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IP Blocking

Panelica 1.0.375 Verified 2026-07-24 Security

IP Blocking is the day-to-day tool for keeping bad actors out: block a single IP or a whole range, let fail2ban ban brute-forcers automatically, block entire countries, and turn a failed-login log into a block with one click.

Panel locationSecurity → IP Blockinghttps://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8443/security/ip-blocking
 IP Blocking
Blocked Whitelist Temporary Jails SSH Logs Countries
IP / RangeReasonExpires
203.0.113.45SSH brute forcein 24hunblock

Blocking IPs

Block a single IP or a CIDR range, permanently or for a set duration, with a reason. Blocks take effect immediately at the kernel through nftables (dropping the traffic before it reaches any service), and you can search, export the list, and bulk-import many IPs at once. Preset blocks give you one-click rules for common attacks (SSH brute force, panel attack, SMTP spam, DDoS, SQL injection, port scanning), each with a sensible default duration you can adjust.

The whitelist protects trusted IPs from being blocked, and the SSH Logs tab turns your server's login history into action: see failed and successful logins, and block a single offending IP or every failed-SSH IP at once.

The whitelist protects against the panel's own blocking, not fail2ban's. Adding an IP to the whitelist stops you (and the panel) from blocking it, but it does not currently feed fail2ban's ignore list, so an automated jail could still ban a whitelisted IP. To exempt an address from fail2ban, add it to the jail configuration directly. And note: blocking is powerful but blunt; the bulk and block-all-failed actions do not double-check that an IP is not your own, so avoid running them from an untrusted network.

Fail2ban jails

The Jails tab manages fail2ban, the service that watches logs and bans repeat offenders automatically. You see each jail's status (currently banned, total banned, currently failing), the banned IPs with a per-IP unban, and you can edit a jail's ban time, find time and retry limit, or its filter rules, all applied live and persisted. The panel keeps its jail bans in sync with its own blocked-IP list.

Behind the scenes: automatic blocking is fail2ban's job, and the panel's jails are hardened against locking you out: the panel jail tolerates more retries than mail jails, and the ignore list includes localhost, all private ranges and the server's own IP, which fixed a real bug where the server banned its own admin. The panel jails cover the panel login, mail (SMTP/IMAP/POP3) and FTP. On reboot, active blocks are automatically reloaded into the firewall by a startup self-heal.

Country blocking

The Countries tab (also reachable as its own view) blocks or allows traffic by country using GeoIP. There are two modes with an important difference in reach:

Mode What it blocks
Block list The listed countries are denied at the firewall, across all traffic (web, SSH, FTP, mail), using published per-country IP ranges
Allow list Only the listed countries may reach the panel (this mode filters panel HTTP requests via GeoIP; it does not firewall SSH/FTP/mail)

A log-only setting lets you see what would be blocked without blocking, and a whitelist panel IPs option (on by default) keeps loopback and private ranges exempt so you do not fence yourself out.

Do not add your own country to a block list if you connect from a public IP. The panel-IP whitelist only exempts private and loopback addresses. Block-list mode drops all traffic from the country's ranges at the firewall, which would include your own connection. Test with log-only first.

Access

Behind the security.ip-blocking page permission and, at the backend, ROOT and ADMIN. The IP Blocking page shows a premium overlay without the ip_blocker license feature. See roles and permissions. Country filtering needs GeoIP data present; without it the toggle is disabled.

Panelica Documentation · Written and verified against the live panel. · Last verified 2026-07-24 on Panelica 1.0.375