OK - we're back !

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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Project Willow » Mon Nov 05, 2012 12:29 am

It is a known IE8 bug. Try going to "tools" and selecting "compatibility mode". If that doesn't work, I'll mess with the code some, but I'd rather not, poopy Microsoft.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby elfismiles » Mon Nov 05, 2012 9:26 am

Project Willow wrote:It is a known IE8 bug. Try going to "tools" and selecting "compatibility mode". If that doesn't work, I'll mess with the code some, but I'd rather not, poopy Microsoft.


Thanks for looking into that Willow.

I'll try "compat mode" ... hope you are well and had a great weekend.

- smiles
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby justdrew » Thu Jan 10, 2013 12:15 am

we are possibly experiencing a DDoS attack from content spammers or at least some fraking bot network. I've got a shitton of ips banned now, but am looking for better solutions.

I know we've got some computer folks out there.

Here's what I want...

a deamon to watch log files and check each spotted ip address against lists of ips downloaded form places like projecthoneypot and stopforumspam etc. and if an ip matched, to nul route that source ip. nul routing seems the lowest cost way to have a major crapload of ips banned. I don't want apache even sending a 403 back, I just want the ips rejected/dropped/nul routed.

We seem to be fairly ok as long as I have most of china 403 banned and about 272,000 other ips. but that's just way to many to keep them all dropped all the time in iptables, that's why I want the log watcher, so only actually active ips have to be banned.




well, the swarm seems to have largely passed us by now.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Feilan » Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:12 am

^^^ so ...I don't understand *much* of what you are explaining there about how to block spam bots - but I thought I'd mention that you have inadvertently been blocking me in the process. :crybaby ...

I couldn't figure out why I kept getting the "you don't have permission ... blah ... blah ... port 80" message, but it's been going on for the last 4 or 5 days. I'm in China these days and perhaps that has something to do with it ...? I noticed a few weeks ago that the GFC wasn't blocking RI anymore, though it was blocked last year and as far back as 2010 if I recall correctly. I came by to do some reading and didn't notice that my vpn was switched off (as it is at the moment) ... tried to open another page that was blocked and realized I'd been reading here for an hour or so without jumping over the wall... so, um ... yah. I just thought I'd mention that. I couldn't get in here yesterday, but today seems fine, so I guess I am no longer tagged with whatever ip you are trying to defeat ...? As I say - it's all geek to me ... :clown
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby justdrew » Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:30 am

Feilan wrote:^^^ so ...I don't understand *much* of what you are explaining there about how to block spam bots - but I thought I'd mention that you have inadvertently been blocking me in the process. :crybaby ...

I couldn't figure out why I kept getting the "you don't have permission ... blah ... blah ... port 80" message, but it's been going on for the last 4 or 5 days. I'm in China these days and perhaps that has something to do with it ...? I noticed a few weeks ago that the GFC wasn't blocking RI anymore, though it was blocked last year and as far back as 2010 if I recall correctly. I came by to do some reading and didn't notice that my vpn was switched off (as it is at the moment) ... tried to open another page that was blocked and realized I'd been reading here for an hour or so without jumping over the wall... so, um ... yah. I just thought I'd mention that. I couldn't get in here yesterday, but today seems fine, so I guess I am no longer tagged with whatever ip you are trying to defeat ...? As I say - it's all geek to me ... :clown


I have at times blocked what I was given to believe was a list of all the ips in China, but it's probably not complete. However, if you get blocked by me, you should just get a 403 error, that'll look like this:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access <whatever uri> on this server.


Apache Server at www.rigorousintuition.ca Port 80


I don't think the GFC has us blocked, because the reason I made the unfortunate decision to block all of china was due to what MAY be their new approach. Rather than blocking US they were taking 1-2 gigabytes a day (or more) off us, scraping the whole site frequently, not to mention all the spam bots and rats knocking on my ssh's door. As soon as I'd block a few nasty ips doing that, it would just shift to new ips within a day or less. Baidu seemed to be partially responsible.

If you're not getting blocked now, and not using your VPN, it's likely you've gotten an ip that was left out of my list, or it may be you have an ipv6 address, which I don't think I'm blocking any of (and oddly haven't had any need to). Does the service you're using assign random ips? Could be you're seeing blocking from GFC intermittently and ours.

I'm looking at what might be the best way to put in some rate limiting so the blocks can be removed. Possibly "fancy" firewall like software, or possibly a reverse proxy like nginx.




anyway, I'd just like to throw out there I'm still looking for a "real" job so drop me a pm if you have any ideas. :thumbsup
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Feilan » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:25 am

...yep, yep - that 403 message is exactly what I was seeing. My personal choice of 'trampoline' is witopia and they've had their work cut out for them getting around the 18th congress hullabaloo whereupon the GFC apparatus went into overdrive choking out those of us trying to sneak into the rest of the internet ... at one point the tech support folks were telling us that they have clients in 180 countries around the world and were spending 95% of their time looking for unblocked ports/ips for users in the middle kingdom. 'Why, why, beijing?' 'Because we can.', comes the answer... :jumping:

It's been easier lately. I'd say for the last three weeks or so I haven't had any trouble. Back in October, before the big meet in B-town, random ips worked well enough. In the last month or so I had to get advice on setting up custom gateways ... UDP channels were/are very much hit and miss - frequently blocked ... I had to check in for new port / ip numbers every few days, but I haven't had to do that for awhile.

Any-who ... I sure do hope you find a 'real' job that suits you! We'll be needing someone here to teach AP physics - the fella we have won't be back next September ... I don't suppose that's up your alley, eh? Drop me a pm if it is! :partyhat
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby parel » Tue Jan 15, 2013 7:47 pm

Thanks for getting me back in. I was locked out between 3-9th January.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Feilan » Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:32 pm

There ya has it - when v(ery) p(assable) n(icety) is engaged, I can't get in here. Turn it off and I'm good to read on :)
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby justdrew » Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:38 pm

Feilan wrote:There ya has it - when v(ery) p(assable) n(icety) is engaged, I can't get in here. Turn it off and I'm good to read on :)


you're saying you're getting 403s on the VPN but not on your household Chinese ip? Where's the VPN connect to? If it's a business it's possible they have their own restrictions on what can be surfed through their network.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby FourthBase » Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:06 pm

That hour or so offline sucked, lol.

You guys still backing up this whole board regularly? I'm assuming/hoping you still do.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby justdrew » Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:09 pm

FourthBase wrote:That hour or so offline sucked, lol.

You guys still backing up this whole board regularly? I'm assuming/hoping you still do.


of course :thumbsup

The nazi's had us down for an hour or so. all is well now.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Karmamatterz » Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:20 am

Not exactly sure who calls the shots on the software and upkeep of the board. Have you guys ever considered migrating this board to Drupal or another CMS framework that would provide a huge step forward in how content is related, tagged and searched? I know it would be a tremendous undertaking of time to do so, maybe that's why it's never happened. The advantages of moving away from the phpbb platform would be significant.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Project Willow » Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:35 pm

Yes, we discussed it, and part of the work on such a move is already done, but it would indeed be a tremendous undertaking, not the least of which is requiring our admins here learn new software.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby Karmamatterz » Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:06 pm

Oh, thank you for the update Willow. Can you share with me what CMS or framework you and the team are looking at? I've been involved in a few Drupal deployments myself.
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Re: OK - we're back !

Postby justdrew » Fri Apr 26, 2013 4:36 pm

you mean the drupal forum module? It seems like the only thing it would give the forum we dont already have is 'catagory'/'tags' for posts, a neat feature, but one that could be added to phpBB with a plugin.
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