What's Up Wid Dis?

[Gary Sisco]

Both a friend (who uses a different server) and myself have both been greeted with this error message when trying to read al jazeera's english website. What does this mean?

You are not authorized to view this page
You do not have permission to view this directory or page from the Internet address of your Web browser.

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If you believe you should be able to view this directory or page, please contact the Web site administrator by using the e-mail address or phone number listed on the english.aljazeera.net home page.

HTTP 403.6 - Forbidden: IP address rejected
Internet Information Services

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Technical Information (for support personnel)


Background:
This error is caused when the server has a list of IP addresses that are not allowed to access the site, and the IP address you are using is in this list.


More information:
Microsoft Support

[tippy]

Hmmm, same thing for me, yet it lets me go to regular aljazeera.net.

[Vince Kargatis]

More hacking, perhaps, or simply a misconfigured webserver. Certainly nothing on your end.

[Pete C]

I found this on another site:

>>> Starting the very day that Al Jazeera's English-language Website launched, the "CNN of the Arab world" has been constantly hacked with denial of service attacks, spamming, hijacking, etc. While the Arabic site goes online intermittently (only to get knocked offline again), the English-language version is nowhere to be seen. (The URL for the English site now either doesn't work or brings up the Arabic site. Often, the main URL doesn't work either.)

[Tanager]

Gary, assuming the message you got is accurate, it means that Al Jazeera has chosen to block a range of IP addresses from accessing their webservers. As another poster said, it hasn't got a thing to do with your software configuration, and it doesn't have anything to do with what ISP you use, except that the range of IPs your ISP (and your friend's) assign to their users are likely within those that Al Jazeera is currently blocking. The usual reason for doing something like this is the belief that an attack is currently originating from within that address block. It's a brute force solution when you don't have any other means at your disposal, and I'm sure they'd rather you be able to access their servers without being blocked.

[Pete C]

April 4, 2003
Akamai Cancels a Contract for Arabic Network's Site
By WARREN ST. JOHN


In a move sure to complicate the efforts of Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, to get its English-language Web site running, Akamai Technologies abruptly canceled a contract on Wednesday to provide Web services for the site.

Employees at Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said they were frustrated by the decision, though not entirely surprised. "It has nothing to do with technical issues," said Joanne Tucker, the managing editor of the English-language site. "It's nonstop political pressure on these companies not to deal with us."

Akamai, based in Cambridge, Mass., would not comment on the reason for the cancellation. But Jeff Young, a company spokesman, issued a statement confirming that Akamai would no longer do business with Al Jazeera.

"Akamai worked briefly this week with Al Jazeera to understand the issues they are having distributing their Web sites," he said. "We ultimately decided not to continue a customer relationship with Al Jazeera, and we are not going to be providing them our services."

The English version of Al Jazeera's Web site was shut by hackers roughly 12 hours after it went online on March 25. For a time, Web users trying to gain access were directed to a Web page bearing an American flag. Akamai, whose clients include MSNBC and CNN, maintains a broad network of servers that provide protection from hacking attempts. It was for that reason, Ms. Tucker said, that Al Jazeera hired the company.

"Basically this was our answer to the hacking that has been nonstop and pretty aggressive," she said. "We had a done-and-dusted deal on March 28. Then yesterday, we get a letter from them terminating the contract."

Akamai's decision is one in a series of headaches for Al Jazeera since the start of the war. Defense Department officials criticized the network for showing images of dead and captured American soldiers. After that episode, the network's American financial correspondents were banned from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. On Wednesday, Iraqi officials expelled one Jazeera correspondent from Baghdad and barred another from reporting there. American officials have also accused the network of unduly emphasizing civilian casualties in Iraq.

Al Jazeera contends that much of the traffic that shut down its site was from Web users simply curious about its coverage. The search engine Lycos reported yesterday that "Al Jazeera" was its most-searched-for term last week.

Ms. Tucker said that Al Jazeera hoped to have its English site up within 24 hours, but that without Akamai's many servers, the site would be more vulnerable to hacking attempts.

The site went live just after 7 p.m. last night.

"It doesn't derail us," she said. "We can withstand the hacking up to a point, but if they focus it all on one server it would put a lot of pressure on that server.

"We hope that won't be the case," she added. "We're working on it all the time."

Ms. Tucker called the hacking attempts "pathetic." "It's a narrow, pro-censorship attempt to silence a news site," she said.

This is not the first time that Akamai has had to deal first-hand with tensions between the Arab world and the United States. The company's co-founder and chief technology officer, Daniel Lewin, 31, was on American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001, when the plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

[Monte Smith]

It's up now: http://english.aljazeera.net

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, my man at my server told me that al j had been under hack attack and was blocking a lot of American servers as they tried to repair the site.