Question Blocked IP and Country ISO Code

[XTech]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.67 #2

Hello,

I've added the ISO country code and the IP addresses of visitors from a specific country to my website's firewall settings, but I still see traffic from that country.
I configured this under Tools & Settings > Firewall, but it doesn't seem to be blocking them.

Do you know why this might be happening?

Thank you!

 

[Raul A.]

Hi,

Do you pass your website via a CDN like Cloudflare? In that case, your server Firewall will see only Cloudflare IP addresses.

If you don't use a CDN, then perhaps the firewall didn't get applied because of the long time needed to load all the IP addresses in the IP lists.

 

[Kaspar]

In addition to @Raul A. suggestion it's also worth noting that IP geolocation never can be 100% accurate. That because the IP geolocation data is gathered from specific databases vendors. They will try to keep their IP geolocation data as accurate as possible, but there is always room for error. Especially as (blocks of) IPv4 address are traded or sold frequently.

By default the Plesk Firewall uses the free "IP to Country Lite" database from DB-IP. For which, if I remember correctly, the vendor only releases an update once a month. Which such a low update frequency, some inaccuracies are inevitable. You can switch to the MaxMind IP geolocation databases for the Plesk Firewall to increase accuracy.

 

[XTech]

Thank you both, I will try what I can achieve!