Mathletics

[mansin]

So hands up if you use Mathletics.

 

School wants to trial it but we're having difficulty getting the site to load.

 

We've tried adding various IP ranges and domains to our whitelist.

 

 

 

3plearning, the parent site is also the same.

 

The strange thing is that site fails to load even on a completely unfiltered/unrestricted computer in the office.

 

Anyone else had such issues?

[Ant]

I've noticed this too, however the login page and content pages work fine for us.

 

https://login.mathletics.com/

[mansin]

Thanks Ant. Unfortunately the login page is even worse.

 

[LukeRowberry]

Both pages load fine here so it's not their side

[andy_b]

Checked the url list here: https://support.3plearning.com/tech/mathletics/ ?

[mansin]

Checked the url list here: https://support.3plearning.com/tech/mathletics/ ?

 

Thanks, but I've already checked that out and whitelisted the domains as suggested.

 

The irony here is that that support link also won't load (from school), as its 3plearning.com

[CamelMan]

We had an issue with Mathletics earlier this year. We have a geoblock on Russia - their site didnt work. Ease the Geoblock - Site worked. Contacted them and they were adamant that no part of their site was Russia connected (however I did have some issues getting an IP address out of them as they kept supplying domain names). Added their IP as an exception in the Russian Geoblock - site worked, take it out site stopped.

 

Still adament that there was nothing connected to Russia - therefore stopped using them.

[mansin]

We had an issue with Mathletics earlier this year. We have a geoblock on Russia - their site didnt work. Ease the Geoblock - Site worked. Contacted them and they were adamant that no part of their site was Russia connected (however I did have some issues getting an IP address out of them as they kept supplying domain names). Added their IP as an exception in the Russian Geoblock - site worked, take it out site stopped.

 

Still adament that there was nothing connected to Russia - therefore stopped using them.

 

This is very interesting indeed. Can I ask what you used to GeoBlock?

 

I don't suppose you have that IP by any chance?

[CamelMan]

This is very interesting indeed. Can I ask what you used to GeoBlock?

 

I don't suppose you have that IP by any chance?

 

Its via our Firewall - we blocked the top 15 countries known as hacking hotspots.

 

Apologies I've dug through the email chain and they didnt actually come back to me with an IP - I identified it via the Traffic Monitor on the Firewall - 79.133.176.212

whitelisting this on the Geoblock allowed the site to load correctly - I've just replicated it to make sure its still accurate and I had the same result.

 

Their development Team have stated that this is not a known IP address of their product or sites.

[PaddyNewman]

79.133.176.212 belongs to the Zhejiang Taobao Network ASN, as does their cdn (west.cdn.mathletics.com - 47.246.44.225) so they definitely do use a random cdn that floats around Russia and the US, but also China - TAOBAO also owns/supports Alibaba.com

 

Their development Team have stated that this is not a known IP address of their product or sites

I'm glad they know where they are hosting their data...

[andy_b]

I also hit:

 

west.cdn.mathletics.com 79.133.176.210 (which if you load separately looks very chinese)

 

on the login page.

 

(Also favicon missing)

[PaddyNewman]

Sounds like they need to think about their hosting locations

[Koldov]

Its via our Firewall - we blocked the top 15 countries known as hacking hotspots.

 

How easy is it to Geoblock?

 

Is there anywhere that lists a countries range of IP addresses?

 

Wouldn't it cause multiple issues like this?

 

Don't most hackers use VPN or do the Russia/Chinese state sponsered ones not even care if you know where they are?

[mansin]

Thanks all for the input so far. I've managed to get the main mathletics.com/uk working by adding west.cdn.mathletics.com to our firewall.

 

Next task to get login.mathletics.com working. Pinging login.mathletics.com comes up with - ppphostapps.eastus2.cloudapp.azure.com [40.70.9.33]. Adding both the domain and IP hasn't worked so far.

[CamelMan]

How easy is it to Geoblock? - Its a built in feature of our Firewall - just tick a box next to each country

 

Is there anywhere that lists a countries range of IP addresses? The Firewall providers sustain this but as IP address are registered per country I imagine there is a database somewhere.

 

Wouldn't it cause multiple issues like this? I've had it on for over 2 years and this was the only issue found. Most education resources are UK/US based that we use.

 

Don't most hackers use VPN or do the Russia/Chinese state sponsered ones not even care if you know where they are? Yup this isnt a standalone solution to protection, just a little part of the wider system. Targeted attacks would use more advanced techniques but it would stop some low level idiot and ropey websites\advert redirects. With the ease of turning it on if it added 1% to our protection it would be worth it.

[KK20]

Mathletics works for us. We also geoblock, we use pfblocker on our pfsense firewall for our geoblocking. SNORT threw up a lot of hits from the usual suspect countries, it was worth geoblocking for these alone. The GeoIP lists come from MaxMind.com Edited March 16, 2022 by KK20

[mansin]

Thank you all for your input.

 

Finally got it working, added more domains to the whitelist.