President Bush’s website now blocks non-US visitors

Until recently, the GeorgeWBush.com website was easily accessible by anyone with a web browser, just like any other website. No more. As of early Monday morning, anyone trying to access it from a non-US computer (with a few exceptions) gets this message, instead: “Access Denied. You don’t have permission to access ‘http://www.georgewbush.com/’ on this server.” Boing Boing has a link-filled report.

October 28, 2004 by bentley Uncategorized 9

GregS* says:

October 28, 2004 at 6:45 am

security
I didn’t know that possible

Considering the way things are I’m guessing its a prime target for hackers right now, and I’m also guessing that a lot of the culprits are outside the U.S.

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bentley says:

October 28, 2004 at 7:24 am

Re:security
It’s possible. For instance Showtime restricts access to its website to only US-based IPs. Anyone else gets this: “We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States.” I starting hearing about it two or three years ago, when Stargate fans outside the U.S. were unable to get to the show’s website. (Showtime claims they don’t want to waste bandwith on foreign visitors who can’t watch the shows. This doesn’t make sense to me: don’t they syndicate their shows around the world?)

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ChuckB says:

October 28, 2004 at 6:52 pm

Re:security

For most large blocks of network space (think IP addresses rather than hostnames), it is possible to tell the country of the organization “owning” them. I think that one of these owning organizations could allocate blocks within their space to customers in a different country, since Internet addressing is purely logical, rather than physical, though supernetting does offer an incentive to keep continguous block close together in network terms.

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Grumpy Librarian says:

October 28, 2004 at 7:53 pm

Security?
Oh come on. Hackers?

Spoofing an IP address is easier than any hack. And I doubt hackers connect through the web port anyway.

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GregS* says:

October 28, 2004 at 8:06 pm

Re:Security?
I’m not a hacker so I wouldn’t have a clue. All I know is that this could go down as the most heated election in history so its the most plausible explanation to me at this point.

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birdie says:

October 28, 2004 at 8:16 pm

Re:Security?
Grumpy – fill us in. How do you spoof an IP address (or this that not exactly a kosher question)?

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birdie says:

October 28, 2004 at 8:54 pm

significance?
Boing Boing site states: Can US servicemen and women, reporters, and contractors in Iraq access georgewbush.com? Blogger and NBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites is in Iraq, and he tells BoingBoing: “I just tried. Access denied.”

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Grumpy Librarian says:

October 28, 2004 at 11:08 pm

Re:Security?

Routers forwarding packets only care about the destination IP, not the IP where the packets are coming from, just as the post office cares about the To address not the return address. So, just as I can write someone else return address on an envelope, I can have my computer give a false return IP address.

Now, I won’t be able to get anything BACK from the server (no web browsing with a spoofed IP) but I can certainly hit the site I want to hack.

If I wanted to see a site that was blocking my IP, I could use one of the many free proxy servers on the web.

For the record, I’ve never done this or other hacks. But tyhe library computers have been victimized, so I know some of what is possible.

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nbruce says:

October 28, 2004 at 11:23 pm

blocked website
I notice when I check my site meter that I have blocked visitors–I have no idea who, but perhaps spammers, or the security level I’ve set, or people who have sent nasty e-mails in the past and are on my blocked list. Anyone know?

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