View Full Version : phpBB Dos Attack

l234244
12-27-2004, 12:28 PM
Anyone know how to stop Dos attacks, my forum is being hit? I keep blocking ranges of IP addresses but there seems to be no end to the them.
wyrickj
12-27-2004, 05:42 PM
Do you have a firewall in place? If not I highly recommend getting one.
l234244
12-29-2004, 07:02 AM
I have a firewall on my computer but dont see how it would stop my site from getting hit, am I missed something?

PS - The attack has finished, 5gb of bandwidth used and the banning of about 300 IP ranges stopped it. However, I still would like to know how to prevent this in future, thanks.
wyrickj
12-29-2004, 11:33 AM
Well you should have a firewall to stop DOS Attacks. I run ISA Server 2004 and if so many connections come from the same IP in a minute the firewall drops the connection. Also block ICMP (Ping) traffic.
l234244
12-30-2004, 08:57 AM
Found the problem, some kind of worm was exploiting phpBB. For anyone running this software add the following to the top of common.php

$browser = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) ? strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) : '';
if(substr($browser, 0, 3) === 'lwp')
{
die('No bots allowed on this server.');
}
if(isset($_GET['highlight']) && strpos($_GET['highlight'], '%27') !== false)
{
die('Sorry, highlight bug is fixed.');
}

Stops the worm immediately. All thanks goes to CyberAlien at phpbbstyles.com.