Unable to access site

#1: Post by **D12edpresso** » August 16th, 2016, 9:56 pm

Hi HB, I've been experiencing problem accessing the site via wifi (home network) or mobile network (I'm from Indonesia btw). Everytime I try to access the site, it got stuck on the captcha thing.
I only able to access the site using VPN.
Anyone experienced this before? Do you know how to solve this?

Thanks

#2: Post by **leon** » August 16th, 2016, 9:59 pm

I'm in Hong Kong and have recently been getting a redirect page from CloudFlare before being able to access the site. It only pops up for a few seconds and then the forums open normally. Is this some sort of security feature?

I don't know if it's related to what D12edpresso is experiencing, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

#3: Post by HB » August 16th, 2016, 11:14 pm

First a bit of background. This site is protected by a service called CloudFlare. In layman terms, CloudFlare is a network of servers between Internet users and host servers like HB's:

CloudFlare speeds up response time by caching commonly-accessed files and protects host sites from malicious actors by challenging suspicious behavior or possible distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS).

To the specifics of the OP's question: Cloudflare presents a challenge when it detects suspicious behavior. Once you pass the challenge (either a short auto-delay or a CAPTCHA, depending on CloudFlare's risk evaluation), you should not be challenged again for the day. Cloudflare notes that suspicious behavior isn't necessarily triggered by the user's actions; it can be triggered by the user's computer if it unknowingly hosts malicious bots.

#4: Post by **Bak Ta Lo** » August 16th, 2016, 11:50 pm

D12edpresso wrote:Hi HB, I've been experiencing problem accessing the site via wifi (home network) or mobile network (I'm from Indonesia btw). Everytime I try to access the site, it got stuck on the captcha thing.
I only able to access the site using VPN.
Anyone experienced this before? Do you know how to solve this?

Thanks

Same here in Macau, the captcha thing has recently been going wild. I have never had the captcha challenge until a few weeks ago, now I get it constantly, even sometimes just when I do a page refresh. I have to pass the captcha images challenge every time I visit from my laptop or my phone. I am doing it and passing the challenge every time I open my browser, but it requires me to do it every time.

#5: Post by **leon** » August 17th, 2016, 4:25 am

I can no longer access the site at all on my phone (Chrome browser on Android 6.0.1). The CloudFlare page comes up and goes into an endless refresh loop. No captcha visible.

#6: Post by HB » August 17th, 2016, 6:58 am

Weird. Try clearing the browser cache; I'll send a problem report to CloudFlare. For what it's worth, I have an iPhone and sometimes rebooting it will fix odd behavior.

#7: Post by **DanoM** » August 17th, 2016, 7:44 am

Here in Japan I get the CloudFlare popup for a few seconds whenever I connect to the site. If I connect again after a couple of hours it again gives me the popup, sometimes after about 1 hour, and I see it multiple times per day. I'm connecting from the same IP address here in Japan for all communication too.

At least I don't get caught up in any connection denial loops.

#8: Post by HB » August 17th, 2016, 7:49 am

The challenge assumes you have JavaScript enabled and allow a cookie. Once it stores a cookie indicating you passed, it should not bother you again for days. I'll try a less aggressive security setting and see if that helps.

#9: Post by **leon** » August 17th, 2016, 9:33 pm

Seems to be working properly on my phone again.

August 17th, 2016, 9:57 pm

This is what I get when trying to get to home-barista.com via one service (but others work fine):

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /forums/unreadposts on this server.

(similar messages for the main site, etc.)

There have been a bit of DDoS attacks going around hitting certain governments - the only publicized attack that I know of has been Australia - but I would assume Cloud Flare is being cautious.