Hey guys, anyone ever experienced this and have any idea how to deal with it? Akamai has completelly locked my IP from accessing Steam and i´m pretty sure it´s releated to the use i made with Steam API. I was importing my steam library to a game launcher, and it was a matter of minutes after i started i encountered this error.

I know i can come out as an asshole by saying what i´m about to, but i know 100% that my IP is blocked, so please don´t come with superficial guessing on trying to correct me on my affrimation. Akamai has a lookup tool and my IP is showing as restricted in it.

  • Yes, i have tried resetting my modem multiple times, it´s not isolated to one device, clearing chrome cookies does nothing and i already flushed my DNS.

  • Akamai lookupresult comes out as my IP being flagged as DDOS risk
    https://i.imgur.com/yuXjVt8.png

  • This is the error i get
    https://imgur.com/a/CTkAJVr

By doing a tracert i was able to verify that my connection is being blocked by Akamai, which is a CDN. Contacting Akamai does nothing, since Valve is their client and valve alone could rever this, but contacting Valve support also does nothing since they most likelly will never get in contact to the actual server administrator, who could whitelist me.

I ran multiple virus scans on my machine and nothing came up (i use malwarebytes for years now).

I contacted my ISP, they are useless, the "tech" guy who picked up the phone couldnt understand the concept of a CDN... Anyways, i have no idea what to do, i´m on a dead end on this.

2 years ago

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wait?
move?
change isp?
get new ip from current isp?
use vpn/proxy? (preferably one in your country for safety)

2 years ago
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Yeah, i´m using a VPN to be able to access it for now. And as i said, my ISP is useless. I contacted them, spent one hour on the phone. It was like trying to explai physics to a monkey. The ISP technicians only read from a manual, they have no clue how to actually fix a problem.

I asked them to change my IP and all i got is "we will send a tech visit next monday."

And its been over 24 hours, usually IP blacklisting clears up from CDN´s in a few hours.

2 years ago
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Only thing I can think of is getting a new IP. So maybe charging ISP? Alternatively you can try calling them and starting the conversation saying that you want to cancel the service, from there you might be able to negotiate a new IP, they're usually a lot more willing to help you if they feel like it's either that or losing a client.

2 years ago
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The reputation score at Akamai should gradually return to normal if you do not perform any other suspicious "attacks" on their network. How long that takes is a mystery and may depend on the IP reputation of your neighbors on your network/ISP/country. Could be days or weeks.

If you post at https://community.akamai.com/ perhaps an Akamai employee can help look up more details. I have seen them help people there in the past.

2 years ago
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Have you tried to force an IP change? Some people recommend unplugging your modem for minutes/hours but I found that changing the router's MAC address usually works immediately.

2 years ago
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Yeah, no luck on changing so far. Even tried contacting the ISP

2 years ago
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So good news, you aren't "blocked", you've probably been detected as a bot network, and "i´m pretty sure it´s releated to the use i made with Steam API" makes it sound like you know exactly why. Obviously, don't do this in the future. Now this should clear up on its own, but it could take weeks to months if you tripped a really high threat rating (and this will reset every time you trip a threat rating again, for example by continuously trying to connect). That's what Akamai does, it isn't just a CDN, but also the first few layers of security for a lot of big companies.

Your best option is to change your IP address, period. The only person who could fix this from Steam or Akamai is going to be a relatively high level engineer in the security ops center at Valve Inc, and you will never get on the phone with them unless you know them personally. It wouldn't make sense to fix this for you, you're a bot network, why would anyone help you? This is literally their job to block you.

Luckily, unless your ISP is secure as hell (extremely unlikely) and refuses to use DHCP, you should be able to change your IP trivially on your end using ipconfig on windows, ifconfig on linux, or just unplugging your router for 5-15 minutes depending on their lease renewal time. There are tons of tutorials for this online. If that doesn't work then your IP can still be changed by your ISP directly, or you could always cancel and reopen your account.

2 years ago
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Funny think is, Steam API accepts up to 100k calls. I only made arround 17k calls while importing. I literally used the API within its boundries.

