Gateway BOTNET Alert

[pdgseele]

Hi all,
I have just put up a simple page to see if everything works properly, and it does, but I have issues in reaching the page from my office pc, while from home I can.
The message I get is:
Gateway BOTNET Alert
This request is blocked by the SonicWALL Gateway Botnet Service.
BOTNET command and control server.
Responder IP:198.91.81.3
Where is the problem?
Thank you for your help

 

[descalzo]

Sounds like your workplace has a firewall in place. That firewall seems to consider the IP address (198.91.81.3) of your server to be a "threat", and therefor is blocking it.

Talk to your IP department about removing the IP address from the "threat" list.

 

[pdgseele]

thank you for your reply. I was wondering if our "IP department" is blocking this IP or, the other way round, if the server is not accepting requests from my IP. I will contact them and report about the result.

Thanks!

 

[pdgseele]

ok, my "IP dept" told me that they are blocking this IP because they consider it potentially dangerous. Actually I suppose that they let the gateway decide, without checking if this is true or not.... Anyhow, seems that they will not change the situation, so I am wondering if there could be another solution.....

 

[Dead-i]

There is nothing we can do on our end. On free hosting, we have three servers, and each server has it's own IP address. Every account on each server shares the same IP address. Your company may be blocking this shared IP address due to another user's past actions, but our abuse team work hard to enforce our terms, as well as our abuse scanners on our servers spotting malicious files.

On free hosting, it is impossible for us to change the IP address your account is served from.

 

[pdgseele]

thank you for your answer. Unfortunately my "IP dept" told me that they aren't going to do anything about the issue because it is for personal use.
This makes it quite useless, since I am in the office for 10 hours per day :-(
How many chances do I have to get a different IP if I try to register again?

 

[Livewire]

If they've blocked one of the free servers, there's a good chance they blocked the other two; before trying to re-register I'd recommend checking if .2 and .4 are blocked as well (the first three octets are the same). If they are, then all three of the free servers are blocked, and re-registering won't get past the block at all.

Assuming at least one or both of those isn't blocked, then you have X in 3 chances, where X is how many weren't blocked. It's still not great odds sadly, mostly because we don't have a way to force the account to create on a specific server.

 

[pdgseele]

Seems that .2 and .4 aren't blocked, so I am going to try to pick the right ip with a new registration.

Thank you all for your help!

 

[dattechx]

or you could try a proxy?

 

[kenny9]

Use of a proxy is a violation of the TOS and will get you suspended.

 

[dattechx]

Ah

Use of a proxy is a violation of the TOS and will get you suspended.

 

[dpyro200488]

Setup a VPN on your home PC and connect from there.

 

[Livewire]

Quick note here as well, when we're stating that we don't allow proxies in our Terms of Service, we mean installing one on the hosting account itself, or using one to sign up. If you're using one to access the account it should be fine, but personally I'd suggest the VPN from home PC idea just to be safe. If you'd rather not set up a VPN, try setting the home system up for remote desktop, and remote into it from work - assuming they haven't blocked that, it'll probably be a bit slower than VPN but shouldn't require as much tech-savvy to set up.

 

[pdgseele]

as far as I know it is possible to access in remote desktop a home system, they didn't block that (yet..). I will try this as first.

Thank you all for your help!!