Bad Behavior 2.0.31
October 17th, 2009 by Michael Hampton
Bad Behavior 2.0.31 has been released. It is a maintenance release and is recommended for specific users identified below.
MediaWiki and WordPress users who have not updated in the last year or so should take note of special upgrade instructions below.
Who should upgrade?
Users of specialized web services integrated into their host platforms, for which Bad Behavior should not screen requests, should upgrade to take advantage of new functionality introduced in the previous release.
What’s new?
New in this release (since 2.0.30):
- Due to ongoing issues with various web services such as OpenID and PayPal IPN behaving in strange ways which trigger Bad Behavior, a new whitelist was added in version 2.0.30. You may now add URLs of your site to Bad Behavior’s whitelist. When a URL is added, Bad Behavior will ignore any HTTP request to that particular URL. If you need this feature, please check the
bad-behavior/whitelist.inc.phpfile for further information. In version 2.0.30 this feature was comparing the whitelisted URLs to the wrong field in the HTTP header. This has been fixed. (Thanks to Magnus Wester for catching this error.)
Support
Thank you to everyone who has chosen to make a financial contribution toward further development of Bad Behavior. Your contributions ensure that I can prioritize Bad Behavior development and make more frequent and timely releases, like this one.
Download
Special Upgrade Instructions
Users of MediaWiki and WordPress upgrading from version 2.0.20 or earlier should follow these special directions (from 2.0.21 or later, upgrade normally):
For MediaWiki: Before installing this version of Bad Behavior, manually remove (e.g. using FTP or ssh) any old versions you may have, including the lines added to LocalSettings.php. Then install the new version fresh, following the installation instructions for MediaWiki.
For WordPress: If updating to this version through the automatic updater fails, manually remove (e.g. using FTP or ssh) any old versions you may have installed. Then upload and install the new version fresh, following the installation instructions for WordPress. After doing so, future automatic updates should proceed normally.
For other platforms: No changes to your upgrade procedures should be necessary.
Álvaro Degives-Más Says
Just to be 100% in the context of a WordPress installation… If I’d want to whitelist the (currently) four IP addresses used by the PayPal IPN server callbacks, I’d include those IPs somewhere between lines 14 – 20 in `whitelist.inc.php` right?
I’m just making sure, because I can’t find that file named `bad-behavior-whitelist.php` you refer to above… (Unless of course I’m missing something i.e. having to make it or something like that).
Or alternatively, should I include the domain of the PayPal IPN server (i.e. “notify.paypal.com”) and whitelist that somewhere? I guess not, as whitelisting specific IPs should nip any external server access issues in the bud, but still… Just making sure I understand the philosophy. Thanks again for putting up with my dense head – and for the quick fix release!
Oct 18th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Michael Hampton Says
Oops, the name was wrong. I fixed it.
In the case of PayPal IPN, you would probably do best to whitelist your URL rather than the IP addresses (which PayPal says might change someday).
Oct 18th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Álvaro Degives-Más Says
[Density disclaimer]
But wouldn’t that imply that *any* external host / server could then reach that URI on my own server, if I’d whitelist the path to the file on my server where the PayPal callback is expected / received? If so, I’d rather keep an eye on PayPal’s changing IPs* myself, while keeping Bad Behavior guarding the gate…
[/density disclaimer]
(Sorry…)
*A tech support person at PayPal I spoke with assured me that they rotate the dns resolution fairly frequently; so it’s not changing (at least not frequently) the “real” four IP addresses used exclusively for IPN, and to which their server domain (notify.paypal.com) resolves. Then again, I do see your point about unlocking access to one’s own URI; that way, it’s that particular code’s problem to deal with the nasties out there, and frees up precious BB cycles. So, I’ll go ahead and do that instead of whitelisting physical IPs. See, I should’ve listened to you from the get-go.
Oct 18th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Michael Hampton Says
In the case of PayPal IPN, all requests it receives are supposed to be sent back to PayPal for verification before they’re processed. So this is the right thing to do.
Oct 18th, 2009 at 1:21 am
ratTus rattUs Says
Your code in whitelist.inc.php after “if (!empty($bb2_whitelist_urls))” does not work for me. Whitelisted URLs are not whitelisted for several reasons. The following works: http://pastebin.com/f362a0492
if (!empty($bb2_whitelist_urls)) {
if (strpos($package['request_uri'], “?”) === FALSE) {
$request_uri = $package['request_uri'];
} else {
$request_uri = substr($package['request_uri'], 0, strpos($package['request_uri'], “?”));
}
foreach ($bb2_whitelist_urls as $url) {
if (!strcmp($request_uri, $url)) return true;
}
}
HTH.
Oct 21st, 2009 at 11:26 pm
nonegiven Says
Hi.
could I make s suggestion … it would be helpful/great if the way Bad Behavior plug in was laid out in the admin section allowed easy copying of all the IP address so that one could add them to a .htaccess deny script.
(… or, indeed, be able to do so from the admin panel).
Is there anywhere else, eg log that I can do so except going to the database?
Thanks
Oct 22nd, 2009 at 6:15 am