Randomly getting "Access Denied" when attempting to load categories.json

The impact of this bug is beyond critical.

At random, I get this screen:

My account is in good standing with moderation, and I have no alt accounts, and I believe this is an error.
And also, visiting any other page brings me to a blank page with the title “Access Denied”

The only reproduction steps I can find is just refreshing until it happens.

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I have refreshed many times but i couldn’t reproduce this.

I am using FireFox developer edition v.103.0b8

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I’ve been seeing users getting access denied at random for random webpages, resources, and posts either since the recent maintenance, or since one of the recent incidents. Hard to say exactly because it’s infrequent.

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For me this issue has been specific to the DevForum. Refreshing multiple times on my forum, my testing forum, Discourse Meta, and I’m allowed in every time. That mayyy be because all of them are using 2.9.0beta7, and the DevForum is using 2.8.1, but I dont think the Discourse version should change it like that.

1 Like

Let’s leave it to the staff who actually monitor these categories please. Pretending to be able to triage issues like this clutters threads with unhelpful mumbling.

This has nothing to do with moderation, it’s more likely an issue with measures against DDOS, a configuration mistake, or something else obscure.

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Are tou still experiencing this issue today? We’ve been making some performance changes behind the scenes!

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I just experienced the issue just now.

The only way to get in is turn your VPN on then off again.

Thanks for the update!

We made a change this morning around HTTP/HTTPS (in this thread) that likely will also fix this issue for you, but please let me know if it persists today!

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I will mark this as solved, if I encounter the issue again I will DM you. Thanks :slight_smile: