[TOR] Asus website bricked?

[MichaelCG]

If you think a slow port scan is all a hacker does and is the only risk....you don't understand CyberSecurity too well. A proper attacker can do plenty of damage over dial-up. It just may take them a bit longer to execute.

And keep in mind...Akamai may only be blocking because of a configuration that Asus, their customer, requested. Asus may or may not use Akamai everywhere as well. This week they use Akamai, next week it could be Azure, then AWS, then Cloudflare. They use the same error pages across the board. There are lots of content/acceleration/optimization providers out there other than Akamai that all operate in a similar manner. Some cache content only, while some also provide an optimized lower latency transit back to the originating servers. On top of optimization, many include various "security" features as well like filtering based upon RBLs and other options.

No company is under any obligation to accept traffic from Tor nodes. It is a business decision they are allowed to make. You say you buy from them since they won't let you in...they may accept that risk. You don't like it...you are free to find another vendor that meets your requirements.

 

[Almighty1]

http://zsmith.co/tor.html

RMerlin is right.
Think of Akamai just like your house, they have the right to allow or deny access to anyone since if you want access, you play by their rules. If you don't, then you don't get access. I mean it's not unreasonable to know who actually went into your house.

MichaelCG may be right too, are sites like www.cnbc.com also restricted to tor or are they not as they use akamai as well.

 

[Fitz Mutch]

Yes, but why now? Akamai is suddenly blocking Tor users from accessing the Asus website. Why the Asus website?

On June 19, some big tech guys met with President Trump at the White House, including Akamai CEO Tom Leighton.

Fast-forward to 9:37, as Akamai CEO Tom Leighton introduces himself to The President.

LEIGHTON: We protect government websites from attackers — the majority of the government websites — including WhiteHouse.gov.

THE PRESIDENT: The DNC could have used you.

LEIGHTON: Well… (laughing)

CROWD: (laughing)

LEIGHTON: It’s an important job, and as you can imagine, there’s a lot of folks out there trying to do bad things, and we’re delighted to help.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4617524/Trump-meet-tech-CEOs-government-overhaul.html

 

[MichaelCG]

Why now? Because their customer asked them to. Akamai doesn't just "do" things because they want to. They do them because they sell a service to their customers based upon their requirements.

 

[Fitz Mutch]

Why now? Because their customer asked them to.

Yes, but how do you know that Asus specifically asked Akamai to start blocking Tor users? You don't really know for sure. Maybe Akamai tries to do the right thing on behalf of the customer?

Maybe Asus simply changed their content delivery provider to Akamai and that Akamai's default policy is to block Tor users? Is it like Facebook where the default policy is to share everything, unless specifically told otherwise?

We just don't know.

 

[MichaelCG]

Why do I care? I have plenty of more important things to put that much thought process towards....

If you really want to try to find an answer...open a ticket with ASUS. Doubtful they will give you anything useful and more than likely you will get a very generic "we secure our sites with industry leading security controls" or something like that.

 

[RMerlin]

You guys realize this is all based on speculations, right? Cause it happened right at the same time Asus were making changes to their website (the support pages were changed). It might have been just a configuration glitch on their servers, especially considering the error message returned...

Yesterday afternoon I was renewing a couple of domain names for a customer with a well-known registrar. Right at the end of the process, their website started returning generic Apache "Access Denied" error messages. Took a few minutes to be able to once again access their site - most likely a configuration glitch on their end.

It happens...

 

[Fitz Mutch]

You guys realize this is all based on speculations, right?

It's a fact that Tor users are now blocked from www.asus.com. Running a traceroute proves that Akamai delivers content for www.asus.com. And it's reasonable to infer that Akamai Technologies is hiding something because the blocked page reads only, "Access Denied", without any identifying information as to who is doing the blocking and why. When Cloudflare blocks a website, it's easy to see what's going on.

 

[RMerlin]

It's a fact that Tor users are now blocked from www.asus.com.

Tried other Akamai customers, like Microsoft?

And it's reasonable to infer that Akamai Technologies is hiding something because the blocked page reads only, "Access Denied", without any identifying information as to who is doing the blocking and why.

Quite the opposite to me, a generic error message seem more likely to be a configuration error on the webserver/loadbalancer than an outright block by the CDN.

 

[Fitz Mutch]

Tried other Akamai customers, like Microsoft?

I've never had any issues accessing www.microsoft.com via Tor.

Here's an Asus website that is accessible via Tor. Not protected by Akamai? Whoops.
https://cms-am.asus.com/ecp/

 

[SmallNetGuy]

I've never had any issues accessing www.microsoft.com via Tor.

Here's an Asus website that is accessible via Tor. Not protected by Akamai? Whoops.
https://cms-am.asus.com/ecp/

Hi everybody!

Not sure if it's any related, but for me asuscomm.com does not work whole day today (July 15th). I've tried my hostname at asuscomm.com and it does not work ( http://iplookup.asus.com/nslookup.php ).

Anybody else having same trouble?

 

[David B]

Hi everybody!

Not sure if it's any related, but for me asuscomm.com does not work whole day today (July 15th). I've tried my hostname at asuscomm.com and it does not work ( http://iplookup.asus.com/nslookup.php ).

Anybody else having same trouble?

Yes.