All EDZNET shared and managed hosting servers are protected by BitNinja, a server security system from BitNinja Inc. This article explains what it does for your website and email, what you might notice, and what to do if it blocks you by mistake.
What BitNinja does
BitNinja watches connections to the server and automatically stops traffic that behaves like an attack, before it reaches your website, mailboxes or cPanel. It works at several levels:
- IP reputation: it challenges or blocks addresses known for malicious activity, or behaving suspiciously.
- Brute-force protection: it blocks addresses after repeated failed logins to cPanel, webmail, email apps, FTP or WordPress, which stops password-guessing attacks.
- Web application firewall: it filters out requests that try common attacks against websites and content management systems such as WordPress.
- Malware scanning: it scans files on the server for malicious code.
- Connection fingerprinting: it recognises known attack tools by the way they set up secure connections, and stops them before they get any further. See TLS handshake fingerprinting explained.
You don't need to install or configure anything. It runs on the server and protects every account on it.
What you might see
Most of the time, nothing. Visitors using up-to-date browsers aren't affected. Occasionally a genuine person gets caught. When that happens:
- in a browser, a security check or captcha page appears, and completing it normally lets them straight in
- email apps and FTP programs time out or can't connect, because there's no page for them to show
- very old browsers or email apps may get an SSL handshake error
The most common cause is an old password saved on a phone or tablet that keeps retrying in the background.
If you or a visitor is blocked
Find the IP address with our What's my IP tool (or whatsmyip.edznet.io if edznet.io won't load), and send it to us. We remove the block and tell you what caused it. Blocked by the firewall? How to get your IP unblocked has the full steps. If your business has a fixed office IP, we can whitelist it.
Your data
To do its job, BitNinja processes technical data such as IP addresses, traffic patterns and access attempts. It acts as a data processor on our behalf, uses the data only to protect our infrastructure, and keeps it only as long as that requires. Our privacy policy has the details.
