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#14709 Many Security exceptions for Reason: tmpl= in URL

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by nicholas on Saturday, 19 January 2013 13:20 CST

Saturday, 19 January 2013 07:20 CST

nemmar

Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes
Have I searched the tickets before posting? Yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? Yes, https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/admin-tools/web-application-firewall.html
Joomla! version: J2.5.8
PHP version: 5.3.19
MySQL version: 5.5.27-cll
Host: dedicated server
Admin Tools version: 2.4.4
 
Description of my issue:

Nicholas,

I have a question that I'm not clear about after reading the help doc:

https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/admin-tools/web-application-firewall.html

AT Pro is working great and has drastically reduced the number of security exceptions I receive daily since hte spam/hacker bots got tired of AT Pro blocking them all the time. The security exceptions alerts I receive now are mostly for Reason: tmpl= in URL

1) The help doc mentions how you can view Joomla templates with the tmpl= in the URL, but why would a spammer/hacker bother with trying to use the tmpl= in the URLs?

2) Is there any way for me to know if the Google crawling bot is being blocked accidentally with the tmpl= security exception? I guess it would be okay if Google crawled those URLs, unless you think it's better to block all access to the tmpl= URLs even if it's Google.

Thanks for any advice.

Saturday, 19 January 2013 13:20 CST

nicholas

Hello Guy,

1. A hacker will use the tmpl= URL parameter for fingerprinting. Let's say I don't know if your site is using Joomla!. I will take a regular URL and pass tmpl=gobbledygock. If I see the template reverting to one of Joomla!'s built-in templates I know that you're using Joomla!. Based on some things in the HTML of the template I might even understand which version family (1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 3.0) of Joomla! you're using. This is not the only way to do that, it's just one of the most popular.

2. This happens because of the com_email Joomla! core component, that is the "Send by email" button appearing in your articles. As explained in the documentation, if this is an issue for you (i.e. you need this "Send by email" feature that virtually nobody uses in real life) you can check the next option which allows access to the site's templates. It's a moderately bad idea (it opens up a way for hackers to do fingerpritning) and I recommend against it, but if you want to you can definitely do it.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
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