What is Leech Protection ?
The Leech Protect utility available in cPanel enables users with preventing users from disclosing the passwords to a restricted area of a website publicly and restricting the number of times a user can log in to the areas.
The site administrators get the capability of redirecting the accounts to preferred pages incase of such violations. Hence protecting the breach into the system.
cPanel control panel allows the capability to manage leeching by redirecting or potentially suspending the user. A maximum number of logins can be set according to your preferences, while the default value is set to 2 hours. If incase the limitations tend to exceed, the user is assumed to be offering other users the login details.
Inorder to enable this feature, one must login to your cPanel control panel. You may refer the following links to learn the ways to access cPanel :
- Ways to access cPanel (control panel)
How to Enable Leech Protection?
Step 1 – Look for the Leech Protect icon located in the Security section of cPanel home screen for accessing the Leech Protect Menu
Step 2 – Browse and Click the folder for which you intend assign protection
Step 3 – Assign the number of times you intend to allow a user to login during a window period of 2 hours.
NOTE: A value of 4 can be considered to be ideal, anything below might suspend a genuine user who would probably have carried out attempts to connect due to failure of internet connectivity. Though, if the login attempts are made through the same network or even a subnet, suspension of the accounts doesn’t occur.
Step 4 – You must update the URL of the website where you intend to send the users that are violating the accessibility criterion’s and the set number of login attempts.
NOTE: You may encounter an internal server error message if the updated URL isn’t something other that of the leech protected area.
Step 5 – You also have an option to receive notifications for leeching attempts. Check the box besides “Send Email Alert” and update the email address in the field titled “Send Email Alert to” for receiving instant alerts on possible leeching attempts.
Step 6 – For suspending a particular account, you only need to click box besides the option titles “Disable Compromised Accounts”
NOTE: If user is caught in violation for accessing the leech protected areas, the account is suspended and the password disabled. For reactivating a particular account you are required to reset the password for that particular account.
Step 7 – You may now click on Enable for enabling leech protection. After which a Leech Protect Confirmation screen would appear.
How to Disable Leech Protection ?
Disabling Leech Protection is simple process. You only need to click the Disable button after which you’d be see a confirmation statement.
You may reconfirm whether the changes to have been implemented by going back by clicking the link provided on that page.
If you don’t notice the leech icon against the directory which you had previously protected that means it has been successfully disabled, else you may attempt the same procedure.
How to Manage the Users in Leech Protected Directories?
Upon accessing the leech protected directory, you would observe an option titled Manage Users in the form of a button (you must scroll down to the end of the page to view).
Then you’d be shown with the Password Protected Directories configuration area for the particular directory. You may wish to check the Password Protect Directories document to know more on the topic.
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