"Forbidden"

[blakessa]

Hi guys,

Is there some issue going on at the moment? In the cpanel it says all the servers and fine and there's no known issues yet my site has been down for hours.

Haven't made any changes so I know it's not me lol. When I try to load my site I get:

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/

 

[blakessa]

A day goes by and this is still happening.. what the..

Okay according to your self help section these are the reasons behind this error:

"403 Forbidden

• Your files or directories may have incorrect permissions. You can manage permissions from within the cPanel File Manager or through FTP. All files should have permissions of 644, and directories should be 755.
• A rule in your .htaccess file might be denying your request.
• Your request might be being blocked by mod_security because it looks suspicious. Please post on the forum."

1. Permissions checked, they are fine and unchanged.
2. Not sure how to look at this one but once again I've changed nothing, the site was working fine before.
3. I'm guessing maybe it's this one as I've just discovered I can load the site on my mobile phone just fine still. So maybe your security bot has blocked my main computer only from browsing my site. Seems weird though as I'm the creator of the site so of course I'm going to have it open on my computer a lot lol! I've been with you guys for around 6mths now and this is first time this has happened despite no real changes in my activity. :/

 

[blakessa]

weeks go by.. my home computer is still blocked from viewing my own site.. just ridiculous.

 

[lylex10h]

Did you block your own IP using .htaccess?

 

[blakessa]

I don't even know where or what that file is so I haven't touched it. It happened overnight while I was sleep. One day the site was loading fine, the next it wasn't, I hadn't uploaded or changed anything.

Where do I find this .htaccess file? I browsing my account folders through the web file manager but can't see anything like it. File search comes up with nothing.

I still think my problem is the 3rd reason:
"Your request might be being blocked by mod_security because it looks suspicious. Please post on the forum."

 

[Anna]

Quite possible as I found the IP you are currently posting from listed on one of the spamhaus lists as well as on the stopforumspam list, we do use some blocklists in our measures to help prevent spammers from causing troubles.

To get the IP removed from those lists you would need to send the request, or possibly even go through your ISP to get it removed, especially for the spamhaus list that could be true.

The IP could be on other lists as well, for various reasons. Dynamic IPs can be a bit of a pain as you'd get the reputation of anyone that previously had the IP for doing weird/bad stuff even if you never have.

 

[blakessa]

My IP is on a forum spam list??? omg what the..

Great... *sigh*

Thanks for the info, I'll go visit those lists and try and get my IP removed!

Once removed from those spam lists websites will your block list automatically update? or will I need to chase you guys up about it?

 

[Anna]

Should clear up automatically, though might be a bit delay, I'm not involved in that part myself, but if I'm not mistaken the lists are queried regularly (though might be cached for a period of time) and thus our records are updated regularly.