Forums attacked again

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:53 am

We got a problem on the forums

... The user VanBaston14 seems to be a bot and is making posts (not too nice ones)...

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:54 am

thats my second user

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:55 am

(You blew my cover dammit)

Killswitch · Post by **Killswitch** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 11:45 am

Do other forums get as much attention from bots as this? I've never known it before.

Flype · Post by **Flype** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 1:16 pm

don't know about the german forum, but the french one
has the sme problem since some month.

that's really annoying.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 2:07 pm

Um... attacked?

jqn · Post by **jqn** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 3:04 pm

Be careful!

"VANBASTON15" is in the memberlist, again!

GeoTrail · Post by **GeoTrail** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:34 pm

I've constructed a list of VERY potential spammer accounts:

Click username for link to their profile.

Oh, and I created a simple program for the occation, and yes, I had very little to do at the time

http://www.geotrail.no/downloads/UserLinkCreator.exe

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:59 pm

Cool! This should help the mods quite a lot

. The problem is that it keeps creating new users...

.

Rescator · Post by **Rescator** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:26 am

I'm familiar with this problem.
THe fact is that there are bots out there able to "read" the registration verification image. (using OCR or similar)
phpBB's builtin visual verification is a very weak CHAPTKA.

On a different forum where I am administrator I created a custom visual verification.

It is a direct slot in&replacement, simply rename the old forum/incudes/usercp_confirm.php
to usercp_confirm_org.php
and use mine instead.
That stopped all automated bot registrations as my CHAPTKA is albeit not as crazy as the best ones out there, at least it's good enough to twarp these bots and still humanly readable.

Does any of the mods here have access to the forum install or does only Fred? lemme know where to email the php script. it's only 4KB compared to the original 120KB one

Note! GD2 (php extension) is needed for it to work as the script uses that for it's image generation. So if the server this forum is on do not have that extension enabled this script won't work sadly.
It also need the verdana font but that "should" be avail, if not it's easy to modify the script to use some other font. (or tweak the way the images is generated as well, the script is very flexible)

THe other alternative is to hunt for some fix or MOD at the phpBB support forums, or upgrade to the phpBB 3 beta that has a draconian monster of a visual verification image.

Thalius · Post by **Thalius** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:18 pm

phpBB 3.0 is out - testing atm how easy it is to migrate databases.

GeoTrail · Post by **GeoTrail** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 9:21 pm

That's the beta version.
It's been out for awhile now.
Been running in it here

X · Post by X » Tue Sep 26, 2006 9:34 pm

Thalius wrote:phpBB 3.0 is out - testing atm how easy it is to migrate databases.

Agreed, phpBB 3.0 is NOT out. Only a beta version, and not upgradable at that.

nco2k · Post by **nco2k** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 9:38 pm

man thats so damn annoying, i hate spam and bots. its such a waste of time, but i guess as long as there are people out there, "dumb" enough to read and follow the links, it will never stop.

ps.: i think it happened only once or twice, at the german forum.

c ya,
nco2k

ricardo · Post by **ricardo** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 11:23 pm

Killswitch wrote:Do other forums get as much attention from bots as this? I've never known it before.

Yes.

Attacks are directed to forums that runs certains versions of PHPBB.

PureBasic Forums - English

Forums attacked again

Forums attacked again

List of possible spammers