Strange hobbes.nmsu.edu behavior.

[Digi]

Very strange situation with hobbes.nmsu.edu. No access from Russia and Ukraine. From other countries there is access. Letters are ignored and not even accepted by the server. Does anyone have any info on this?

[Valery Sedletski]

I'm opening Hobbes successfully in Linux (Firefox 68 and Falkon browsers), via an american VPN. If I try opening Hobbes from OS/2 in
latest Firefox 45 from my own IP address (russian Tele2 cellular provider), it opens, but I got a SSL error:

Secure Connection Failed

The document contains no data.

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.

    Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

So, it opens from some places even in Russia, but SSL connection fails. Does it require a too latest SSL version?
Is anybody outside Russia and Ukraine able to open Hobbes from OS/2 browsers?

[roberto]

From Spain, without problems.
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; Warp 4.5; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0 SeaMonkey/2.42.9esr
Saludos

[jls_os2user]

No access from Russia to hobbes.nmsu.edu.
I've try to send them a email and recieved:

<hobbesarchiver@nmsu.edu>: host mailrelay6.nmsu.edu[128.123.34.142] refused to
    talk to me: 554-mailrelay6.nmsu.edu 554 Your access to this mail system has
    been rejected due to policy.

[ivan]

hobbes/incoming opens here in France but there is no information as to what the file might be about so most things being uploaded at the moment are a complete mystery as to what they are. 

[Wim Brul]

Use HobbesIncoming to access all files in there.

[Digi]

Use HobbesIncoming to access all files in there.

hobbes.nmsu.edu does not work from Russia and Ukraine at all.

[Laurence Pithie]

Do any of the mirros work for you?
http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/hobbes/
http://crydee.sai.msu.su/archive/

[Ian B Manners]

Hi Everyone,

Curtis, the 'maintainer' of hobbes is busy with another project at present, I've thrown some ideas about how to present the text information description files, and access, to him but I can not see anything happening for a 'while' on that front.

I will let him know about the access issues though I suspect they maybe to do with IP ranges being added to the blacklist for uploading scr, php, ISO and other irrelevant files, I've had similar issues with form and DoS attacks from Russia and Ukraine but now most of my banned ranges are China, VietNam and USA so Curtis maybe amicable to relaxing access blacklists when he has time. Hobbes is on a new server, and I know that Curtis has been looking at different ways to secure the server while still giving access to those who use it.

I'll come back to this thread in a couple of weeks time and gather all the information up and let him know.

For those who would rather not go through me, the new Hobbes Archiver email address on the Hobbes server does work (hobbesarchiver at nmsu dot edu) fine for me from Western Australia, so problems could be due to blacklisting or routing issues. I say routing issues because I've been having intermittent packet problems to Europe for the past 3-4 weeks with no access to China.

As pointed out by Wim, you can access the directory directly via https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/incoming/
or FTP via ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/  using anonymous, and your email address (fake or real) as the password.

[Dave Yeo]

hobbes/incoming opens here in France but there is no information as to what the file might be about so most things being uploaded at the moment are a complete mystery as to what they are.

The txt files show up at ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/, should be a workaround for the SSL errors too.

[Valery Sedletski]

ftp access fails too: "Network access denied (65)". So, they seem to ban us by IP, neither http, or ftp or
mail works.

PS: Mirrors of course are very outdated. E.g., ftp://crydee.sai.msu.su was last mirrored in 2017.

Accessing ftp root from a VPN with nftp or Netdrive gives an empty directory listing. Can anybody tell Hobbes admins
that discrimination by territorial attribute is not good. Nobody yet bans USA from russian ftp's, like ftp.osfree.org or
ftp.os2.snc.ru,  if we'll begin, would it be good? This will make an additional  fragmentation of community, which is
already very small. Everybody tells about mythical "russian hackers", but I doubt that russian OS/2 users are those,
and even that those mythical hackers are interested in visiting Hobbes. So, ordinary OS/2 users will suffer, as always.

[Hermit]

I confirm that access is closed from the Russian address. We have to select a proxy server.

 ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/
The connection was reset

Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; Warp 4.5; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0

[Dave Yeo]

What about other parts of NMSU https://nmsu.edu/?

[Eugene Gorbunoff]

testing from Russia:

* hobbes.nmsu.edu  -  Doesn't work during the last few months.
   host hobbes.nmsu.edu
   hobbes.nmsu.edu =   128.123.88.139


* https://nmsu.edu/ - works fine

[Mathias]

Like Ian said... most likely geo block on the specific hobbes external IP.

An admin must really be sick of attacks until he's blocking a whole range or even country ranges. Unfortunately this could potentially mean legit connections also cannot pass through anymore.
But as for protecting the service, this is, as a temporary measure, a valid tool to keep the services up for all of us.
Imagine hobbes being unaccessible for everybody without the geo block would be bad...
And even worse, if it becomes too expensive to protect and maintain hobbes.....
So.. as a quick fix, they propably banned whole ranges to quickly get rid of the attackers.

For the hobbes admins, I'd recommend using adaptive firewall config tools like [  Fail 2 Ban ].
With this they can unblock all the ranges again, and instead configure a set of rules to *automatically*...
- block each individual IP that does forbidden things at every third or second attempt
- unblock them again after n hours

Using such an auto config tool, the firewall maintains itself and only the bad guys need to stay outside. : )