I was just banned from Talkchess?

[Robert Flesher]

I have been talking to a mod at Talkchess ( he has been very helpful) but he/they do not know why am I banned. According to the mods I am active. However, it is obvious my IP has been blocked/banned as I get this,
Critical Information
You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.


Anyone care to speculate?
All of a sudden my IP is blocked during a controversial thread about Fabiens letter to the community, and the mods even don't know why?
Icdchess is the sponsor for talkchess? They sell Rybka.....hmmm
Nah, this must be my imagination, it must just be a mistake, correct?

You need to find out from Sam Hull what's going on.

Jeremy

Sam Hull fixed the problem.

[Robert Flesher]

Something is wrong. You can't get the message "banned from this forum" if the ip is blocked. So I am not quite sure what is going on. If you get that message, then the server can still be attacked since it had to receive your packet, which is a request for a new TCP/IP connection, and a DOS attack uses that very type of packet (SYN) to create the attack...

Normally when your IP is blocked, you drop into a black hole and can no longer be seen by the server at all... the packets just get tossed out...

If someone were really clever, I suppose that with linux and IPTables, one could create a rule that would fire off a reply such as what you saw, but it really seems unlikely since it is not worth the effort. Why notify an attacker he is being ignored?

Hello again Bob, Sam fixed the problem, but thanks for the quick response. Btw FYI the board does issue a ban message if your IP address is blocked. I thought
you may want to know.

Thanks again

Robert

[BB+]

I just clicked on some thing in TalkChess (the General Topics forum link from the front page), and got the same message:

Critical Information

You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.

Reloading the front page then gave the same message. Are all lurkers banned now?

EDIT: about 10 minutes before this, it was OK... it is now 21:42 GMT.

[orgfert]

I just clicked on some thing in TalkChess (the General Topics forum link from the front page), and got the same message:

Critical Information

You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.

Reloading the front page then gave the same message. Are all lurkers banned now?

EDIT: about 10 minutes before this, it was OK... it is now 21:42 GMT.

It might have to do with spam crawlers attempting to sign in from certain IP ranges causing the forum software to block those ranges. If your IP happens to be in that range....

[BB+]

Yes, it looks to be IP related.

[Hood]

maybe it is not the IP problem but your e-mail adress problem, sth is reading it and is making the blockage ?

[hyatt]

Something is wrong. You can't get the message "banned from this forum" if the ip is blocked. So I am not quite sure what is going on. If you get that message, then the server can still be attacked since it had to receive your packet, which is a request for a new TCP/IP connection, and a DOS attack uses that very type of packet (SYN) to create the attack...

Normally when your IP is blocked, you drop into a black hole and can no longer be seen by the server at all... the packets just get tossed out...

If someone were really clever, I suppose that with linux and IPTables, one could create a rule that would fire off a reply such as what you saw, but it really seems unlikely since it is not worth the effort. Why notify an attacker he is being ignored?

Hello again Bob, Sam fixed the problem, but thanks for the quick response. Btw FYI the board does issue a ban message if your IP address is blocked. I thought
you may want to know.

Thanks again

Robert

Seems odd, to say the least. The problem is that a DOS attack floods the host with SYN packets to create new connections. Which will fill up the "listen queue" nicely, causing other connection attempts to be rejected. If you accept a packet to create a connection to send back a "banned" message, it would seem to me that you just opened the door for a DOS attack... So maybe they are talking about a different type of attack, say someone trying to break in by cracking a password or something...