Tag Archives: Script Kiddies

Blocking IP Addresses Using htaccess

I’m writing this because blocking by domain on my hosts pretty much kills my web site and so I have had to learn to block ip addresses. Blocking single ip addresses is simple as you just need something like the following

order allow,deny
deny from 9.120.161.206
allow from all

And that will block the computer at ip address 9.120.161.206 from being able to access your site. But what if you want to block a whole range of ip addresses such as 9.120.161.0 to 9.120.161.255? Well then we just leave off the end number like this

order allow,deny
deny from 9.120.161.
allow from all

Ok so now we get to the clever and damn fiddly bit. As of Apache 1.3 we can use CIDR codes to specify ranges of ip addresses. So another way of writing the above code would be

order allow,deny
deny from 9.120.161.0/24
allow from all

and that would do exactly the same as 9.120.161. but we can do so much more. After the break (ie click the read more link) I will show a list of the CIDR codes and what they do.
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Sad Children Thinking They Are Hackers

A few days ago I installed the Bad Behavior plugin for Word Press just as an extra way of combatting spam comments etc. In 2 days it’s blocked 49 attempts by malicious scripts to access this blog. I just looked at the log and most of them are attempts to run a remote PHP script to see if I am running a vulnerable script. The remote scripts are all the same and simply contain

<?php /* Fx29ID */ echo("FeeL".CoMz"); die("FeeL"."CoMz"); /* Fx29ID */ ?>

Basically from what I can see there is a bunch of script kiddies who like to call themselves hackers but haven’t got the first clue about real hacking. All they can do is follow step by step instructions they have found on security web sites. A real hacker is a person who actually knows how things work and looks for ways to exploit them so that the makers can make the products more secure.
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