Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Advanced IP Ban Manager

Advanced IP ban manager

What is it/What does it do?

This is intended as a replacement for the ip bans under vbulletin options. It allows for timed ip bans, cidr ranges and attatching reasons to bans.

It also features registration only ip bans allowing members who may be effected by an ip ban to continue using the forums, but blocking registrations and ip ban exempts so that you can ban a large range of ips and let through a smaller subset of them.

Features

• Ip bans
• Timed ip bans
• Ip ban exempts
• Registration only bans
• Ban by cidr range

Installation
Backup db.
Upload files from zip.
Import product.
Refresh admincp.

Once Version 0.3 is installed; upload the attached php file into your admin cp to replace the one already there. This file fixes a couple of minor issues for some people.

Changelog

• 0.3.1
  Added a work around for issues of 0.0.0.0 ips being banned on any system where ip2long returned a signed int instead of an unsigned int.
• 0.3
  Fixed bug where ip bans wouldn't block registrations unless set to registration only.
  Added file with a list of common spambot ips that can be auto banned.
  Changed limit on cidr range from 16 to 4 As i often came across instances where i wanted to ban larger ranges
• 0.2.1b
  Added a bitfield rebuild to installer to fix issues with menu not showing.
• 0.2b
  Fixed bug in instal code.
• 0.2a
  Added admin permissions and exempt bans
• 0.1a
  Initial release.

Notes

This has been tested on 3.7.2 but should work on 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x

This mod has not been tested on vbulletin 4; a separate, improved vbulletin 4 version can be found HERE

Access is now controlled by an admincp permission however no control over ip banning is done.

This variable can be used in the config file to prevent banning any ip/range of ips that contain the ips listed in it: $config['SpecialUsers']['unbannableips'] = "127.0.0.1|127.0.0.2";
Ips should be separated by a | symbol. This will not effect any bans that are already in place.

Bans are limited to a cidr range of 4. (This should be more than enough) If you require a ban that covers more than this, it should be set in the database. If there is demand for it, I may make the cidr limit optional/changable in future versions.

Exempts/bans work by taking the tightest cidr range match. eg if you ban 127.0.0.1/16 and add an exempt for 127.0.0.1/24 the exempt will take precedence, however adding another ban against 127.0.0.1/32 would override the exempt.

When uninstalling, the mod will remove the modifications to the admin table, however it is upto you to drop the ipbans table yourself. This has been done in order to preserve the data in that table incase you still want it for something.

I've added a file which was created by a member of my admin team, it contains a large list of ip addresses from which A lot of malignant traffic seems to come from. If you are having trouble with spam bots this list may help in preventing them from registering. To use the file visit the url : <your forum url>/admincp/ipban.spambots.php It will ask you to log in to your cp then display a blank page; this is to be expected as all its doing is inserting into the database. It will add approximately 140 bans; so they've been coded NOT to show up in the ip ban list. This feature is something i plan to expand on with a full interface for viewing, creating, adding and removing ip blocklists, but for now this mechanism is what i've come up with.

Support

As all of my boards have been upgraded to vbulletin 4, I am no longer actively maintaining any of my vb3.x mods. Free support for all of my 3.x mods is being removed from the 31st of March 2010 after this date, I will only be offering paid support for 3.x mods; downloading and usage of the mods will remain free but unsupported.

Please pm me for support of 3.x mods as I will not be checking their threads very often.

[S]Support is now offered as this is a beta release. I'll be checking vborg from time to time but for critical support issues, you are best contacting me on my own forums.

I'm hoping that this version (0.3) is bug free, so this can be considered a release candidate version.[/S]

I've uploaded a fixed php file for some people who were having problems with short php tags and other parse errors. This needs to be uploaded to the admin cp. The file will be added into the zip once in the next release.

This mod [S]will be [/S] has been upgraded to support vb4 The vbulletin 4 version will be released once the beta goes public.

Extra features in vb4.0 version:

• whois ip from admin cp
• cidr calculator (shows the ip range that a cidr bans)
• test bans (enter an ip to see if its banned or not)

Planned features for future versions:

• import/export bans
• integration into 'delete posts as spam' => admins with suitable permissions will be able to select a box to ban the posters ip(s) in addition to banning their account(s)

[nso]

Originally Posted by odln018

Ok, got that resolved, but am now getting the following error:

I got the same error but quickly figuered out the problem.
The author has used the short hand <? instead of <?php in the beginning of the PHP files.

This mode is not supported by many installations, and one should always use <?php when programming in PHP.

So, to fix your problem. Go in to all PHP-files in this modification and change the first line to read
<?php
instead of
<?

It seems like the author has ommited the ?> at the end of the files as well. This is poor practise.

Otherwise, top ace!

[Carnage]

It seems like the author has ommited the ?> at the end of the files as well. This is poor practise.

This is debatable. There are a good number of reasons for omitting it:
- Prevents excess white space at end of file; this can interfere with sending headers etc and cause xhtml validation errors.
- php.net dosn't use closing delimiters in its code eg http://www.php.net/source.php?url=/include/prepend.inc
- The closing tag is in fact optional.

Anyway, fixed file uploaded for those that dont have short tags enabled.

[Carnage]

@caltek: what versions of php/mysql are you running? 32bit or 64 bit os?

[Hornstar]

thanks for the update. This does indeed enhance the IP banning functionality in vbulletin and could be useful to have as default. I have many banned IPs over the years, now I have no clue why any of them were banned.

[Carnage]

Thats pretty much why i wrote this mod. It also allows me to give all admins ip ban privilages without them having access to the other options.

For anyone who was wondering; this does seem to work fine on vb 3.8.2 as i've just updated my own board to that version.

[Mutt]

installed on 3.82

when I add an ip, it says added successfully, & the row is saved to the DB

BUT when I list banned ips, the list is blank.

not sure what is wrong

[Carnage]

You checked the db and the ip is in there?

did you install the list of ip bans provided with the mod?

[Mutt]

Originally Posted by Carnage-

You checked the db and the ip is in there?

did you install the list of ip bans provided with the mod?

This is all I did

-------
Installation
Backup db.
Upload files from zip.
Import product.
Refresh admincp.
-------

yes, the ips are in the DB. I have 3 rows in the ipban table. I've attached an example. image 1 shows the row int he DB. image 2 is what I get when I click List "IP Bans"

[s8glive]

Does this work on 3.8.2

[kapii]

When I ban a IP with an CIDR, it shows as 0.0.0.0 and /8 for example, instead of what I entered... In the case shown in the attached zip file, I was banning 194.8.0.0/8 which is spammer trying to spam my site... However, it all shows as 0.0.0.0 as you will see in the attachment...

What can I do about it, or is there a reason it wouldn't show the IP info?

Thanks,
kapii