Here’s an updated version of the post, including a recommendation to switch to a better, free hosting panel along with a list of good options:
Subject: Urgent Action Needed to Prevent Scam Registrations and Bot Activity on the Panel
Dear Admin,
As a concerned community member, I want to highlight the growing issue of scam registrations, bot attacks, and fraudulent sign-ups that are increasingly affecting our platform. This is disrupting the registration process for legitimate users and compromising the integrity of the service.
To address these problems, I’d like to propose a few actionable steps along with the best security tools and methods that can be implemented to secure the platform. Below are several key strategies that can help eliminate these issues and protect our community from malicious activities.
1. Enforce Gmail or Legitimate Email Verification Only
Scammers commonly use temporary email services (e.g., 10-minute emails) to flood the platform with fake registrations. This can be easily mitigated by ensuring that only legitimate email addresses are used, with a preference for services like Gmail.
Tools to Use:
Email Pattern Validation: Use regular expressions (regex) to validate email addresses on your registration forms, allowing only Gmail and other legitimate email services.
Example Regex for Gmail validation:
^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@gmail\.com$
Temporary Email Blocklist: You can also use a service like EmailListVerify to check if an email belongs to a disposable or temporary email provider.
Why It Helps:
- Blocking disposable emails ensures that only valid users can register, reducing the likelihood of scam or bot registrations.
- Verification of legitimate email addresses also reduces fraudulent sign-ups.
2. Block VPNs and Suspicious IP Addresses
VPN usage is prevalent among scammers to mask their true location, making it easy for them to bypass restrictions. Blocking these connections can significantly reduce bot and scam traffic.
Tools to Use:
- Cloudflare: Cloudflare’s Bot Management feature offers VPN detection and automatic blocking of malicious IPs. Enabling Bot Fight Mode helps in blocking known bad actors, including VPN users and scrapers.
- IP Geofencing (via Cloudflare or cPanel): You can use geofencing to block traffic from specific countries, such as China, where many bot attacks originate.
Why It Helps:
- Blocking VPNs reduces the risk of bots or scammers registering accounts.
- Geofencing blocks traffic from high-risk countries where many fraud attempts originate, improving the overall security of the platform.
3. Implement Token-Based Authentication or Time-Limited Verification
Adding an extra layer of protection with token-based authentication or time-limited registration verification helps ensure that the registration process is secure.
Tools to Use:
- JWT (JSON Web Token): You can implement JWT for token-based authentication. After a user submits a registration form, send them a unique token that must be validated within a time window.
- Time-Limited Links: Set time-to-live (TTL) for verification links, ensuring that users complete registration within a specific time (e.g., 10 minutes after email verification).
Why It Helps:
- Token-based authentication ensures that only valid users can complete their registration, while bots cannot manipulate the system.
- Time-limited verification makes it harder for bots to abuse the registration form over extended periods.
4. Rate Limiting and Bandwidth Control
Bots tend to flood websites with excessive requests. By implementing rate limiting, we can stop bots from submitting registrations too frequently and consuming too many resources.
Tools to Use:
- Cloudflare Rate Limiting: Cloudflare offers rate-limiting rules that allow you to limit the number of requests made to your registration page per minute/hour.
- Fail2Ban: This tool can be used to block IP addresses after multiple failed login attempts or suspicious activities, such as multiple registration attempts from the same IP in a short time.
- Apache/Nginx ModSecurity: ModSecurity rules can be configured to block bots or excessive requests to registration forms.
Why It Helps:
- Rate limiting will reduce the number of registration attempts from the same IP, preventing bots from overloading the system.
- Bandwidth control can limit the amount of data being consumed during registration processes, ensuring the platform isn’t slowed down by malicious traffic.
5. Use Geofencing to Block Scam-prone Countries
Countries like China, Russia, and India are often associated with bot activity or scam registrations. Geofencing can help prevent users from these regions from accessing registration pages or challenge them to complete additional verification steps.
Tools to Use:
- Cloudflare: Cloudflare provides Geofencing and IP Access Rules to block traffic from specific countries. You can easily restrict access to the registration page from high-risk regions.
