NULL mag Issue 06 25 Mystic blacklist tip

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

null magazine

 · 3 years ago

  

 

 
    some bbs software like mystic bbs, has a feature to blacklist ips 
    that are making too many connections in a short time period to your 
    bbs. this prevents attacks, so its useful. the bad thing with this, 
    is that some times, we as users/sysops do many connection attempts 
    and finally, our ip gets into that file... resulting to not be able 
    to connect, even at our bbs sometimes. 

    also, many sysops don't know about this or they don't know how to 
    clear it or they just forget to clear it, from time to time. this way 
    you loose visitors, who for some weird reason, they got "banned" and 
    not they can't even connect to your bbs. 

    a solution to this problem is obviously, to clear the file. but 
    because we have so many things to do... we will do it automatically, 
    using cron or other event manager. the solution is apply able to any 
    bbs software, you just have to figure out, which file you have to 
    delete etc. for example we will make a simple script to clear a 
    mystic bbs blacklist.txt file. the script is simple as deleting the 
    file and also creating it with the 'touch' command... this is very 
    important! let's see the commands first: 

    rm <full path to file>/blacklist.txt 
    touch <full path to file>/blacklist.txt 

    for a pi installed mystic bbs... you should have something like this: 

    rm /home/pi/mystic/data/blacklist.txt 
    touch /home/pi/mystic/data/blacklist.txt 

    simple! make the script executable and add it as a cron job like. 
    initiate cron editor with:  crontab -e 

        MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT ROOT! make this as a simple/normal user! 

    in the editor that will open add this line in the bottom of the file: 

    00 */2 * * * <full path to script> 

    example: 

    00 */2 * * * /home/pi/mystic/clearbllst.sh 

    save and exit the editor... the new cron job will be installed. the 
    cron command/job we applied, will delete the blacklist.txt file every 
    two hours at exactly 00/zero minutes. this means that someone that 
    makes too many logins and got banned... he will have to wait for 
    about two hours to be able to login again. you can change this to 
    whatever you want. for example to erase the file every 12 hours you 
    will enter the command like this: 

    00 */12 * * * /home/pi/mystic/clearbllst.sh 

    it is very important to re-create the file! if you just delete it, 
    mystic server (mis) will create it, but with root access only! so 
    next time you will go to edit it, you have to be a root user! this is 
    not a good way to do it and the file originally belongs to a normal 
    user. so we execute our cronjob as a normal user and recreate the 
    file, to avoid the creation of the blacklist file with root access. 

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