Error 403

Hey guys and gals.

I'm getting this weird error 403 whenever I try to edit a forum post. Anyone else getting this?

https://prnt.sc/torow5

plz send halp

Edit: Managed to edit this one forum post, for whatever reason. And the image I attached is not showing up.

Does this always happen?
Is there anyone else with this problem?

Haven't had a problem with editing specifically, but have been getting error pages today.

But I don’t think they were 403 pages, were they? More likely to be 404 pages.

Wasn't paying close attention, I'm afraid. Just noticed a few error pages today.

Originally Posted by Myrthos
Does this always happen?
Is there anyone else with this problem?

Usually happens around 1-3 AM Eastern time for me. It happens rarely in the afternoon also but I just have to reload. At night it takes a few minutes to reload. Hope that helps.

I'm getting this right now. In the What I've been watching thread but not here obviously!

I just had this when trying to answer a PM by Pibbur.
My browser is Vivaldi.

I already had this months ago , but it had disappeared since then.
But this is new now.

Can you provide me with a time when it happens so I can narrow down the search in the log files?

I wrote a completely new PM with his quoted text only minutes or seconds after that, and the time of that sent PM is 19:46 local time (Berlin time zone) on 30th of October, 2020

Means it would have been between 19:40 and 19:46 , I think, looking at my speed of typing on my keyboard, i can roughly narrow it down to 19:44-19:46 o'clock local time.

Thanks for the details, much appreciated.

I found the entries. There are four of them with an IP address matching the location you live in.
The reason you get the 403 error is because our firewall detects an "HTTP Request Smuggling Attack".
You can find plenty of references about what this means if you put the quoted text in a search engine.

What it means for our server is that the HTTP headers send from your side appear to be manipulated, the firewall kicks in and disables access. I checked if there are more people who have 403 errors originating from this specific firewall rule and you are the only one.

I'm not sure what it means from you side. I don't think you are doing something deliberately to accomplish this, but I can only guess to what could be causing this.

Okay, I'll do some research.

I've had that error a few months ago already, but only 1 or two weeks ago, my ISP has changed things on the server side, if I understood things correctly.
Plus, they had sent me a new router, or what it is called, which I had installed. It handles everything now on my side.

FYI: I got the original reply from you, Alrik. But it's gone now.

a pibbur who is confused.

I have a theory now where this error comes from : I usually browse the internet with several tabs open, meaning that the browser might be on very different sites (news sites, The Watch, fan forums …).
This might confuse the server, maybe, because the contents of the different tabs - to and fro - get somewhat mixed up - at least that's my theory.
When I post on The watch with only 1 tab open, in which The Watch is itself - then I never get this error.

That would be really troublesome if that was possible, but it is not the cause of the problem.