error 403: Forbidden! ... Help

**phobos** · 09-25-2003, 04:36 AM

Has any one come across the error 403: Frobidden! message? I just recently launched a site and everything was going fine. But all of a sudden that message shows up. The really funny thing is that the error message sub text is in German!

Here is the complete message:

error 403: Frobidden!
Verboten!
Es sind nur ungenugende Zugriffsrechte gesetzt. bitte andern Sie Die Rechte mit Ihrem FTP-Program.

...
I have a really bad feeling that this is actually an attack on my server! Some sort of worm of malisious FTP program. Any comments will be much appriciated. Thanks in Advance. Phobos

**Guerrilla** · 09-25-2003, 08:00 AM

If this is a linux server you may have directory protection on or you may not have your CHMOD permissions correctly configured on a cgi script.

The fact it is in german leads me to believe that you are using a virtual host that probably has servers in germany (one&one do this - BTW they suck big time).

A hacker could possibly be putting a fake 403 page on your server. They woud do this by altering your .htaccess file but its probably just your web hosts standard page.

**david** · 09-25-2003, 08:28 AM

Can you still log in to your account. I have had a couple of problems where I have had this happen, and it turned out that my host had suspended my account due to a rogue script (it was using far too many resources). They should really have let you know, but some don't.

**phobos** · 09-26-2003, 02:50 AM

First of all I would like to thank Guerrilla and David for responding. Today I got an email from my administrator and David you were right! It was a rouge script and it cloged up their entire network. They host approximately 400 web sites and they were all down for about six hours. My administrator said the exact same thing your did David : "It was consuming too much resources!". All of this happened in a matter of 15 min. That is how long my fire wall was down for. I was wondering is there any software that I can install on windows 2000 server to prevent this kind of thing from happening again (Something other than a fire wall... i.e a antivirus program)? I went to Norton's site and all of their products for win 2000 out of my price range ! Thanks Again David and Guerrilla you were very helpfull.