October 27, 2004

IP filtering

Posted by Henry

BoingBoing 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 links to a story suggesting that georgewbush.com suffered a DoS attack on Tuesday.

Update2: Joi Ito suggests that the site has been timing out if you tried to reach it from Japan or elsewhere since August. Curioser and curioser …

Posted on October 27, 2004 05:47 PM UTC
Comments

The BBC has an article on it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3958665.stm

Posted by David M · October 27, 2004 05:53 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”?)

Posted by Ken Houghton · October 27, 2004 05:53 PM

Ken: or the person who told them was fired?

Posted by Motoko · October 27, 2004 05:58 PM

The BBC says it’s blocking non-US ips since Monday morning, and according the Inquirer the DoS attack was Tuesday. Nice preemption.

Posted by Motoko · October 27, 2004 06:09 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?

Posted by mona · October 27, 2004 06:12 PM

Hacked by Chinese?

Posted by Barry Freed · October 27, 2004 06:16 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.

Posted by cd · October 27, 2004 07:10 PM

No problem accessing it from Vancouver, Canada. (More’s the pity.)

Posted by Rob Cottingham · October 27, 2004 07:39 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!

Posted by Barry Freed · October 27, 2004 07:51 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.

Posted by G. Svenson · October 27, 2004 08:07 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.

Posted by jbbuhs · October 27, 2004 10:03 PM

I get it in Toronto.

Posted by Andrew Edwards · October 27, 2004 10:10 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.

Posted by jholbo · October 27, 2004 11:58 PM

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. ;-)

Posted by Tom T. · October 28, 2004 02:41 AM

I got it in germany until I moved out in August. No data since then…

Posted by Jackmormon · October 28, 2004 04:45 AM

No show in Việt Nam.

Posted by Peter Murphy · October 28, 2004 05:07 AM

I think it’s been inaccessible in Japan since early summer, if not longer.

I can never get Pandagon either. No idea why.

Posted by Matthew B. · October 28, 2004 04:11 PM

403 error in Bermuda.

Posted by Alex Jones · October 28, 2004 05:07 PM

Hm, I can reach www.georgewbush.org from overseas just fine. Don’t know what you all are complaining about…

Posted by cdc · October 28, 2004 05:18 PM

I am assuming that cdc is making the jest when he points to www.georgewbush.org as the Bush re-election site, since that is a parody site, made by the whitehouse.org people.

Posted by cd · October 28, 2004 07:34 PM

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?

Posted by Tom DC/VA · October 29, 2004 02:33 AM

“Access Denied” from Taiwan.

Posted by Andrew · October 29, 2004 07:09 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.

Posted by soaping club · October 29, 2004 07:56 AM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.