What happened to the forum? > SPAM

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ergenomic
2
Joined: 08 Aug 2010, 08:41

What happened to the forum? > SPAM

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What the hell is all this tripe that has appeared on the forum advertising garbage?
Last edited by Steven on 30 Nov 2011, 13:26, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: edited title

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Steven
Owner
Joined: 19 Aug 2002, 18:32
Location: Belgium
Contact:

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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Spam indeed. I'm deleting them as we speak!

It's been a long time since we were flooded like this.
Anyway, users deleted, posts deleted and all IP's banned.

ESPImperium
64
Joined: 06 Apr 2008, 00:08
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Contact:

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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Still starting to come thru.

Probably using a proxy and a bot to spam i think.

What about suspend all new registrations for a while???

Dragonfly
23
Joined: 17 Mar 2008, 21:48
Location: Bulgaria

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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A good countermeasure IMO. Or at least put registration on approval but this will increase the workload of mods and admins.
F1PitRadio ‏@F1PitRadio : MSC, "Sorry guys, there's not more in it"
Spa 2012

bettonracing
1
Joined: 12 Oct 2007, 15:57

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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Tomba,

Would it help if users reported the posts? E.g. Does the 'report' give You a direct link to the spam that saves You from searching for it?

Regards,

Kurt

bhall
244
Joined: 28 Feb 2006, 21:26

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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Wow. It's almost, in a very weird way, impressive.

wesley123
204
Joined: 23 Feb 2008, 17:55

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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bettonracing wrote:Tomba,

Would it help if users reported the posts? E.g. Does the 'report' give You a direct link to the spam that saves You from searching for it?

Regards,

Kurt
Sure that will prevent it. I dont see how Tomba has to even search for it when the whole 'active topics' section is flooded with it.

Quite an annoying situation, I would say an fix would be to allow users to search to the homepage with an search engine, but not the forum.
"Bite my shiny metal ass" - Bender

gridwalker
7
Joined: 27 Mar 2009, 12:22
Location: Sheffield, UK
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Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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Doesn't phpBB have a Captcha plugin? That would make flooding much harder and it should be relatively easy to install. It was an integrated feature of the CMS produced by my former employer, so I'd be really surprised if there isn't a package that could give the same protection to F1T.
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine ..."

wesley123
204
Joined: 23 Feb 2008, 17:55

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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wouldnt work, based on usernames etc. these are just scripts, and lately scripts can go around Captcha quite easily, causing Captcha to become harder and harder and more different, as a matter of fact I for example have an huge problems reading the Captcha 9 out of 10 times and it seems it has a fault tollerance since a lot of times I am quite sure I was wrong, yet the captcha was correct.

Although it isnt my best friend I am for using a captcha script as well as blacklisting the http://www.f1technical.net/forum webpages. If it cannot be found it will not get flooded is what I think.

With the captcha I think when it is added all current members should be forced to fill it in once to verify themselves as an user. Apart from that, newly registered users also have to fill in a captcha to be allowed to post their first post. I am sure this will solve it.
"Bite my shiny metal ass" - Bender

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JackHammer
4
Joined: 03 May 2011, 01:53
Location: Gloucester

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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How long has the F1 question been in the registration form?
Might be worth changing it or adding another

Something simple/stupid like "Copy and paste this text into the box" might do the job
Image

gridwalker
7
Joined: 27 Mar 2009, 12:22
Location: Sheffield, UK
Contact:

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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wesley123 wrote:wouldnt work, based on usernames etc. these are just scripts, and lately scripts can go around Captcha quite easily, causing Captcha to become harder and harder and more different, as a matter of fact I for example have an huge problems reading the Captcha 9 out of 10 times and it seems it has a fault tollerance since a lot of times I am quite sure I was wrong, yet the captcha was correct.
That is true in some cases, notably the most popular systems (such as reCaptcha) : this is because they primarily rely on images that can be analysed.

The system that we integrated into ocPortal was quite novel and innovative, in that it generated the captcha images using custom css injection, creating the captcha images on the fly within the browser without relying on easily analysed image formats. This made the captcha both easier to read and more secure against bots.

Admittedly, this would soon be circumvented if large numbers of people started relying on similar systems, but it certainly proved to be reliable during the 2 years that I was working for the company. Even if it wouldn't be a 100% secure fix, implementing captcha would still be an extra layer of security that could slow down the forum-flooding spammers.
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine ..."

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WhiteBlue
92
Joined: 14 Apr 2008, 20:58
Location: WhiteBlue Country
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Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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This is a bit embarassing, isn't it? Looks like someone with experience of ambushing web sites got pissed off. I hope it gets resolved soon. The forum is unusable as it is.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

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ackzsel
0
Joined: 15 Nov 2005, 15:40
Location: Alkmaar, NED

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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Is it possible to disable posting for the first 24h or something after registration (assuming all these acounts are new)?

xpensive
214
Joined: 22 Nov 2008, 18:06
Location: Somewhere in Scandinavia

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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WhiteBlue wrote:This is a bit embarassing, isn't it? Looks like someone with experience of ambushing web sites got pissed off. I hope it gets resolved soon. The forum is unusable as it is.
A pissed off member perhaps?
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

CMSMJ1
Moderator
Joined: 25 Sep 2007, 10:51
Location: Chesterfield, United Kingdom

Re: WTF happened to the forum?

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same thing happened to another forum I use - loads of registrations and spamming at 0500 this morning.

it is a pain in the arse I'll bet!
IMPERATOR REX ANGLORUM

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