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Investigating 'Access Denied' on multiple websites: My IP was blacklisted by Akamai
One Day, I Could No Longer Connect to Several Sites from My Home Network
The other day, I started seeing "Access Denied" on Yodobashi.com.
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.yodobashi.com/" on this server.
This was occurring on all my devices, including PCs and smartphones, while I could access it without issues via a mobile connection.
I found the following Togetter as a similar case report, so I initially suspected a system failure on the Yodobashi.com side.
However, I later confirmed that the same phenomenon was occurring on web pages other than Yodobashi.com.
For example:
- https://www.nhk.or.jp
- https://banusy.dmm.com
- https://www.tepco.co.jp
- https://www.yodobashi.com
- https://joshinweb.jp
- https://www.demae-can.com
- https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp
- https://p-bandai.jp
On these web pages as well, Access Denied was displayed, and checking the response headers revealed that a 403 Forbidden status code was being returned.
I suspected a failure with my provider or fiber optic operator, troubles caused by IPv4 or IPv6, or a geolocation misdetection of my IP address. In conclusion, I discovered that my home global IP address had been banned by Akamai, putting me in a state of "Akamai ostracism."
Once you are in this state of Akamai ostracism, you become unable to browse most web pages that utilize Akamai.
nslookup
Let's send a DNS request with nslookup and see the results.
nslookup www.yodobashi.com
As a result of performing nslookup on the sites listed above, I found that akamaiedge.net is being used for the CDN.
For sites that do not use akamaiedge.net for their CDN, it is presumed that security tools such as Akamai's Kona Site Defender are being used.
Akamai Client Reputation
According to Akamai Japan's blog:
"Akamai, which possesses vast amounts of threat intelligence, ranks IP addresses worldwide to detect and defend against access from dangerous IP addresses."
This was stated in the blog.
In other words, it seems that if the assigned IP address behaves suspiciously on any website using Akamai and is judged to have a "bad reputation," access is blocked not only from that specific web page but also from multiple web pages using the relevant product.
This could target not only your own actions but also the actions of a user who was previously assigned that IP address, or another resident living in the same building where a shared line is used.
Checking if Your IP Address is Blacklisted
You can check the reputation of your IP address on the web page above.
Sure enough, it was targeted. Thank you very much indeed.
There is a link at the bottom of the page that says Request to investigate your IP address, so if you think it might be a false positive, it seems possible to send an investigation request.
What to Do if You Experience "Akamai Ostracism"
I did submit the investigation request form via the Request to investigate your IP address link mentioned earlier, but as of now, the Akamai ostracism has not been lifted.
Additionally, I tried calling Akamai Japan's support phone number, but the only response I received was, "We do not accept inquiries from general users."
In conclusion, if the investigation request form does not resolve the issue, there is likely no other way than to change your IP address.
For providers with dynamic IPs, the IP address might change by restarting the router, but for services with fixed or semi-fixed IPs, realistically, there may be no way other than:
- Changing your provider
- Using a VPN
I don't think there is any other way.
Finally
When I searched for "Akamai Access Denied," I found the following blog posts. Although both pieces of information are five years old, they seem to refer to the same thing.
I do run a scraping bot against one particular site, but I don't use it in a way that puts a load on the web page, and I only operate within the scope explicitly stated in the site's terms of service.
In fact, I'm still not banned from that specific web page and can browse it normally, but it's hard to accept being treated as an attacker by Akamai and denied access to other web pages that use Akamai.
The "Access Denied" page shown during the block doesn't contain any specific information about Akamai. Therefore, if a general user were to encounter a similar false positive, it would be difficult for them to find the solution on their own.
In my case, since I'm running a scraping bot, I can't complain if I'm considered to have some fault, but I've summarized this information in this article in the hope that it might be of some help to others.
That aside, I'm in quite a bind. It's a real problem.
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