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Admin Tools

#36634 The WAF hardening options blocks sending "forgot your password" email

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 Saturday, 19 March 2022 20:17 CDT

dpollez

The WAF hardening options "Disable creating / editing backend users from the frontend" also blocks sending an email after clicking "forgot your password" for registered users.

I cannot even "activate" a user with this setting on.

Very annoying....

What is going wrong?

Thanks

Didier. 

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Your issue cannot be reproduced. I tried that on a brand new Joomla 3.10.6 installation with Admin Tools 6.1.5, default configuration plus “Disable creating / editing backend users from the frontend” enabled. I created a new Registered user in the backend and used the password reset in the frontend for that user. I got the email just fine. I went through the password reset just fine. The new password works.

Something in your description does not make sense. This feature only blocks frontend user operations for users who are already assigned or are being assigned in user groups which have the Backend Login permission. The Registered user group does not have that permission by default.

This leaves us with three possible reasons for your issue:

1. It's unrelated to Admin Tools. Have you tried reproducing the issue after disabling the System - Admin Tools plugin? Is it possible that your problem is your site's email configuration?

2. You have added the Backend Login permission to your Registered group. Essentially, you have made every single user on your site a backend user which is a bad idea and a security issue. If that's the case I would say that you have a far more serious problem than not sending password reminder emails!

3. You have a third party plugin which is doing something stupid, somehow adding users to a user group that has the Backend Login permission enabled. In this case you have a security issue being perpetrated by the third party plugin and your issue is once again something far more serious than not sending password reminder emails!

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!

dpollez

Thank you very much for your quick and clear answer.

Unbelievable, but the group to which almost all registered users belong had access to the backend. So did other random subgroups of registered users.

I am the only one who has access to the backend and registration is not possible, I create the users myself.

This is also a very recent problem, a few weeks ago I had a user set a new password via this system and it still worked then.

I can't believe I granted these rights myself, I am a bit security paranoia, some rights even seem absurd and random to me. And the website and rights have not changed for at least two years, except for updates and adding some users.

I also find it hard to believe that support from an extension supplier, who have already been granted temporary access in the past, would have done this.

Backend access is secured via folder with .htaccess password and the only superuser logs in via 2FA. I am changing the .htaccess access immediately and will continue to look. I have some other problems, including errors when I go to PHP 8.0, so I stay on 7.4 for now.

After changing permissions, password resetting works again as it should.

Thanks again.

Didier.

 

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

You're welcome!

I am glad that Admin Tools helped you catch even this kind of unlikely problem :)

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!

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