I did something terrible, something no sysadmin in their right mind should do to a server. I ran nmap. Once. And I got myself on some kind of blacklist, essentially into a hosts.deny
I could no longer access the website I was working with. Requests would time out, with occasionally a half-loaded page which I can only see the title of: “Visitor anti-robot validation”.
After hours of fighting with it I figured out the blocking is done by a retarded service called BitNinja, a service likely purchased by the server’s provider.
What’s the problem?
- First of all – the fact that it took me hours to figure out who is causing it.
- Second – really, an NMAP gets you on a blacklist these days?
- Third – look at their website, bitninja.io. And try to find ONE MENTION of getting your IP delisted from their bullshit lists. You won’t. Unless you first pay to suubscribe to their service.
- Fourth – have you looked at their website yet? They sell bullshit. Everything is a sound byte, nothing has substance. There is no information on there that’s even remotely technically useful.
The problem is – I don’t run the hosting company. I just help out with the server. So I have to deal with these bitninja retards. I have two “options” I will both pursue:
- Email bitninja. According to many reports I read online this is hopeless. BitNinja is a scam and they will not do anything for you unless you pay them.
- Email the hosting company who (presumably) did pay BitNinja. And hope that they have better luck, though given that they are paying for this bullshit service I suspect they don’t know what they’re doing either.
Option 3? I don’t know that there is one. I already got two IPs blocked, one of which is my static IP at home. Soon I won’t any networks I can access which will not be banned by the BitNinja scam.
My last option might be to not work with this server at all. But I really wanted to volunteer to help these guys out. They could really use a linux expert on their team.