Prevent guests/users from using proxies at your forum
 

This hack will allow you to prevent guests/users from using proxies at your forum. You can dissallow proxies for the forum as a whole or to prevent only registrations with proxies. You can enable and disable it at the Acp of your forum where you can control the settings for the mod.

Note: As you know there is no such way of preventing proxies 100% but it helps a lot. I tested it with a dozen proxies and it stopped 8 of them.

So does this mean all AOL users are blocked?

Clicked installed, voted and nominated, awesome hack and much needed for ban evaders.

will this top search engine spiders? the last on i had on vb3 did

guess i wont be visiting either from work,
entire work lan around 5000 employess wont be able to acces.
Every server and computer from "inside" is run through a few proxy gateways.

and im sure there are many many coorperations who run like this to
control in and outs of their net.

Just thinking you might have good intentions and want to block spam etc,
but you also endup blocking users who have good intentions.

EDIT : a little read, the number 2 on this page.
http://www.google.dk/search?hl=da&lr...e&ved=0CAwQkAE

Proxy server :
•A hardware server that acts as an intermediary between a work station user and the Internet so that an enterprise can ensure security

Tested this with a few online proxies and worked both times, big thanks. :D

If I want only prevent only the users ? not guests

I don''t think that it should have any effect on search engine spiders. What this hack does, is it checks port 80 and 443 for an open reply which indicates that a user is using proxy. It is meant to block the ban evaders as mentioned above or other uers that might have malicious intents when visiting your forum with a proxy.

@vb4newb and @vb4newb, thanks for your comments and for clicking the Install button.

It kinda prevents the users as well since they will have to load your forum as guests first in order to log in. I could have made it that it affects once you are logged in but I thought this way was better.

I will love to have this running on my site but unfortunately I will appear myself as behind a proxy, I do have another mod that tells you when somebody is trying to hide the real IP and turns out I'm on the list, and I know I'm not hiding, so as nice as this mod is it will be a real problem since it will prevent legitimate members to log in.

would like to see the idea of adding a proxy to a list so that it blocks proxies on a list you give

instead of blocking all proxies

otherwise when i get to work i cant view my own site due to use using the internet through a proxy provided by our county area

or an option to to add or ignore proxies so that some can visit

Just for everyone information, Singapore visitors usually access the web through a gateway proxy. So, if you are using this you may as well block entire country.

my whole university is running through a proxy, which is the same for many other uni's

Adding a proxy list would be not so effective as those proxy lists gets update very often. it si more effective this way. Although it might prevent some legit users as stated above. If you are worried about it then I think it would be better to not install the hack.

borbole,

I REALLY like the concept. Could you consider having a track, monitor and control system rather than just "block all".

The way it would work is thus:

1./ It would record all proxy attempts AFTER login name is captures, and log the proxy IP as well as the username
2./ The admin would be able to view this tracking list
3./ At any time, the admin can review proxy use ("monitor") and if the user logged in, which username it was ("track")
4./ The admin can select from the list of proxy addresses, and make specific IP's BLACKlisted or WHITElisted
5./ The admin would have an option to set the default as all (unknown) proxies BLACK or WHITE
6./ There would be an option to allow/block guest proxy access

I think that your programming hook is therefore one step later... let people log in first BEFORE running the blocking.

Yes, this requires some manual intervention by the admin to make it work properly. But this is very important for us, since we run a private vB for staff and clients. Clients may be behind proxies. By tracking, I can see who they are and the IP of the proxy. I can then decide to BLACK or WHITE list them. I cant risk blocking clients. I only want to block hackers.

When we have a new client, I could "shields down" until the client has logged in and I have the monitoring data. Then I could "shields up" again.

With this modified tool I would now have a monitoring system to see if people are trying to access via proxies, especially banned users (ex. staff and ex. clients).

I have tried that before when I coded it for another forum software and due to the proxies lists getting updated dayily it made next to impossible to track them. Whereas like this it works great.

Now, if you want to block people from logging in with a proxy, change the register_start hook to login_process hook and whenever a user logs in with a proxy, it will revert him/her immediately to their real ip.

Works great at what, though? Blocking entire corporations? Entire campuses? All AOL users? Apparently some countries?

It seems to me this is like using nuclear missiles to kill mosquitoes...

I am very happy with it ,I tested it thoroughly and then again my members are all home users
so I think it depends on your target membership, not all forums cater to Large corporations
that use proxies.

thank you

I'm all for this!!!!

You'r hack idea is great, you have no idea how badly I/we need something like this, but not so drastic though; and I think if you implement lemonadesoda's ideas this will become MOTM in no time!.

I don''t think you read my previous post about what it actually blocks and what not. It blocks only those who use the open ports I mentioned and not AOL users or entire countires. For my needs this works great and for others as well. If you don''t like it don''t use it, very simple. Or modify it yourself as you please for personal use :)

I have coded this for another forum that I use and I haven''t had a problem with aol users. I agree, not all forums cater to Large corporations that use proxies. And most of my members are home users too.

You are welcome.

I had implemented a similiar thing at a mod I have coded for another forum software and it didn''t work for the reasons I posted in my earlier post.

Can you improv it to adslock. Like person who use adblocker addon on firefox can't view forum. It will be great addon maybe best addon of the year.

I still think the tool is a bit blunt.

Yes, it might be all you need for your forum, but I think to win nominations from the community it needs a little more capability for their needs. Perhaps find a half-way house to the suggesiton I made earlier in post #15?

Anyway, good luck, and I hope you do consider to develop the mod further. It's got a lot of potential. :)

i had to un install it ,
its was really slowing down my forums and cms
loading times went from 10 seconds back to normal speed

My hack doesn''t influence the speed performance in any way btw.

Did you know about "Resource allocation" ? This hack does influence to speed performance.
Each request allocate memory for php (not for you hack directly) and wait up to 2 seconds for normal users with port 80 closed by firewall.
On typical server this can be increase requested memory for two times or more.

well done can u make it for 3.8 please so i can use it :)

It should work on a 3.8 forum. Remove the version from the <dependencies> and you should be all set.

Thats not always true at all. Based on that, this mod would block me, since I have stuff running on both those ports from my home connection. The same would apply if I used my work connection.

It is my understanding that 80 and 443 are regular open proxy ports. And if the IP address of the computer is coming from computer that has those ports open means that the user is behind a proxy. But you are right, this is not always 100% true.

http://www.xroxy.com/proxy-80--US-nossl.htm

http://www.xroxy.com/proxy-port-443.htm

Would I be able to get this but just for registered users? I don't want to block any guests.

Yes.

That has nothing to do with my mod.

So sorry, wrong thread, I apologize.

No problem at all :)

Hey, thanks for the mod but will this work with 3.8? Please tell me yes haha.

@ [name]borbole[/name]: really interesting hack, but i'm wondering about, have this any effect over the crawlers?

The thing is that I don't use vb 3x and wouldn''t know if it work there or not. But tell you what, try to remove this line from the xml file and give it a go, but at your test forum. If it works then install it at your live forum.


I don''t think so.

The 3x version is reelased here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=242357