HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden Question

Well this is gonna sound kinda weird. But just a few seconds ago I was not able to view this web page.

Cryptographic Filesystems, Part One: Design and Implementation

Basically the first time I tried to view it I got the following:

Quote:

---

You are not authorized to view this page
You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.

HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden

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Then a few minutes later I decided to try again and well what do you know it worked.

Has this ever happened to anyone ? Does anyone have any ideas as to why this might have happened ? I have viewed this webpage before and have never encountered this error.

Operating System : Windows 98
Web Browsers : Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 6.0 SP1
Mozilla Firebird 0.7

Note: This only happened when I used the Microsoft web browser. I do have the latest Service Pack for both the OS and browser.

I'm using linux with mozilla and I can't get to it:

Quote:

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Forbidden
You are not permitted to access the remote system.

If this is an error, then you should contact your local firewall administrator.

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Don't know what the problem is. I also tried it on my win98se box with IE, and it loaded just fine. Oh well.

edit
Got it to load when I took out the www with mozilla. Very Strange.
/me shrugs

Yes I have seen it on a Corporate network when trying to access information from some of the remote sites that had belonged to another company that we merged with. Sometimes it would work later on but with others you had to go to the frontpage and use the search facilities to get what you wanted.

I never did find out exactly why it happened............traffic volume, loss of data whilst making the connection?, or something weird and the error message is a red herring?

Cheers

EDIT: We did not have to enter passwords to get onto these remote sites, so it should not have been an authority problem..........may be the two servers couldn't establish trust for some reason?

Now I got another problem. Well whenever I visit their webpage not all the images load. Some of them are just white boxes with the title and an x within a box to the left side.

Any ideas as to how I could fix this ?

Note: Yesterday everything loaded up fine it just seems as if my browsers don't wanna play nice today.

Note: It happens with both of the browsers that I have installed. Only happens when I visit their site.

I managed to get into the site with no problems. WinME/IE6 SP1

They seem to be having problems?


Right mouse click on the "little red x" and select "show picture" then scroll down beyond the picture and scroll back up. The diagram should have miraculously appeared ;)

Just don't ask me why :D

Cheers

Yeah I think that they are having problems with their site. Who knows that it is ? But everything is pretty much well find for me now.

Thanks nihil.

::Slaps self::

Quote:

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Right mouse click on the "little red x" and select "show picture" then scroll down beyond the picture and scroll back up. The diagram should have miraculously appeared

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Now why did I not think of that ? :confused: Oh well ....

The one thing you might try (just to see if it works) is to route your connection differently - one of the computers you go through on your way there might be listed as untrusted by their systems.

Just a random thought.

Regards,

SSJVegeta-Sei

In my experience, the 403 error code has usually meant permission problems by the webmaster. So might be best to send a note off to the admin, telling him this.

HTTP Error Codes and What they Mean
Common HTTP Errors (simplified)

On an interesting twist, I'm being told that it's "Firewall Error: Forbidden" and I should contact my firewall administrator (interesting since I don't have one)

I can access the page, but it's very slow to load, even on my DSL connection. They may just be experiencing a lot of traffic and the webserver can't cope.

The main page came up slow for me. The other pages on the site seemed to load faster, but when I clicked back to go back to the main page I got the
"Forbidden
You are not permitted to access the remote system.

If this is an error, then you should contact your local firewall administrator."
message.
It must be an issue with the site.

What's interesting is that it's SecurityFocus (hosters of the BugTraq lists). I wonder if they are under attack at this point. I tried to reconnect, I got a blank page and "page contains no data". I hit refresh and then got the "Firewall Error: Forbidden".

It's definately them having an issue but I have concerns that it's more serious than a simple misconfig.

[edit]

Further to this, a search at Google reveals their main page was last updated on the 4th.

rofl i just got this, ahahha i tried to go to battleforums.com and i got it, so i tried about 5 min later and w00t i got there, and i was using IE 6.0 SP1. oh well i got there eventually

have you tried netcape??? Sometimes sites that cannot be retrieved by explorer can be viewed in netscape

This isn't so odd realy that a page doesn't load in one browser but will in another. For those of you that have IE and netscape, and have some free time, try this:

http://www.ihatemicrosoft.com

First load it in IE and see the message you get.

Now try Netscape :)

Cool huh?

Yes, I am tired. It's 2:19 PM and I'm still awake from yesterday.

That particular page is depedent on the response the browser gives. I went with Opera (which responds saying it's IE 6) and got a page that says:

Quote:

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Throughout this site, the staff of I Hate Microsoft.com makes extensive use of all technologies we can find to give users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer an unpleasant experience when visiting I Hate Microsoft.com. We use Java from Sun MicroSystems. JavaScript and PHP technologies. Therefore, our site is best experienced with a Netscape Browser.

You are using the Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Linux 2.4.22 i686) which may produce some bad results.

We do not apologize for your inability to access this site. We do feel sure that you will appreciate that we do not wish to compromise on how we feel about Microsoft or on the views of our co conspirators.

---

It's not an accurate indication of who visits their site.

Yea, that's something they need to work on. You need to use netscape to see it correctly. Think I'll email or post this to the BBS. I used Kon, Mozilla, and Galeon, and none of them diplayed it right. It's still a funny site though.

That is really weird since I visit that site everyday and have never encoutered any problems with it until yesterday.

I've been looking to see if they posted any messages about the problems that they had yesterday but I cant find anything. I am pretty sure they know.

But everything seems to be ok now.

Anybody have any ideas as to what might have happened yesterday ?