My company's firewall is blocking my website. Is there anything I can do on my end to fix this?

May 20, 2008 7:29 AM

My company's firewall is blocking my website. Is there anything I can do on my end to fix this?

(Be kind, I am a website newb.) Up until last week, I had no problems accessing my website or its cPanel admin from work. Now I just get a timed out error even when I just try to load the page (or something of that effect--can't remember the exact wording.)

My work is pretty laid back about web surfing during breaks/lunch, etc., and I have never had any problems accessing any other sites (flickr, myspace, youtube) so what could possibly be so bad about my site that they would block it? It's just a simple online portfolio.

My hosting company says that it is because the firewall is blocking the port the cPanel is on and apparently a lot of companies view it as an insecure port? They said the only thing I could do is request that my company allow it.

I don't really want to go that far just to access a personal website from work (I mean, I do have real work to be doing :) but I guess my bigger concern is that if our firewall is blocking it, how many others are as well? I didn't even realize that the reason I couldn't access it was because of the firewall, I just thought the server was down or something. If other people experience the same thing, might they just think I have an unreliable site?

Are there any changes I should make to make it more firewall-friendly? Sorry if these are totally dumb questions, but I am totally new at this website stuff.

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (6 comments total)

If other people experience the same thing, might they just think I have an unreliable site?

Most company firewalls block outgoing connections to ports other than 80, to prevent people from using things like P2P clients and whatnot. cPanel is usually on port 2082, so from your company's perspective it's unsafe.

Your actual site should be on port 80, which means you and your site's visitors should be able to access it through any firewall.

Assuming your hosting company can't give you a fix for this, and you are okay with breaking your company's firewall rules, you have a few options. You can setup a tunnel between your work computer to your home computer, which would run the cPanel connection through a port 80 connection. You could also use an anonymous proxy service, which would redirect all of your web traffic (including the connections to cPanel) through an anonymized connection to a single site on port 80.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:46 AM on May 20

http://www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork/

^ That should break you through.
posted by fusinski at 7:46 AM on May 20

The cPanel will probably be (should be) at some https:// address, which they SHOULD allow.

One trick I've found working at clueless companies that have the "i'm a cyber-policeman!" fascism dial turned all the way up to 11 is to append ?ibm.com to the end of the website you're trying to reach, eg. if your cpanel is at https://admin.example.com, try accessing it via https://admin.example.com?ibm.com

Reason that works is, they'll see "ibm.com", and think you're trying to access a perfectly legitimate website.
posted by slater at 7:47 AM on May 20

It doesn't surprise me that you don't have access to Cpanel considering it uses a non-standard port, but the reason the website itself is blocked depends on the way the filter works (there is probably a software package in addition to the firewall).

Websense, for example, looks for certain keywords--I don't know anything about the content of your site, but maybe you can look for anything objectionable.

If your company is laid back, as you say, your best bet would be to talk to someone who knows the system. Catch your IT person at a good moment and tell them your concerns about other people being able to access your site (more than coming across as whining about your own lack of access). You will likely get the scoop on the issue, and may even score yourself an exemption from the blacklist.
posted by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 7:49 AM on May 20

Reason that works is, they'll see "ibm.com", and think you're trying to access a perfectly legitimate website.

OTOH, firewalls I've dealt with use port and IP filtering. Depends on the service.

Also be warned that if your IT people learn you're using a proxy or tunnel, they may not be happy with you going around the firewall. I would go Mr. Anthropomorphism's route and try to get on the whitelist.
posted by jmd82 at 7:59 AM on May 20

From your position no. if it worked once and no longer works it sounds like one of your network admins saw some suspicious traffic and decided to block the IP. You can play with ssh tunnels and get past it but at that point you may be violating your company's security policy which may mean bad news for your job.

If other people experience the same thing, might they just think I have an unreliable site?

You can email some buds and ask them to try to connect from home. If they can then I doubt youre on some blacklist, but there's always the remote possibility that turn-key web-blocking solutions may have put your site on their list. Normally these solutions present a web page saying "site blocked for inappropriate content" or some-such.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:44 AM on May 20