Error 403 Forbidden

Well I think we have exhausted our resources in house to resolve this. That said, I am taking this issue up with our hosting company AGAIN and we'll see what that turns up.

Post up your IP and ISP here so that I can push it to our host to check out. This is driving me nuts...

:crazy
 
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Dave,
I had the same problem happen to one of our members on my forum last year. If I remember correctly it had something to do with the dns not being correct.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk
 
Post up your IP and ISP here so that I can push it to our host to check out. This is driving me nuts...

My home service is Time Warner Cable Internet, I will PM my IP address.

I have tried changing my DNS servers to the Google servers at the router (just after the modem in the signal chain), and that didn't help, either.

The things we can pretty safely rule out:


  • Problems or settings with the forum software: I get a 403 even when I go to the front page of the site (not within the forum directory).
  • Individual machines: I'm getting the issue on iOS (two different devices), OSX Mac, Windows 8.1, and Ubuntu Linux.
  • Local User's DNS Server Settings: I've tried several, and it didn't help. Also, if it was a DNS issue on our (local user) side, I would expect that there would have been other web sites that I would have trouble visiting, and that's not the case.
  • Firewalls/Spam filters: I've bypassed the router and wired directly through the cable modem, no difference. Also, if it was a firewall issue, we probably wouldn't be hitting the 403 page at all, as it is served from the website's box.

I'm stumped, too.
 
The issue may be in our htaccess. Stand by.

*EDIT: Major tweaks behind the scenes, I expect this issue to be resolved by this evening!!! 4/15/14

:blacksmith
 
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Thanks to all who have worked on getting this issue resolved, hopefully by tonight per Daves post. Hooyah
 
I'm curious, did it end up being an htaccess issue?

I believe it was but the weird part is that I did not find the affective IP's being blocked. It was very weird to say the least. Hopefully this issue will be resolved now. :)
 
We had a LONG list of IP blocks set up that had been implemented over the last year. This was the problem. Once we "re-set" the blocks to zero (except the re-evaluated Russia and China blocks) the issue seems to have been resolved. You guys were somehow blocked by our attempts to protect the site from spam and malware.
 
Hey guy's it's 2 thumbs up from me all's well now. Again Thanks a bunch for your effort to fix this. Cheers,
 
Regarding not finding their IP addresses in the block list has to do NOT with their specific IP's, but being part of a subnet of a blocked IP address.

In other words, their IP Pools were behind an IP address that was in our blocked list.

If that makes sense.
 
Regarding not finding their IP addresses in the block list has to do NOT with their specific IP's, but being part of a subnet of a blocked IP address.

In other words, their IP Pools were behind an IP address that was in our blocked list.

If that makes sense.

Yeah, I was looking for their subnets, not their actual IP's. I even went with just the first two octaves and didn't find any matches. That is why I was like :dunno because it didn't seem like the problem was there. Host did say with as long of a list we had, it can cause funky behavior even though specific IP subnets were not directly blocked.

Just happy to get this resolved. :D
 
I would not be surprised if AT&T and the others were running an entire set of CLASS A IP addresses through a completely different parent IP address, having a little insight into their network years back.
 
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