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Admin Tools

#23688 Repeated exceptions: template= in URL

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by on Friday, 11 December 2015 17:20 CST

Wednesday, 11 November 2015 03:50 CST

wendy.p
Hi, I've had Admin Tools Pro installed for 6 months, with the Web Application Firewall running. I've consistently and repeatedly had security exceptions reason template= in URL. My security exceptions log reports that the target URL is http://www.flourishdayspa.com.au/index.php/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=tendo&link=2806baae74c517364e0ae7f1668c0a4e708a305d - this is the email link to a friend popup box. The numbers are sometimes different, however the link is to the email to friend popup box. The ip addresses are usually international (ie not Australia). I cannot tell if these are legit visitors or google or malicioius in intent. I sometimes receive email notification 3 or 4 times together, and usually every couple of days. In configure WAF/Visual Fingerprinting Protection, I have block tmpl=foo system template switch to: Yes. List of allowed tmpl= keywords set to component,system,raw. Block template=foo site template switch: Yes. Allow site templates: No.
Please help me identify how to fix. Thanks.

Wednesday, 11 November 2015 04:04 CST

nicholas
Hello Wendy,

As you can read in our documentation under "Allow site templates":

Enabling this option partially overrides the previous option (the blocking of template=foo in the URL). If the template= URL query parameter specifies the name of a template which exists in your template directory, then it will be allowed without raising a security exception. This is required only on sites which are using more than one template at the same time. What we mean by that is that you can go to Joomla!'s back-end, go to Extensions, Templates and assign any of the installed templates to any number of menu items. When you do that, several core components –including com_mailto, powering the "send this page by email" icon in your articles– have to append template=yourDefaultTemplateName to the URL. This would cause your site to throw security exceptions whenever a legitimate visitor would, for example, try to send an article by email to a friend of his. By enabling this option you prevent this security exception from being raised.


Since newer versions of Joomla! always specify a template parameter in the mailto links you should enable the "Allow site templates" option in the Configure WAF page.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 11 November 2015 04:26 CST

wendy.p
Thankyou, I was confused with my interpretation of 'Allow Site Templates'. I have changed that to Yes. Thankyou.

Wednesday, 11 November 2015 06:07 CST

nicholas
You're welcome!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Friday, 11 December 2015 17:20 CST

System Task
system
This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.
Edited by on 2015-12-11 17:20 CST

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