- IP Blocklist: Use services like IP2Location or MaxMind to identify and block high-risk IP ranges or countries.
Why It Helps:
- Blocking access from high-risk countries will reduce the number of fraudulent registrations, ensuring only legitimate users from trusted regions can sign up.
6. Implement Open-Source Security Tools and Free Hosting Panels
To further protect your platform, using open-source tools designed for bot protection, rate limiting, and IP blocking can help maintain security without incurring additional costs.
Tools to Use:
- Fail2Ban: Block malicious IPs that try to brute-force login attempts or flood your site with requests.
- ModSecurity: A Web Application Firewall (WAF) to filter and block malicious traffic.
- OpenResty (Nginx-based): Use OpenResty to create custom security rules that block bots based on IP or behavior patterns.
- VestaCP or Webmin: Open-source hosting panels that offer security features like IP blocking, rate limiting, and access control, making it easy to manage your hosting environment.
Why It Helps:
- These tools offer effective protection from bots and scammers while remaining free and open-source.
- They also provide customizable security settings, allowing you to adjust rules according to your platform’s specific needs.
7. Time to Switch to a Better Hosting Panel
Devil Panel (or any current hosting panel you're using) may be outdated and lacking modern security features. It's time to switch to a more secure, reliable, and feature-rich hosting panel that is well-suited for handling the demands of bot protection and secure user registrations. Below are some free, open-source panels you can consider switching to:
Free Hosting Panel Options:
VestaCP
A simple, lightweight control panel designed for small-to-medium hosting environments. It includes essential features like email management, DNS management, and security tools, making it an efficient choice for servers with low resource usage.
Webmin
A comprehensive, web-based system administration tool ideal for Linux servers. It provides robust security features, including user authentication, access control, and real-time monitoring to manage your hosting environment effectively.
CentOS Web Panel (CWP)
A free control panel specifically for CentOS servers, offering a user-friendly interface with powerful security features. It includes capabilities like IP blocking, firewall management, and integration with widely-used security tools like CSF.
Froxlor
A lightweight server management tool designed for managing web hosting environments. It provides key security functions, including SSL support, firewall management, and rate limiting, ensuring a stable and secure hosting experience.
Ajenti
A flexible, minimalist control panel ideal for managing small to medium hosting environments. It supports essential server management tasks like real-time security monitoring and IP blocking, providing you with an easy yet powerful interface.
DirectAdmin
A straightforward and user-friendly control panel that offers essential features such as email management, DNS management, and security tools. It’s best suited for shared and reseller hosting environments due to its simplicity and efficiency.
ISPConfig
A versatile and open-source hosting control panel supporting multi-server management. It comes with robust features like firewall management, IP blocking, rate limiting, and SSL certificate management, making it a comprehensive solution for hosting management.
CyberPanel
A fast and optimized free hosting control panel powered by OpenLiteSpeed. It offers features like SSL management, DNS management, and auto-backups, and is renowned for its speed and performance, particularly for web applications.
This version aims to provide clearer descriptions and concise points for each panel, highlighting their strengths and features more effectively.
Why It Helps:
- These panels come with modern security features and are better suited for handling today's security needs, including bot detection, rate limiting, SSL certificates, and user management.
- Switching to a newer, more robust panel will enhance overall security and improve the ease of managing hosting services.
Conclusion
I strongly urge the administration to implement these steps and utilize the tools mentioned to secure the platform from scam registrations, bot-driven attacks, and fraudulent sign-ups. These methods will create a much safer and more legitimate environment for our users, ensuring the integrity of the platform.
By using a combination of Cloudflare, email validation, rate limiting, geofencing, and open-source tools, we can create a more secure registration system that protects the platform from malicious activities and provides a better user experience for everyone.
Additionally, switching to a more modern, secure hosting panel like VestaCP, Webmin, or CWP will significantly improve the platform’s ability to manage security and user registrations.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I am confident that, with the right measures in place, we can make this platform safe and accessible for all legitimate users.
Best regards,
Forum Member!