IPS Company Forums 403 Forbidden Error

[Brandon C]

Whenever I try to access the IPS Company Forums, I get a 403 Forbidden Error every so often. It's been happening all throughout the day for me today.

I don't know what the problem is, either.

It is very aggravating, too, because now I am getting it every couple of minutes and keep having to refresh, and when I do, the forums are all messed up and everything!

Note to IPS: See Ticket: #303861 for more details.

[Gozzy]

This also happened to me on IPSBeyond but only for a short amount of time so i don't think its got anything to do with 2.2.

[Stewart]

I'll get it looked into, likely due to some additional security measures :)

[Brandon C]

I'll get it looked into, likely due to some additional security measures :)

Thanks Stewart, keep me updated in the ticket or here, please. :)

[Sinistra Sensei]

err Also happening to me but I see someone is already on it ^_^

[Gozzy]

I just got this error. I refreshed my cookies and cache ect and now it works :o

[RawkBob]

i get it when i open a few tabs of various topics at a time... i'll guess it's to do with some anti-dos measures...

[Black Prowler]

so how is this coming along? :huh: I am still getting the issue. I can try to clear cache and cookies but I really dread doing the cookies cause I have to relogin everywhere again :ermm:

[Keith J. Kacin]

I do believe this is due to some anti-DoS protection.

[RevoDS]

I do believe this is due to some anti-DoS protection.

Maybe, but it even happened while I had one tab opened but I tried to visit my "Settings" tab in my profile...a bit excessive :P

[robirming]

I'm getting it very often. I hope it won't stay like this, because it's very very hard to navigate around the site with all the errors.

[Lindy]

I do understand it's frustrating and assure you it's temporary. These forums are often victim to DoS attacks around the time of releases and this time is no exception (your guess is as good as mine in terms of who has such an axe to grind)

The system is currently set to drop you if you request X number of pages in X number of seconds (I don't have the values handy at the moment) -- it has no way of knowing if a client is performing a DoS attack or is simply an anxious browser.

We'll tweak the settings a bit more and in the meantime, hang in there. :)

[Brandon C]

I do understand it's frustrating and assure you it's temporary. These forums are often victim to DoS attacks around the time of releases and this time is no exception (your guess is as good as mine in terms of who has such an axe to grind)

The system is currently set to drop you if you request X number of pages in X number of seconds (I don't have the values handy at the moment) -- it has no way of knowing if a client is performing a DoS attack or is simply an anxious browser.

We'll tweak the settings a bit more and in the meantime, hang in there. :)

Thanks for the reply, Lindy, I appreciate it! :)

Sorry about the ticket and the topic, I won't do it in the future, I apologize. :blush:

[Michael P]

[Michael P]

[Lindy]

The limit was 6 pages in 5 seconds (geesh, you guys need to get out more!)

I've changed that to 10 pages... note, doing topic tabbing WILL trigger it.

[Michael P]

10 in 5 seconds should be better :) I don't generally tab that many at once. And if I do get the error, a refresh makes it go back to normal (I suppose by the time I get to read whats on that tab, it's like a minute later)

Interesting protection system, is it some form of Apache module? or some external software that does it?

[Lindy]

We have a combination of things to combat various attacks from hardware to this, which is mod_evasive... an apache module. As you can see, it is quite effective. :)

[Luke]

We have a combination of things to combat various attacks from hardware to this, which is mod_evasive... an apache module. As you can see, it is quite effective. :)

It's so effective it keeps me out half the time. But I suppose sometimes that's a good thing :whistle:

[robirming]

I've changed that to 10 pages... note, doing topic tabbing WILL trigger it.

Thanks!

[sully]

What happened today? Both these forums and IPSBeyond were un-responsive.

And what affect does it have on us? Nawt much to be honest, we can live a few hours without the forums since we have our boards to play with :P Effectivley, the hackers loose out :P

[whitetigergrowl]

I see this is still an issue. When I arrived on the site it worked fine. I went into a forum (This one) and recieved the Forbidden error. Not doing anything fancy on my end.

[Luke]

I think this will be addressed tomorrow when everyone gets in the office :)

[TestingSomething]

I do understand it's frustrating and assure you it's temporary. These forums are often victim to DoS attacks around the time of releases and this time is no exception (your guess is as good as mine in terms of who has such an axe to grind)

The system is currently set to drop you if you request X number of pages in X number of seconds (I don't have the values handy at the moment) -- it has no way of knowing if a client is performing a DoS attack or is simply an anxious browser.

We'll tweak the settings a bit more and in the meantime, hang in there. :)

Wish I had that. Although luckily I havent been DOS attacked in a long time. But these 2 morons kept doing it a lot at one point.

[Markster]

Awfully weird. I assumed they might be doing some updating.