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I was able to access aescryp.com the other day. The I was trying to view/download the user guide found here: https://www.aescrypt.com/documentation/ (on Windows). Right after that I couldn't get access to the site anymore. I tried another computer (Linux) and the site was working fine there. Then I tried to access the same user guide and again I all of a sudden can't get access to the site. What I experience when I enter aescrypt.com into the address line is first nothing. After some time I get a "Problem loading page" and "Connection times out".

I have

  • tried ipconfig /flushdns without success.
  • (of course) restarted the computer(s) and that didn't work.
  • waited 24 hours, still no success.
  • tried different browsers and cleared cookies
  • tried the tor browser also without success.
  • pinged the website and got a fine return
  • checked with my systems administrator and the site has not been blocked (re comment below)
  • checked the host file on Windows and it does not have any websites listed.

On a third computer I can still get access to the website, but I am afraid to click the user guide link (it is a pdf file).

I have read the following: Why are some websites not accessible from one computer on a network? and Why can't I traceroute or access certain websites in my browser even though I can ping them from terminal?

but they don't seem to help.

Any suggestions?

Community
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Thomas
  • 185

3 Answers3

2

Mystery solved!

As suggested in chat, I got in contact with a person behind the website. Because the site had experienced DDoS attacks the server had some aggressive software running ti block these attacks. In short the server interpreted the attempt to view the pdf file as an attack and the IP was added to a blacklist. From what I understand this has now been corrected and I can access the site again.

(Now I don't know what to do with my bounty.)

Thomas
  • 185
1

The same thing just happened to me when I tried it. Simply unbelievable!
I did some more research and these are my results:

I browsed to http://www.aescrypt.com/ without any problem, looked at the documentation, also without any problem, then tried it again. But the second time it blocked, same as with you.

When trying again, I noticed that when I entered the address http://www.aescrypt.com/, the address bar suddenly changed to https://www.aescrypt.com/ (notice the https), which timed-out. Evidently, the aescrypt website was redirecting my http request to https. From that moment on, both the http and the https requests keep on timing-out every time that I try, and this also happens on every browser that I try.

I then connected to a Web VPN service and tried again : The result was the same, even though my IP address has changed!

I have done a whois lookup of www.aescrypt.com, IP address 174.129.216.74, and found out that their server is an instance on Amazon EC2 AWS. Like with you, ping works fine.

Before my access to the aescrypt documentation was cut-off, I noticed that it was in the format of a PDF file, so you might be able to access their site from another computer and download it for later use.

As a temporary solution, you can find the documentation in the Google Cache using this google search:
cache:https://www.aescrypt.com/documentation/AES%20Crypt%20User%20Guide.pdf

If you can get an address for the aescrypt Support, then you should complain. The problem might of course clear up in the future when(if) they fix what they did to their webserver.

harrymc
  • 498,455
-1

Have you tried clearing the browser cache? I've seen things get b0rked when an invalid CSS (or JavaScript!) file gets loaded. This is different from clearing the cookies from the browser.

Jason
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