2 years ago
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Yes, 100K / day. It's hard to say how they have the rate limits defined, but normally Akamai will have 2-3 levels of rate limiting to flag you as a threat. Often this means if you exceed the global average over several hours you will trip level 1, if you exceed several hundred / minute, you will trip level 2, and if you exceed 5-10 / second you will trip level 3. If you sent all 17K requests in a period of 10 minutes you'll probably be flagged for a while. This is called burst or spike traffic, and is exactly what botnets do to attack websites. You didn't trip a limit on the Steam API, but rather on a spike arrester which is a service Steam purchases from Akamai, so Steam can't do anything about it on their end, and Akamai is paid not to fall for phishing attacks like "I'm sorry I did something stupid and you flagged me, can you please unban me?" Buffer your requests and spread them out 1-2 / second or so to avoid tripping these detectors in the future. Sometimes you have to go even slower, for example SteamGifts tends to tempban around 1 request / 2s if continuous over a long enough period of time.

2 years ago
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Any idea how long this block lasts? My ISP is unable to change my IP for some reason lol. They are sending me a new modem tomorrow, which according to them it´s supposed to change my IP.

2 years ago
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Depends how big a threat they consider you, or how many threat indicators you tripped. "Client reputation" is the score the AI internally uses to decide which threat category to place you in, and the category determines which security rules are applied. Rep is supposed to decay at a relatively steady pace every 2 hours or so, however if your rep is a million, it could take a while. They do have a permanent global botnet list (or rather a few), though I think it is unlikely they would place you there for 1 incident (however, if you've done this a lot, maybe with other sites, but never been flagged before, then all bets are off). Most reports are that you'll normally be restored after a few days.

I see no reason why switching routers would change your IP if turning your existing modem / router off for 30 minutes didn't, but I'm not surprised if your ISP has no idea how their own systems work (most don't). Have you tried using a different browser or device, spoofing your User-Agent (grab a valid one off one of the UA string list dumps online), unplugging your router and modem overnight, etc? Any of these could resolve your issue.

2 years ago
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What others have said… you’ve probably been getting info from steam in such a way that the server thinks you’re a bot or hacker.
It’s restricted access- in this case completely, and if you’re lucky, access will be restored as long as you give it a cool-down period.
If it’s been from the particular app you’ve been using and you still want to use this app, then chances are the same block will happen again. Continued use could cause more severe blacks/bans.

At this stage all you can do is wait.

2 years ago
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I guess this is something the game launcher (or whatever is used to import the data) should fix to prevent this from happening again.

May I ask which game launcher it is? I know Playnite and GOG Galaxy can handle multiple libraries.

2 years ago
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Launchbox. Gog and Playnite don´t use your personal API key to import, they use their own with a very large limitation, way beyond the 100k requests we normal users get.

2 years ago*
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This is a bit off topic, but during the Christmas and New Year holidays, the number of people complaining of such line problems increases rapidly.

It is possible that there is a zero-day glitch in your router or modem that is being exploited.

In any case, it is better to reset the router or modem in your spare time before using it.
(They are often exploited when the system is overloaded).⚡💻⚡☎

Of course, don't forget to reboot all your computers, smartphones and IT appliances to see if anything strange is going on, and do a security scan if possible.

P.S. There is another problem if the connection is from China.📝

2 years ago
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This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

2 years ago*
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It has nothing to do with my account. I can access it normally with a VPN.

2 years ago
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The sad reality is that a handful of CDNs/cloud-providers nowadays have almost complete control over the internet (Akamai, CloudFlare, AWS, ..); it's basically a centralized point of failure that goes against the idea of a resilient internet...

Have you noticed lately that whenever a popular CDN service has an outage, half of the internet goes down with it?

Have you noticed how whenever you browse the web using Tor/VPN or just choose to block Javascript you will get an unusual amount of captchas and wait-while-we-verify-you-are-not-abuser blockpages!

CF is a particular offender here, they have grown massively obliterating all competition by offer many bundled services for free (CDN, caching, reverse proxy, DDOS protection, domain registrar, DNS resolver, SSL certificates, etc.).

If for whatever reason you find yourself "blacklisted" by one of these CNDs you will have a very hard time accessing large parts of the web.

No one entity should have that much control over the whole infrastructure! It's a global threat to privacy and freedom of information.

2 years ago
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