Oh! The trials and tribulations…
Can you imagine my surprise when I was denied access to this site this morning?
The error message I received from Firefox and Chrome were similar and made it sound like I might have been hacked. “Lithuania”, “geoblocking”, “security certificate invalid”, and all kinds of unsmiley indications (including a spam contact message overnight).
The AI assistant on my hosting service said everything was ok. A human said everything was okay. No one could figure it out. Until I tried something locally.
I am at the office today, you see. So I disconnected from the “guest network” at the office, did a mobile hotlink and tried again. Everything was as expected. Apparently, the firewall they use here is geoblocking certain servers. I’m guessing this site is located in Lithuania (at least for today, I believe it is mirrored in several places, including in the US). That makes sense, as it prevents access by hackers — argue with me if you want, but that larger region has a reputation for having hackers. Even though I have a valid SSL certificate, I’m guessing the firewall software is set to high discrimination (we’ve been ransomwared previously).
So, no, nothing is wrong with the site. Something is wrong with the overly aggressive firewall that is not even connected to our primary network (I assume my site is still too new to meet reputation rankings requirements).
I’m sharing this with you to remind myself not to jump to conclusions because of coinciding “weird” behavior, but to ask myself “what is different?” before I get support involved, assuming the worst.
I’ll go on and actually work now…
11 responses to “Lessons learned”
There isn’t much quite so unsettling as things not working as they had the day before. Glad it firgured and I hope your day is nothing but smiles going forward.
Cautiously optimistic. The work PC did a crash around the same time, so I managed to (hopefully) get all of the technical glitches out of the way early. 🤞
Oh, it tantrumed. Oh dear.
Oh dear, indeed.
Could it be a hacked WiFi router?
Perhaps, but considering it is a work-based router and a coworker just asked me about similar web access issues on the core network (different WiFi router), I suspect someone changed the settings for Watchguard (it seems to be the firewall being used based on the messages) to be highly aggressive. It’s blocking legit US EPA sites for her with the same kind of messages.
Or the ISP, I guess, could conceivably be overdoing it here in the office. She’s got a support ticket out and promises to keep me informed. Very weird.
What a pain. Technology – if only we could do without it. 🙁
I initially thought all kinds of swears. Then to discover it was the workplace acting weird…
And confirmed when a coworker couldn’t view a legit government site… She had the same kinds of errors on a site that I use all the time for my work. Sigh.
At least it’s a relief to know that it’s not something you’ve done. Irritating though. 😐
😶🫣 technology can be very strange at times!! Glad you got it fixed 😊
It sounds like it was an aggressive firewall issue based on the response my coworker got when she asked the helpdesk what the heck was up for her.