How to whitelist a website to work properly
IP Addresses can be ‘spoofed’ using virtual private networking (VPN) technology. When a device hits the server with incorrect login information it can not tell whether the device belongs to the user in their office/home or if the device belongs to a hacker on a different continent. Why Whitelisting Your IP Is Bad for Your Security Unfortunately one of the problems we run into is that a misconfigured device owned by the client will also hit the server repeatedly with incorrect login credentials and the same security measure used to block a hacker will now be used to block the client. We really don’t want this to happen to our clients so we follow the convention of blocking IPs that hit the server too many times with incorrect login information.
Once inside, they have access to your website and to your emails, and they can set up spam bots to broadcast spam/scam/virus emails from your email address.
How to whitelist a website to work properly password#
Hackers often attempt to gain access to servers by hitting them with ‘brute force attacks’ where they have an algorithm cycling through millions of password combinations a minute that will keep going until the correct combination is reached. IP addresses get blocked because someone is repeatedly attempting to access the server with invalid login credentials. If you have a mobile device or laptop which you travel with it may connect to all sorts of different modems and so use different IP addresses depending on which network it is currently connected to. If you have several devices all connected to the same modem (like in an office) then all those devices will be using that modem’s IP address. So every time you check your email or visit a website the modem in your network takes your requests, labels them with its IP address, and broadcasts them to the appropriate servers which then reply back to your modem which in turn broadcasts the reply to your device. It is very similar to writing one’s address in the top left corner of an envelope. Every time a computer or mobile device sends a request to a server it also sends its IP address so the server can identify who is making the request and to whom it should send information back to.
What is an IP Address?Īn internet protocol (IP) address is a unique identifier that is given to users according to the device and the network they use to access the internet. To unpack this, we need to explain what an IP address is and why IP addresses get blocked in the first place.
Whitelisting an IP address compromises the security of the user as well as the reliability of the server for everyone else that uses it. What’s Wrong with Whitelisting an IP Address? This would be easy and make our clients happy, but it is something that we avoid doing at all costs. The easy solution to this problem is to just permanently white-list certain IP addresses, tell the server to never block them no matter what. This is when we have to do a lot of extra work and make some tough decisions. There are occasions though when a client gets continually blocked. Normally an IP block is an easy fix, we just unblock it and our clients continue on their merry way. This is when the client starts to run into problems case and point, IP blocks. Every so often though we run into a thorny issue where ‘safety’ and ‘reliability’ fight against each other. Normally everything runs just fine, our clients can visit their websites and send and receive mail as they expect, not even noticing that our servers are blocking hack attempts. As a web agency that seeks to provide excellent hosting service we always want to ensure that our clients have safe and reliable service.