How Staq Firewall Blocks Bots Attacking Contact Forms

Staq Firewall acts as a robust replacement for Akismet or Cleantalk, safeguarding your WordPress site from spam and bot attacks on form submissions. Staq subscribes to the Cleantalk API service, syncing data into our firewall for enhanced protection. This article outlines how Staq Firewall blocks bots targeting forms, the flow of the request checking process, and the supported forms.

Disallowed Content and Request Flow

The firewall scans requests and blocks any identified as spam or containing disallowed content during form submissions. The flow of the request checking process ensures that various patterns, including email addresses and comment words, are checked against blacklisted content. In order to disallow/block a contact form submission, the Staq Firewall system checks:

• IP Already Banned: Blocks the request if the IP is previously banned.
• Spoofed Payload: Blocks if the payload is spoofed.
• IP Blacklisted: Blocks any IP from blacklisted sources.
• Max Rate Limit Reached: Blocks when the request exceeds the maximum allowed rate.
• User Enumeration or Form Enumeration: Blocks any form or user enumeration attempt.
• Blacklisted Email/Content: Blocks the request if it contains blacklisted emails or disallowed content.

What Forms We Support

Staq Firewall now extends its request checking capability to handle form submissions across a wide variety of form plugins by scanning the `form_id` or if the `action` is equal to `form_submit`. This ensures support for most common form plugins.

Our solution should be compatible, but not limited to, the following forms.

• ContactForm7
• NinjaForms
• FormidableForms
• FluentForms
• GravityForms
• WPForms
• HappyForms
• QuillForms

These plugins are now protected by Staq Firewall, blocking bot-driven spam submissions efficiently.