7G Firewall: September 2020 Update
Pleased to announce that the 7G Firewall is updated to version 1.3 (September 3rd, 2020). Now available for download, 100% free and open-source as always. Continue reading »
7G Out of Beta
The 7G Firewall was released about a year ago as beta, and has had time now to mature/develop into a stable release. So this is just a heads up that 7G is now officially out of beta and ready for use in live/production environments. Continue reading »
7G Addon: Stop Aggressive Scanning for Uploads-Related Targets
Around the end of December 2019 and then now well into January of 2020, I’m seeing a massive spike in aggressive malicious scanning for uploads-related targets. In particular, there are massive numbers of requests for URL targets involving uploadify, plupload, and similar. Typical scans hitting upwards of 30K–50K requests per attack. Just relentless exploit scanning on steroids. Continue reading »
Stop WordPress from Changing .htaccess
In a recent tutorial, I explain how to Stop WordPress from modifying .htaccess. That post explains several ways to prevent WordPress from making changes to .htaccess. This post explains an even better way that is safe, effective, non-invasive, re-usable, and super simple. I’ve been using it on my own sites now for a few years and it works flawlessly. Continue reading »
Remove or Hide File Extension with .htaccess
A common question I get is how to change or hide file extensions using .htaccess. Apparently search engines prefer “pretty” permalink URL structures over query-strings and file extensions. This is one reason why WordPress provides an SEO-friendly permalink option for URLs; because it is preferred over the default plain query-string based format. From the Permalinks settings screen in the WordPress Admin Area: Continue reading »
How to Block IPs with 6G Firewall
This quick post is aimed at users of the 6G Firewall. The latest 6G update removes the IP-address blocking section to improve firewall compatibility and implementation. So now with the IP section removed, you may be asking “how to block an IP address with 6G?” Well good news, this tutorial explains how to do it. Continue reading »
.htaccess Redirect Examples
Finally put together a giant list of .htaccess redirect examples. It’s meant as a quick copy-&-paste resource for those who may be looking for an assortment of redirect techniques. Here you will find redirects via mod_alias and mod_rewrite. Examples include redirecting to and from any directory, subdirectory, resource, URL, and much more. Most of these examples are taken from my previous article, Stupid htaccess Tricks; other examples are taken from previous .htaccess tutorials here at Perishable Press. Enjoy! :) Continue reading »
Bluehost, Sitelock, SSL, and .htaccess
Apparently, Bluehost partnered with a company called SiteLock sometime last year. Supposedly Sitelock is a “website scanner that proactively checks for malicious threats and vulnerabilities”. I guess the service operates on Bluehost servers, and today they sent a scary email letting me know that “malware was detected” on my Bluehost site. Here’s the thing though. I host only one site at Bluehost, and it is a simple one-page site with only a few simple files. So I was surprised by […] Continue reading »
7G Firewall : Log Blocked Requests
This tutorial explains how to log requests that are blocked by the 7G Firewall. This is useful for testing, debugging, and just keeping an eye on things. Learn how to log requests from Apache mod_rewrite and download my custom 7G logging script. It’s a complete example that shows how to log rewrite requests via PHP. All open source and free :) Continue reading »
7G Firewall
The 7G Firewall is here! 7G is now out of beta and ready for production sites. So you can benefit from the powerful protection of the latest nG Firewall (aka nG Blacklist). The 7G Firewall offers lightweight, server-level protection against a wide range of malicious requests, bad bots, automated attacks, spam, and many other types of threats and nonsense. Continue reading »
Cleaning Up Google Search Results
This post is about how I cleaned up an incorrect URL in the Google search results. My business site is basically a one-page portfolio site, located at the URL https://monzillamedia.com/. But in the Google search results, the URL was showing as https://monzilla.biz/, which did not exist. So all potential customers were getting an error page. Fortunately I was able to re-acquire the monzilla.biz domain and redirect all traffic to monzillamedia.com. Continue reading »
Automatic IP Blacklist
Recently a reader going by the name of Rock Star sent me a cool little PHP script that automatically updates your site’s .htaccess with a current list of bad IP addresses. This is useful because it gives you better “real time” protection against attacks and malicious requests. This tutorial shares the code and explains how to implement in two easy steps. Continue reading »
Difference between mod_alias and mod_rewrite
Most of the redirect techniques provided in my stupid .htaccess tricks article all use Apache’s alias module, mod_alias. You can also use mod_rewrite to redirect URLs. The main difference is that, with mod_alias, the server is responding to the client request with a redirect, so the client immediately is sent to the new location. Conversely, with mod_rewrite, the server simply returns the new content, so the client is not actually redirected anywhere. This makes mod_rewrite more advantageous because it happens […] Continue reading »
404 Fix: Block Nuisance Requests for Non-Existent Files
As I’ve written before, blocking nuisance requests can help save you money by cutting down on wasted server resources, memory, and so forth. It also saves you time, as your server access and error logs won’t be full of nuisance request spam. So you will have more resources and time for things that matter, like running your business, helping customers, improving code, etc. So to continue the proud tradition of blocking malicious traffic, this post builds upon previous blocking techniques […] Continue reading »
Blocking the “ReallyLongRequest” Bandit
While browsing server logs, I kept seeing these super long request URIs that begin with “YesThisIsAReallyLongRequest…” and then the request string just keeps going for like 1 kilobyte worth of characters. Not just a few times, but many. In other words, somebody is going around and repeatedly hitting servers with gigantic-size requests. Probably to test server response using other people’s servers. Ummm, yeah kinda malicious. So I did some research and then blocked the “ReallyLongRequest” Bandit. Continue reading »
Blackhole for Bad Bots – Quick Start
Welcome to the Quick Start Guide for the standalone PHP version of Blackhole for Bad Bots. This post basically is a condensed summary of the original Blackhole tutorial. So if you are new to the concept of blocking bad bots, check out the original tutorial. Otherwise, for those that are familiar, the following guide should simplify things and help you get started with Blackhole as quickly as possible. Continue reading »