Question for computer techs. or IP's - problem solving.

[spiritguide]

Question for computer techs. A few days ago I posted an article from VT about veterans suicide and soon after I was unable to go back to the web site. Keep getting unable to link to site banner. All other connections and links work fine except Veterans today. Had an acquaintance at a remote location check out the web site and it worked fine from there for them. Apparently someone hacked a lockout for that site on my IP address as both of my personal computers get the same message and they are on my wifi network. My question is, can an IP lock out a specific web address for a specific user? Will be talking to the IP today to see if they can come up with an answer. Just wondering where this issue came from. Any suggestions would help.

Peace!

[Operator]

Check what your IP is here: http://www.whatismyip.com/

Then reset your modem and check again ... some ISP's (like mine) give out dynamic IP addresses ...

But you may have done this already in the flow of the process (between 'a few days ago' and 'today').

Other alternative is to use a proxy server ... it depends on which browser you use etc. Perhaps read
about that a bit first on the web. Maybe additional help with that will follow later ...

[Tommy]

What Operator states is the most likely solution for you. Most DSL/cable companies does indeed have dynamic IP's (some times changes after a modem reset), getting a dedicated IP is usually for businesses or in some cases a premium service for consumer level internet subscriptions.

If nothing else, look at using a proxy or VPN (see link below for a decent free VPN). Bear in mind that certain VPN's and public proxies does collect user data, so make sure to use it at your own discretion! If you need help setting up a VPN on your system I suggest doing a google search for "how to set up VPN *your operating system here*"
http://www.mybestvpn.com/

As for what happened, it seems like for some reason the VT server blocked your IP. The reason would be anybody's guess, though very strange.

Good luck sorting it out :)

[outerheaven]

Another possibility is if your hosts file becomes "corrupted" (or toyed with). The hosts file is what converts the URL you type in your browser to the site's actual, numerical IP address. If commanded otherwise, though, your computer can associate a different address for what you type. Then suddenly what you type in your browser ("veteranstoday.com") can point elsewhere.

It's a longshot, but who knows, it's something to check. I have had malware attack my hosts file before.

To quickly check if this is the case, and assuming you're running Windows --

Go to Start > Run > type "cmd" in the box and press enter. Now type "ping www.veteranstoday.com" in the prompt and press enter.

You should see "Pinging www.veteranstoday.com [64.207.152.108] with 32 bytes of data:" and then some other information.

If that IP address is anything different -- your hosts file is re-directing you to another IP address. If another IP address appears there, look it up, it might be the home address of the offending party ;)

***

You know what's strange, ever since Gordon Duff's recent 9/11 pieces -- every time I go to VT to try to read an article, the site runs so slowly it's almost impossible to scroll down the page. I'll have other tabs open, which run fine, but the VT page takes 30 seconds or so to respond to any input (such as scrolling down the page).

I hesitate to blame computer problems on PTB, but in this case, it sure seems strange. I'm a semi-knowledgeable computer guy and to only have problems on one site, no matter what ... makes me go hmmmmmm.

[Lifebringer]

Go system resotre, take a date like last week or month and select it. Should work fine. That will remove any "buggaboos" thrown on your IP lock out.

Buggaboos away!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank God for "system restore dates."

[Violet]

If the inaccessibility persists then it looks that your article was not in line with VT and the webmaster IP-banned you. The ban may last a day or two (as a warning) or forever (full exclusion).

It is up to you to decide if you want to return (no matter what) using proxies, other methods etc. to this environment where you are likely to be monitored more closely, or not.

[Violet]

Another possibility is if your hosts file becomes "corrupted" (or toyed with). The hosts file is what converts the URL you type in your browser to the site's actual, numerical IP address. If commanded otherwise, though, your computer can associate a different address for what you type. Then suddenly what you type in your browser ("veteranstoday.com") can point elsewhere.

It's a longshot, but who knows, it's something to check. I have had malware attack my hosts file before.

To quickly check if this is the case, and assuming you're running Windows --

Go to Start > Run > type "cmd" in the box and press enter. Now type "ping www.veteranstoday.com" in the prompt and press enter.

You should see "Pinging www.veteranstoday.com [64.207.152.108] with 32 bytes of data:" and then some other information.

If that IP address is anything different -- your hosts file is re-directing you to another IP address. If another IP address appears there, look it up, it might be the home address of the offending party ;)

***

You know what's strange, ever since Gordon Duff's recent 9/11 pieces -- every time I go to VT to try to read an article, the site runs so slowly it's almost impossible to scroll down the page. I'll have other tabs open, which run fine, but the VT page takes 30 seconds or so to respond to any input (such as scrolling down the page).

I hesitate to blame computer problems on PTB, but in this case, it sure seems strange. I'm a semi-knowledgeable computer guy and to only have problems on one site, no matter what ... makes me go hmmmmmm.


I know another site that only started running terribly slow ever since I posted some (politely formulated) critical remarks about the site which were meant to wake other readers up.

[TargeT]

For the most part this is nearly always your answer:

No one is hacking you (or at least not specifically in the case of viruses, the NSA, etc...) there's lots of room for errors out there in human created systems; it's usually just that.

Targeted hacking is saved for rare occasions, and your (nearly everyone reading this fits this category) home PC is not a good target, nor one that anyone would spend special time on.

[spiritguide]

Pingned the veteranstoday.com and the response was -- Not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Going on to see about VPN and setting one up. Reset modem to no avail or change in the situation. Be back with results of further exploits.

