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#26984 Lifting geoblocking for specific IP

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

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by on Wednesday, 01 March 2017 17:17 CST

mibert
 Hi there,

I would like to ask, if there is any way to lift a geoblocking restriction for a specific IP.
For instance I am blocking Russia, but would like one specific IP to be able to access my site.

I have tried to add this IP into "Never block these IPs " but it seems not to work.

Thanks in advance for your advise and have a good weekend

Michael

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I'm afraid you can't. GeoBlocking is the first action to be executed (before IP blacklisting and IP whitelisting). As a result if something is geoblocked it cannot be selectively unblocked.

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!

mibert
I think this would be a nice feature for further developments.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

Best regards and have a good weekend

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
It is of very limited use. Besides, I have explained in detail, several times, why GeoBlocking is ineffective as a security measure. Any decent hacker with half a functioning brain knows how to circumvent it in his sleep. GeoBlocking is NOT adding security to your site. The only reason for its existence is that many of you want to offer a false sense of security to clients who don't know better and don't want to know better.

Simply put, if you block Russia and China you are NOT preventing Russian and Chinese hackers from accessing your site, even the most simple minded among them. There simple things like proxies, VPNs and TOR; and more advanced (and common!) things like botnets and, generally, hacked PCs, smartphones, tablets, fridges and even smart lightbulbs (I kid you not...) under their control, all over the world. If they get GeoBlocked they will of course assume that they need an IP in the country where that site is located or in the USA, where all major search engines' IP addresses appear to come from. Do you see where this is going? It's TRIVIAL for a hacker to bypass GeoBlocking.

The ONLY valid use of GeoBlocking is preventing non-tech-savvy web visitors from other countries from accessing your content. Just keep in mind that I've got friends who can't tell TCP from AC/DC and they still know how to set up a VPN to bypass GeoBlocking to stream content normally only available outside Cyprus and Greece. That is to say, GeoBlocking is extremely ineffective.

You know why people end up using GeoBlocking? Because the client you build the site for can't understand how abstract concepts like SQLiShield and .htaccess Maker keep baddies out of the site. They do, however, have the intuitive if not outright misguided concept of borders and walls embedded in their heads, leading them to falsely believe that if you "block Russia" out of the site then the Russian hackers can't get in. This is a ludicrous concept for anyone who knows anything at all about web security. I've written this before, in the documentation of the GeoBlock feature.

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!

mibert
Dear Nicholas,

I completely understand, what you say and I know this situation.
My point to use Geoblocking is just to add a little bit of more safety to my site, to avoid that a russian hacker or vulnerability scanner will run over it by chance.

At least in the past, a lot of Admin tool warnings came from russian IPs and that was the reason, I blocked them.

Best regards and have a nice day

Michael


nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
My point to use Geoblocking is just to add a little bit of more safety to my site, to avoid that a russian hacker or vulnerability scanner will run over it by chance.


No, it won't.

It is of very limited use. Besides, I have explained in detail, several times, why GeoBlocking is ineffective as a security measure. Any decent hacker with half a functioning brain knows how to circumvent it in his sleep. GeoBlocking is NOT adding security to your site. The only reason for its existence is that many of you want to offer a false sense of security to clients who don't know better and don't want to know better.

Simply put, if you block Russia and China you are NOT preventing Russian and Chinese hackers from accessing your site, even the most simple minded among them. There simple things like proxies, VPNs and TOR; and more advanced (and common!) things like botnets and, generally, hacked PCs, smartphones, tablets, fridges and even smart lightbulbs (I kid you not...) under their control, all over the world. If they get GeoBlocked they will of course assume that they need an IP in the country where that site is located or in the USA, where all major search engines' IP addresses appear to come from. Do you see where this is going? It's TRIVIAL for a hacker to bypass GeoBlocking.

The ONLY valid use of GeoBlocking is preventing non-tech-savvy web visitors from other countries from accessing your content. Just keep in mind that I've got friends who can't tell TCP from AC/DC and they still know how to set up a VPN to bypass GeoBlocking to stream content normally only available outside Cyprus and Greece. That is to say, GeoBlocking is extremely ineffective.

You know why people end up using GeoBlocking? Because the client you build the site for can't understand how abstract concepts like SQLiShield and .htaccess Maker keep baddies out of the site. They do, however, have the intuitive if not outright misguided concept of borders and walls embedded in their heads, leading them to falsely believe that if you "block Russia" out of the site then the Russian hackers can't get in. This is a ludicrous concept for anyone who knows anything at all about web security. I've written this before, in the documentation of the GeoBlock feature.

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!

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