Forum Moderators: phranque
Last few weeks I have noticed allot of traffic coming from one IP number every time I made changes to a clients Joomla CMS site. I have a forum and a blog attached in sub folders to the site (3 separate DB's in phpmyadmin / mysql)?
The IP numbers were coming from Google translate. I did some digging and saw that another site (Russian guy) copied the entire CMS (joomla) website and is using this script:
<script>_infowindowVersion=1;_intlStrings._originalText = "&#nnnn; ... &#nnnn;:";_intlStrings._interfaceDirection="ltr";_intlStrings._interfaceAlign="left";
_intlStrings._langpair="enŠit";_parentUrl="http://translate.google.com";
_intlStrings._feedbackUrl=_parentUrl+"/translate_suggestion";
_intlStrings._suggestTranslation="&#nnnn; ... &#nnnn;" ;_intlStrings._submit="
&#nnnn; ... &#nnnn;";_intlStrings._suggestThanks="&#nnnn; ... &#nnnn; Google
&#nnnn; ... &#nnnn;.";_intlStrings._reverse=false;</script>(The code is not displaying correctly due to the Russian text?)
What it is doing is retrieving the sites info (realtime) and is sending it translated to another mirror site (identical to mine but in Italian).
He is inserting this after the <head> and ending it before the <title> Every time someone makes a forum post or even if I make a change on the site, Google translate automatically comes to the site and mirrors it back in Italian to the mirror site? And it updates in seconds?
I cannot block his IP address because he is not accessing the site, Google translate is? I do not want to block Google of course? Plus the IP number comes from different Google datacenters depending on which country the user accessing the mirror site is in?
Now if I turn the site off for maintenance, the Italian mirror site goes down as well? So he is dependent on my databases? Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do, has this happened to you as well? Is this a SQL injection problem or cross-site scripting?
Thanks in advance for your help and I hope I am posting this in the right forum.
Maximus
[edited by: phranque at 4:44 am (utc) on Feb. 25, 2009]
[edited by: tedster at 7:29 am (utc) on Feb. 25, 2009]
[edit reason] removed encoded text, added line breaks [/edit]
Thanks for your response..
if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])) {header('HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable');print("<html><head>\n");print("<title>Error</title>\n");print("</head><body>\n");print("<p>This page is blank</p>\n");print("</body></html>");exit; }[edit]... actually, instead of serving up a blank page, it would probably make more sense to redirect them to your homepage or something
Thakns for all your help, you are saving my bum here..
THANKS
I guess now no one legit can translate the site right? You also mentioned proxies, what does this mean and how can it affect the site? My plan is to leave the script in for a few weeks until this guys moves on and mirrors another site and then I will remove it.....
legit sites (like googles translation service) do provide it. so the script blocks it. proxies are supposed to provide it as well, but most don't (because they are trying to keep their users details private). so it will work with some proxies, but not others.
Ok so I installed the script in all main index.php files (wordpress, Vbulletin and Joomla) and sure enough it works for most of the pages (100% on the homepage) but for some internal links it still does not work and displays the mirror for that internal page? It's like 60% of the mirror sites has been blocked but 40% is still getting through.
For example:
www.mirrorsite.com (is not displaying)
www.mirrorsite.com/concert_times.html (is not displaying)
www.mirrorsite.com/upcoming_events.html (IS Displaying)
www.mysite.com/wordpress (is not displaying)
www.mysite.com/wordpress/2009/01/12/townsed-concert-live/ (is not displaying)
www.mysite.com/wordpress/2009/01/18/weekend-retreat-for/ (IS DISPLAYING)
Same for forum....
Is this a cache issue that will resolve over time? Or are some internal pages not feeding the php script of the index.php file?
Thanks again for all the help..
[edit]... just thought... have you got one of those caching plugins installed on wordpress? you might have to clear that cache as well.
[edited by: phranque at 10:40 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2009]
You were right, it is a caching issue. To test this I made a change on one of the pages it was still mirroring (PUT test in h2 tag) and it did not show up on the mirror, 10 seconds later the page it was still mirroring was blank and could not mirror any more. So the rest of the pages it is still mirroring are just cached and should clear up over the next few days :) THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS HAS HELPED SO MUCH!
As it stands now google translate cannot access my site, so any legit user in Argentina (example) who wants to translate the site into Spanish cannot and would see a blank page (I tested this). I do not mind that because I can remove the script once nobody is trying to mirror it and put it back if someone tries it again.
So you are sure this will have no NEGATIVE impact on SEO, rankings, or google accessing my pages and content for indexing correct? The only negative impact would be legit users trying to translate?
Thanks...
Hmmm, I do not fully understand you Ogle? Can you be more specific, how would I redirect googles IP? If I completely block google translate IP will that affect SEO and the google spider from coming to my site?
NO it will NOT.
I've had portions of the google translator UA (as well as other translators) and their (google) IP Translator range denied for longer than I'm able to recall.
Don
