lose members so I can't even leave it where it is so you can see for yourself.

Not sure if this will help you fix it or not, I am willing to a short trial install again if you make some changes

[Randem]

Hi Dave J.

Sorry you are having such issues with BotBanish. Would you have happened to save the log files? They would be very important to find the real reason that things are happening. The log files are in "BotBanish/Client/BotBanish_Logs". IPv6 should have no bearing on the situation for we check for both IPv4 and IPv6. You also have the option of whitelisting IP addresses.

1 - Lockout can have several reasons. Multiple attempts using the incorrect credentials. This can happen when someone is using the "Auto-fill" function in the browser that contains bad information. They would have to try many times for this to happen (our default is 30).

2 - Long buffering as you say is the attempt to contact our servers and it fails. This is why the message "Site gone away" is seen. This could be a DNS issue, for if BotBanish itself cannot contact the server it will turn itself off and continue without protection.

We run the same software on our sites. If you could go to https://randemsystems.support and attempt to create an account and log in and let me know what you find. It would also be helpful if you could zip and send me your .htaccess file. We are always making changes to BotBanish's operations to streamline the process.

Thank you for reporting such issues. We are here to help.

[Dave J]

Hi Randem,

Sorry no I don't have the logs, I removed everything once it started buffering and members said they couldn't get on the site.

I'm going to leave things as they are for a while. The other guys here have suggested some options to add code to the .htaccess file so I will play with that for the time being

[Randem]

Hi Dave J,

Take a look in the SMF error logs, There should be some BotBanish information there. If you had email notifications turned on there should be information there as well.

[Dave J]

Hi Dave J,

Take a look in the SMF error logs, There should be some BotBanish information there. If you had email notifications turned on there should be information there as well.

Due to the fact there were so many bos on the site at one point there were more than 300 errors in the log, so needless to say I didn't check them all before I deleted them Randem, sorry

[Randem]

Hi Dave J,

I did some research on our server side and the only IP's that I see that were locked out are IP's using gbtbot and OpenAI, others have no user agent. There are many lockouts from the same IP segment. If these are bots that you don't mind hitting your site, the bots as well as any IP can be whitelisted.

[Randem]

Also "locked out" can be a vague term that may not actually be so. The users could have been "blocked" which is much different. The blocking could have been triggered in the .htaccess file which would not show up in the logs for they were actually denied access to the site (blocked). A "lock out" would have been software driven and the event recorded. Now if the users were using bad user agents (which could also be whitelisted), this could be a "blocked" event. If the users were attempting to access areas of the site which actually did not exist or were protected, this would generate a "lockout" event eventually, this count is under user control.

In the SMF error log, you could filter for "BotBanish" only errors and not have to look at all the errors and would get a gist of what is triggering the "lockouts" but not the "blocks" since they would have had no access to the site in the first place (as intended).

We have updated the MOD. All our sites are running this software without event, probably because we know exactly what to look for and can adjust for the event. We can help...

[Dave J]

Thanks for the reply Randem.

I have addded a list of bots to reject via the .htaccess files now as per a comment from on of the members on this site, who says he's never had any issues after doing that. So for the time being I will run with that and see how it all goes.
 
I'm in the middle of transfereing my site to a new server, but when that is done, and if the same resources page is available, I will post an image of the usage for my site when the Botbanish was installed it might also help you understand why my site was crashing, although it wont tell you the reason for it doing it.

[Randem]

Hi Dave J,

BotBanish should never affect you for your IP address is whitelisted. a "Site Gone" message is basically an HTTP Error 410 which is blocked in the .htaccess file which can block you from accessing your own site if you use any of the bot user agents found in the .htaccess file. BotBanish does place a quite substantial list of bots in the .htaccess file that can be opted not to be placed there and will run run off the database entries. BotBanish also traps and logs 400, 401, 404, 405 and 406 HTTP errors.

Even though an IP is whitelisted it still can be blocked from the .htaccess file without BotBanish knowing about it. Even the owner of the site can be blocked if their user agent is suspect and in listed the .htaccess file as a bot. This how ever is not the site being down but just being blocked from access for that user agent.

Someone being lock-out will simply be redirected to Google and the event will be logged. We will be placing on our support site a thorough list of possible issues and corrective actions for using BotBanish.

Just having a static list of bot will not keep them at bay unless you keep updating the list, which is basically what BotBanish does. BotBanish will dynamically seek out new bots that are not in the list and reject them also. A learning technique... I imagine that you have a staging site and can run BotBanish there until you get the hang of what it can do.