Sometimes a user may see the following message:
Your connection to this server has been blocked in this server's firewall.
You need to contact the server owner for further information.
Your blocked IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
This server's hostname is *
There can be many different reasons for receiving this message, but the two most common ones are as follows:
Too many incorrect logins.
This is normally caused by a program on a device that is trying to automatically connect with the incorrect credentials, like an email client or FTP client for example.
The block lasts 15 minutes from the last failed login attempt, so the best way to confirm if this is the case or not is to shut down any other devices on the network apart from the one you’re trying to connect with and then closing down all background programs. Once you have done this wait 15 minutes and then try to log into cPanel, if you can do this then the issue is some software configured with incorrect credentials.
To find the offender it would then be a case of starting up the background programs on the current device one by one and waiting around 5 minutes until the issue occurs again. If the issue doesn’t occur again it would be a case of narrowing down the device by turning the other devices on one by one until the issue occurs again and then narrowing down the program on that device.
Once the offending program is found you will then be able to update the credentials and the issue will have been resolved.
FTP connections from multiple locations.
If the same FTP account is being accessed from three or more different locations then all of the IP addresses using the account will be blocked for 15 minutes.
If this occurs then it could mean one of two things, either the account has been compromised or there are too many people using the same FTP account.
- If the account has been compromised changing the credentials
immediately is advised and antivirus and anti-malware scans running on
any device that has used the account in the past.
- If too many people are using the same FTP account it is advisable that you create different FTP accounts per person.
If you have ruled out both of the above two reasons then you should raise a ticket with support so we can investigate the issue further.
