MaxMind’s GeoIP Lite block a Whole Country Via CSF with a little help from our Support Team

At Bobcares, we excel at coming up with solutions for every query as a part of our Server Management Service.

Let’s dive in and read how the Support Techs helped a client block a whole country via CSF recently.

Why use MaxMind’s GeoIP Lite to block a Whole Country Via CSF?

If you want to prevent access to your website from a specific country, you have come to the right place. Blocking traffic from specific countries is possible via ConfigServer Firewall or CSF. In fact, this is usually done when you notice an unusual number of hacking attempts from certain countries or web visits from locations that you do not offer service to do business.

Our Support Team recently helped one of our customers setup a block via MaxMind’s GeoIP Lite service.

How to block a Whole Country with MaxMind’s GeoIP Lite?

1. First, we will sign up for a MaxMind account at this link. You are not required to make a purchase to sign up.
2. Then, set the password and create a license key at this link.
3. After that, set up the downloading mechanism via the GeoIP Update program available at this link. You can also opt to create a direct download script from this link.
4. Next, we have to update /etc/csf/csf.conf with the new key as seen below

   # MaxMind License Key:
   MM_LICENSE_KEY = “addnewlicensekeyhere”

   Our Support Engineers recommend restarting CSF after making the change with the following command:

   root@host [~]# csf -r

How to deny a country via CSF with MaxMind’s GeoIP Lite

We can either whitelist or blacklist specific counties through the main csf.conf file. This is done by making changes by adding country codes to the CC_ALLOW and CC_DENY values in the configuration file. Furthermore, you have to install IPSET as seen below to use this feature:

root@host [~]# yum install ipset

After that, we also have to modify the value in the /etc/csf/csf.conf file.

LF_IPSET = “0”

This value is often found at around line 404 in the file. We have to change it to 1.

Next, we will locate the CC_DENY value in the /etc/csf/csf.conf file and add the ISO country codes of the specific countries that we wish to block. The country codes of different countries are available at this link.

Once these changes have been made we will restart CSF and we are ready to go!

[Need help with another query? Give us a call today.]

Conclusion

To sum up, we learned how to block entire countries from accessing our website from the skilled Support Engineers at Bobcares.