connyosis

Anyone knows anything more about this? According to newssites here in Sweden for some reason people from Asia and Europe are not allowed to access the Bush website anymore. Now, if this is intentional I find it kind of disturbing. What about the americans abroad that is going to vote and now cannot access the web site of their president?
I tried going there myself and was greeted by the message:
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.georgewbush.com/" on this server.

Using an american proxy it is no problem accessing it, so the website isn't down or anything, and it is no problem getting to Kerrys website. This seems a little weird to me...

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neutone

Well the guy is zenophobic. I guess he knows that hackers the world over would love a piece of his site.

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connyosis

Well the thing is hackers wont have a problem accessing his site. I myself (And believe me, I'm not a hacker) could easily access it using an american proxy. The only people being locked out are the "general public" that does not know what the hell a proxy is or how to use it.

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SecretMethod70

I doubt this is something intentionally done by the Bush campaign.

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dksuddeth

Could this also be the complete responsibility of that foreign country blocking the site?

Mephisto2

Interesting.

How else could it happen? Just "a mistake" perhaps?

Here's what I get from Australia

I'll VPN into my US concentrator in a while and see what happens.

I think it's intentional, as I can't see how else it would occur.


Mr Mephisto

rukkyg

It would take a lot of unintentially IP filtering to only block connections from outside the united states. If it's true, it has to be intentional.

Also, assuming that the originating country doesn't own all the internet infrastructure in that country including satelite connections, they couldn't block anything.

Mephisto2

Well, surprise surprise.

Works perfectly for me when I VPN into my company's San Jose network and access the site from there.

In other words, the web-site explicitly blocks access from IP addresses from overseas (Australia at least), but allows sessions from US ISPs.

How interesting and sad at the same time...


Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

It's entirely possible rukkyg.

And it's happening.

So explain that away...


Mr Mephisto

seretogis

France has blocked Yahoo before for selling Nazi memorabilia. China blocks porn and American propaganda sites.

There are central points of access for all regional internet access, so it's not difficult to block certain sites or types of traffic.

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Mephisto2

Very true.

Just so I understand your position though, are you justifying this? From George W Bush? The leader of the "Free World"? The President of the United States? The Commander in Chief? Champion of Freedom (including Freedom of Information I should expect)?

Just curious...


Mr Mephisto

djtestudo

I didn't realize Bush was running for President of Earth.

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Mephisto2

BTW, if anyone is interested, I can check if the site is blocked from Amsterdam, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Bangalore, Milan, Johannesburg and several locations through-out the US.

Just let me know and I'll check it out if you want.


Mr Mephisto

cthulu23

I would bet that this is an anti-DDOS (distributed denial of service) measure.

Hmmm....after digging a little, it looks like that suspicion was correct:
See yahoo news:

Mephisto2

Thanks for contributing to the thread in a constructive manner.

No, hang on a minute. You didn't.

Silly me.



Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

That confirms that they were down. Not that they blocked European/APAC access.

Either way, it's a poor decision.


Mr Mephisto

cthulu23

Perhaps, but their (or their ISPs) decision to block non-US IPs does make more sense in light of an attack on their websites.

Mephisto2

I checked the Democrats web-site from Sydney and the US.

No problem accessing it from either.



Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

If there was a distributed attack that originated from outside the US, yes it does make more sense.

But, as I said, it's a poor decision.

Let's wait and see what the real reason is. If it's security related, one would think they could simply improve their site security rather than block the rest of the world from accessing their leader's web-site.

Mr Mephisto

connyosis

Sweden does not block any kind of sites. We do believe in freedom of speech over here, even if we disagree with some peoples opinions. We're not China you know...

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rukkyg

WTF are you talking about. What country is blocking their citizens from accessing a specific american web site?

China is... China. And ....

http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/002069.html

The French forced Yahoo! to block French from accessing their site. France didn't block anything. So Boya.

And no, there aren't central access points. That's the whole point. The whole system is designed to be able to go through different routing points to different hubs distributed throughout the system so that traffic can be routed to less congested routes. Note that I acknowledge the presence of hubs, but not that you HAVE to go through one particular hub, certainly not one that the government can control.

xepherys

For the router-imparied:

This is not a difficult process at all. Every country has a specific set of finite connections that lead into and out of the country. All traffic in and out has to go over those connections, be they landline or sat. All a router has to do is filter any traffic that passes over those points. Also, large blocks of Class A, B and C addresses are KNOWN non-US ISP addresses. Blokcing whole groups of classful addresses can also banish a vast majority of foreign browsers. There are other ways this can be done, but those would be the easiest to implement and still have sweeping effects.

Mephisto2

First of all, please refrain from cursing at me. It makes you look childish and does you no good. It's also especially unwelcome on the Politics Board.


I was simply stating that blocking "incoming" from outside the US was very easy and that it was happening, as evidenced by the news story and the fact that several non-US surfers were prevented accessing the site.


Mr Mephisto

yoyoyobro

In canada and was able to access the site on my first attempt.

xepherys

rukkyg, I have to say that this post is not relevant because it makes no sense. The goverment doesn't have to control a switch or router for the Bush Campaign Coordinator to have the switch at the server's host block inbound and outbound HTTP requests to and from foreign IP addresses. And talking of using hubs shows that you are not well versed in computer networking. Hubs are outdated, and not used for any major traffic.

superiorrain

i just had a go at getting on to the site. Not working for me either. I don't care at least there are so many sites that i can visit. I'm sure if someone asked Bush to fix it for us he would. He did after all fix the last election. hehehe

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Gopher

I second the fact it's not working in the UK.. same message as others: "You don't have permission to access "http://www.georgewbush.com/" on this server."

cthulu23

As was previously mentioned, those international posters that just have to visit Bush's site can use an American proxy server to reach it. Apparently, whoever hosts the site doesn't have the hardware or know how to filter out attacking IPs only and had to resort to blocking off large sections of the world.

As most here probably know, I'm not much of a Bush fan but I don't think that this is a political issue at all.

cthulu23

Well, I stand corrected....

From the BBC:

Mephisto2

The leader of the free world indeed.

This is just pathetic.

Mr Mephisto

jimbob

Hands up all those outside the US or Canada who don't already know who George W Bush is but need to!

There's always http://www.georgewbush.org instead.

HockeyGuy

<i>You are not authorized to view this page
You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------</i>
From the UK....

Averett

That's really, really sad. Sick.

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bling

Wow. I hadn't looked at this thread because I thought it was just a silly joke or technical misunderstanding.

Locobot

Sounds like more trouble from "the Internets."