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haim evgi
Asked: 2009-08-18 23:49:03 +0800 CST

How can I block access to my website from certain countries using the LAMP stack?

  • 772

I have a website that I do not want to be viewed by entire countries. The website is running on a LAMP server. How can I achieve this?

php apache-2.2 lamp blocking

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Use mod_geoip module. http://www.maxmind.com/app/mod_geoip

    For example:

    GeoIPEnable On
GeoIPDBFile /path/to/GeoIP.dat

SetEnvIf GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE CN BlockCountry
SetEnvIf GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE RU BlockCountry

# ... place more countries here
Deny from env=BlockCountry
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  2. You can use rewrite_mod's REMOTE_ADDR condition to redirect banned users to a single page describing the fact that they are not allowed to enter, or simply give them a 403 error.

    RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^123\.123\.123\.[0-9]{3}$ 
RewriteRule .* ...

    To get the range of IPs for a country, get the Maxmind database for example.

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  3. Check the IP and determine which country hosts it, and then block it. Of course it's not accurate, but it's something. Generally I'm not a fan of doing this though; but maybe it's required for some legal reason.

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  4. You can filter the country ISP's ip adresses. There are a lot of geolocation database, to help you to identify the users country by ip.

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  5. I have came across this site, which claims to ban country,

    IMO, the best way it to block using the .htaccess file

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  6. You can use services like this:

    http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

    to extract info which IP ranges belong to which countries and block them. Keep in mind if you block too many ranges on a high traffic web site you may see some heavy utilisation on your firewalls.

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