“BoingBoing”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/27/president_bushs_webs.html is telling us that George W. Bush’s election site is blocking requests from non-US IP addresses. This seems pretty weird – there could be some reasonable explanation (preventing some kind of DoS attack???), but according to BoingBoing the Bush campaign’s media people aren’t telling. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
Update: “Michael Froomkin”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/10/georgebushcom_not_viewable_from_uk.html links to a “story”:http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19301 suggesting that georgewbush.com suffered a DoS attack on Tuesday.
Update2: “Joi Ito”:http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/10/27/wwwgeorgewbushcom.html suggests that the site has been timing out if you tried to reach it from Japan or elsewhere since August. Curioser and curioser …
{ 23 comments }
David M 10.27.04 at 5:53 pm
The BBC has an article on it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3958665.stm
Ken Houghton 10.27.04 at 5:53 pm
Null hypothesis: No one at the site has the nerve to tell anyone in the Administration that it is not accessible?
Alternate hypothesis: overseas voting deadline has passed, and they want to allow only possible voters to access it so that they can stop being “undecided”?)
Motoko 10.27.04 at 5:58 pm
Ken: or the person who told them was fired?
Motoko 10.27.04 at 6:09 pm
The BBC says it’s blocking non-US ips since Monday morning, and according the Inquirer the DoS attack was Tuesday. Nice preemption.
mona 10.27.04 at 6:12 pm
Oh lord. I wish it wasn’t just the website to be taken out of sight. Where’s David Copperfield when you need him?
Barry Freed 10.27.04 at 6:16 pm
Hacked by Chinese?
cd 10.27.04 at 7:10 pm
Barry: blocking non-US IPs doesn’t protect you from being cracked (or, for that matter, DOSed) by feeelthy foreigners; there is, after all, a large number of stepping-stone cracked boxes and zombie networks inside the USA that can be used.
Rob Cottingham 10.27.04 at 7:39 pm
No problem accessing it from Vancouver, Canada. (More’s the pity.)
Barry Freed 10.27.04 at 7:51 pm
cd:
(quoting our fearless Leader): I know that!
It was a joke.
Kind of like the
“All your base are belong to us”
See:
Hacked By Chinese
pwnd!
G. Svenson 10.27.04 at 8:07 pm
As noted on BoingBoing, one can reach the site on:
https://georgewbush.com/, and http://65.172.163.222/ .
This, of course, is at best a dubious prize to obtain. But it is entirerly possible.
jbbuhs 10.27.04 at 10:03 pm
I live in Japan and can confirm that I have been unable to access the GWB site since (at least) August. It times out, as you noted.
Andrew Edwards 10.27.04 at 10:10 pm
I get it in Toronto.
jholbo 10.27.04 at 11:58 pm
I’ve had this trouble trying to get on the site from Singapore. The trouble does go back a couple months, but I didn’t really think much of the fact that the two times I tried to visit I couldn’t. Figured I just had bad luck. Before now I timed out, now I’m forbidden access.
Tom T. 10.28.04 at 2:41 am
Given the frequency of double- and triple-posted comments on this site, I’m not sure CT should be throwing stones at other folks’ website management. ;-)
Jackmormon 10.28.04 at 4:45 am
I got it in germany until I moved out in August. No data since then…
Peter Murphy 10.28.04 at 5:07 am
No show in Việt Nam.
Matthew B. 10.28.04 at 4:11 pm
I think it’s been inaccessible in Japan since early summer, if not longer.
I can never get Pandagon either. No idea why.
Alex Jones 10.28.04 at 5:07 pm
403 error in Bermuda.
cdc 10.28.04 at 5:18 pm
Hm, I can reach http://www.georgewbush.org from overseas just fine. Don’t know what you all are complaining about…
cd 10.28.04 at 7:34 pm
I am assuming that cdc is making the jest when he points to http://www.georgewbush.org as the Bush re-election site, since that is a parody site, made by the whitehouse.org people.
Tom DC/VA 10.29.04 at 2:33 am
Anyone have any idea how they are doing this? I suppose the easiest way would be to filter all netblocks assigned to RIPE and APNIC. Is anyone from Latin American having problems?
Andrew 10.29.04 at 7:09 am
“Access Denied” from Taiwan.
soaping club 10.29.04 at 7:56 am
That BoingBoing post has a link that will get you to the georgewbush site through some sort of nefarious underground network. However, it still won’t connect to the videos, which means I *still* haven’t seen the world-famous-for-cuteness Wolves commercial (I’m in Taiwan). Curses.
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