[TargeT]

Pingned the veteranstoday.com and the response was -- Not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Going on to see about VPN and setting one up. Reset modem to no avail or change in the situation. Be back with results of further exploits.

did you type "ping www.veteranstoday.com" ?

should get something like this:


C:\>ping www.veteranstoday.com

Pinging www.veteranstoday.com [64.207.152.108] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.207.152.108:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\>

My network doesn't allow ICMP (aka "ping") so these are normal results, but as you can see DNS (domain name service) resolved www.veteranstoday.com to 64.207.152.108, so DNS is working fine.

[spiritguide]

Target tried ping again and got same response as you, I put a period after ping on that previous attempt. Thank you!

[spiritguide]

Finally tunneled through with a free VPN service. Thank you all for the assistance. Able to get to the site now with faster connectivity. Everyone needs a proxy server for sure, Can't figure out why I missed setting one up.

Peace!

[Frank V]

did you type "ping www.veteranstoday.com" ?

should get something like this:


C:\>ping www.veteranstoday.com

Pinging www.veteranstoday.com [64.207.152.108] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.207.152.108:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\>

My network doesn't allow ICMP (aka "ping") so these are normal results, but as you can see DNS (domain name service) resolved www.veteranstoday.com to 64.207.152.108, so DNS is working fine.

It does respond to pings at my end...




[localhost:/dev/pts/0][/home/aragorn]
[22:20:45][aragorn] $> ping -c 5 www.veteranstoday.com
PING www.veteranstoday.com (64.207.152.108) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com (64.207.152.108): icmp_req=1 ttl=52 time=105 ms
64 bytes from ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com (64.207.152.108): icmp_req=2 ttl=52 time=105 ms
64 bytes from ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com (64.207.152.108): icmp_req=3 ttl=52 time=104 ms
64 bytes from ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com (64.207.152.108): icmp_req=4 ttl=52 time=107 ms
64 bytes from ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com (64.207.152.108): icmp_req=5 ttl=52 time=103 ms

--- www.veteranstoday.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 103.965/105.351/107.746/1.321 ms

[localhost:/dev/pts/0][/home/aragorn]
[22:20:56][aragorn] $>



I'm guessing that a ban was in place on spiritguide's IP address, but another possibility is that there was a temporary glitch in the connection.

The Internet is not a tightly integrated and error-free network. There are glitches - which we call "netsplits" in IRC jargon - especially if the target host is geographically far away from the source host, which would signify a great number of routers and repeaters along the way. Any one of those can drop out for a short time due to network overload or just plain malfunctioning.

If you want to know how many hops there are between your computer and www.veteranstoday.com, you should take a look whether you have a tool called trace or traceroute installed. (Sorry, I don't do Microsoft Windows, so I'm afraid I can't be of any help there.)

On my system, and given my present location in Belgium, the trace gives me the following result (which isn't too bad):




[localhost:/dev/pts/0][/home/aragorn]
[22:26:02][aragorn] $> /usr/sbin/traceroute www.veteranstoday.com
traceroute to www.veteranstoday.com (64.207.152.108), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.0.0.250 (10.0.0.250) 0.703 ms 0.967 ms 1.235 ms
2 78-20-64-1.access.telenet.be (78.20.64.1) 9.850 ms 10.796 ms 11.039 ms
3 dD5E0C741.access.telenet.be (213.224.199.65) 11.793 ms 12.771 ms 15.246 ms
4 dD5E0FD29.access.telenet.be (213.224.253.41) 20.220 ms 20.322 ms 19.989 ms
5 brx-b1-link.telia.net (62.115.14.81) 18.726 ms 20.093 ms 19.665 ms
6 prs-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.136.220) 24.764 ms prs-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.136.222) 19.996 ms prs-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.136.220) 19.936 ms
7 ash-bb3-link.telia.net (80.91.251.98) 114.285 ms 114.387 ms ash-bb3-link.telia.net (80.91.251.243) 114.089 ms
8 ash-b1-link.telia.net (80.91.245.66) 99.034 ms ash-b1-link.telia.net (213.155.130.86) 274.003 ms ash-b1-link.telia.net (80.91.245.66) 104.523 ms
9 net2ez-ic-152340-ash-bb1.c.telia.net (213.155.129.78) 111.760 ms 112.056 ms 110.586 ms
10 cr02-1-1.iad1.netdc.com (65.97.48.254) 105.628 ms 112.145 ms 112.256 ms
11 65.97.50.26 (65.97.50.26) 112.347 ms 102.076 ms 101.140 ms
12 e1.4.as02.iad01.mtsvc.net (70.32.64.246) 97.982 ms 116.632 ms 110.141 ms
13 vzd096.mediatemple.net (64.207.159.11) 115.336 ms 108.375 ms 117.099 ms
14 ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com (64.207.152.108) 116.525 ms 107.889 ms 116.685 ms

[localhost:/dev/pts/0][/home/aragorn]
[22:26:06][aragorn] $>



Another thing which yields some interesting information is a WHOIS on the Veterans Today domain. According to that information, the contact information points to an e-mail address under the domain domainsbyproxy.com (which is itself registered with godaddy.com), but the DNS servers are apparently hosted at mediatemple.net, while the last hop in the traceroute above points at vesrv.com - presumably this is a virtual server hosted at a datacenter - which also has mediatemple.net as the host for its DNS servers and for the administrative contact address.

Mr. Duff seems to like complicated setups...

Presumably virtual, because of the two-level subdomain, ve.zzht8wtf.vesrv.com.