Sentinel(tm) vs Fortress(tm) (from NC)

Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 8:36 pm

I'm going to answer these here and not on the other site.

foxyfemfem wrote:

Hello,

I am sooooo confused. I really like the features thats offered in Sentinel. Although, I haven't installed it as of yet. I have a few questions.

What is the difference in Sentinel & Fortress as in pros & cons.

What does Sentinel do that Fortress doesn't and vice versa.

I haven't sat down and wrote out a piece on the comparison but here's what I can tell you.
Fortress(tm) - Will block some/most union and clike hacks.

Sentinel(tm) - Blocks union attacks, clike attacks, script attacks, it also guards against author table injections, and known harvesters. It can write to your htaccess file for complete blockage of an ip (ip can not even load a page on your site)

foxyfemfem wrote:

This statement here bothers me the most...

Wiitigo wrote:

Not to mention your page load times will sky rocket. You will be using more bandwidth and cpu.

If I use both Fortress & Sentinel I assume I'll be using alot of bandwidth (not good).

Sentinel makes a maxiumn of 5 db queries per page load. Normally it makes 2 per page load.

foxyfemfem wrote:

What is this...

GanjaUK wrote:

+ Added on/off switch for Harvester protection.

Each blocker union, clike, script, and harvester can be turned on or off with the on/off switch. You decide which blockers you want to use. If you decide not to use the harvester blocker you cut the normal db queries per page load to 1.

foxyfemfem wrote:

Why does Sentinel utilize the .htaccess file & database? If the ban IP is in the database is adding it to the .htaccess file necessary and vice versa?

An ip written to your htaccess file can't even enter your site at the server level. Hence there is no way for it to ever inflict any sort of damage on your site.

foxyfemfem wrote:

Is there a way for me to utilize both Fortress & Sentinel without using alot of bandwidth as stated above?

You can try it, however we have not tested them together. We concentrated on producing a simple and easy to use system that would replace those that do not give you all the options that Sentinel(tm) does. Sentinel(tm) will be upgraded, as a matter of fact I'm already working on 1.0.1 that will give webmasters even more control over the blockers.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Nuke cops, in their ignorance, is reporting that Sentinel(tm) is Apache specific [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] . It's interesting because in the very next post, the same author states he doesn't know how Sentinel(tm) works! Folks, if you have a question about Sentinel(tm), please ask the folks who wrote it, not the ones who want to knock it. The use of .htaccess is Apache specific, but the use of .htaccess is optional!

New Member Joined: Dec 07, 2003 Posts: 22 Location: USA

@BobMarion
Thanks, for answering my questions although, I'm still puzzled with this one.

BobMarion wrote:

An ip written to your htaccess file can't even enter your site at the server level. Hence there is no way for it to ever inflict any sort of damage on your site.

Now this quote...

Raven wrote:

The use of .htaccess is Apache specific, but the use of .htaccess is optional!

Lets assume I don't want to utilize the .htaccess option. Will the ban IP be able to enter my site at server level?

Assuming if one do not choose to utilize the .htaccess file its to their disadvantage vs utilizing the .htaccess to take advantage of full sentinel protection.

Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 6:33 am

You got it if not using htaccess your protection applies only to nuked pages. Other access like to an image directory or html pages could still be gained. This is the really outstanding thing Sentinel does besides offer a nice simple admin console for editing htaccess, configuration and statistics display.

Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 9:08 am

.htaccess is an Apache per directory access control file. Bear in mind that even a Windows running Apache can use this type of file but a Windows IIS server can not. This is why it is optional within the script to use the .htaccess file.

If you do not use the .htaccess file then any page on your site that pulls mainfile.php will still be protected and any ip listed in the db will be prevented from viewing that page. However as Six said this will not prevent that ip from viewing images and non-mainfile pages.