Another Spam Attack - and upcoming actions

[Robbie]

Just wanted to let everyone know that there was another spam attack today...2 actually...and I imagine more will take place very soon...I'm trying to eliminate them now and enact actions that will prevent them from taking place...but if you get a message alerting you of a pm...and you find that you don't have a pm...it was probably spam, and it was deleted.

I am trying out reCaptcha. Its an image verification system that not only helps eliminate spam, but in the process of solving the captcha, you're helping to digitize old books for online use. Read about it here: http://recaptcha.net/

I may end up temporarily disabling PMs until I can get the problem under further control...if so I'll make a post here letting you all know...and wil also be setting the board up to only allow pms after at least 5 actual posts are made.

[Midgardsormr]

That's brilliant! I most definitely approve of that measure. I love the idea of turning a nuisance into something useful, and doing it completely transparently. That's got to be one of the most elegant ideas I've seen in a while.

[Robbie]

Yeah I thought it was rather ingenious...As soon as I did some searching on the vbulletin forums about spam blocking...I found out that vBulletin NATIVELY supports reCaptcha...I went ahead and signed up...and sure enough it worked.

[Robbie]

I just read...I think the spammer is using a script that tries all the accounts in the memberlist and tries to log in using the same password as their username.

Which basically means...if a user stupidly made their password the same as their username, it will eventually be found by this bot. I'm going to see if I can find code that will tell me what users on the site have done this...

So...if your password is the same as your username...change it now, or I may change it for you.

[Robbie]

There's a BUNCH of spam PMs from a BUNCH of users...I think they're compromised accounts...

I have turned off private messaging temporarily. If all goes well private messaging will return tomorrow or Monday...but I'm not comfortable turning it back on until the spam problem is solved.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Redrobes]

Let me know if there is anything I can do script wise to help out. I use one to grab errors from the error log and format up htaccess entries which get tacked on. Ok it bins some legit attempts to join that screwed up but it culls the spam bots severely.

[Robbie]

Promotions have taken place. All users with more than 5 points have been given their private messaging capability.

What kinda bugs me is that out of 2000+ users...only 282 users have more than 5 posts. We gotta do something about all you lurkers!

Please post in this thread if there are any problems.

[jfrazierjr]

Promotions have taken place. All users with more than 5 points have been given their private messaging capability.

What kinda bugs me is that out of 2000+ users...only 282 users have more than 5 posts. We gotta do something about all you lurkers!

Please post in this thread if there are any problems.

<-- not a lurker
<-- not having any problems that I know of, or at least not any that might have been caused by your monkeying around with your site's permissions at any rate....

[JoeyD473]

Promotions have taken place. All users with more than 5 points have been given their private messaging capability.

What kinda bugs me is that out of 2000+ users...only 282 users have more than 5 posts. We gotta do something about all you lurkers!

Please post in this thread if there are any problems.

What's wrong with us lurkers?

[SeerBlue]

I am sure there is nothing wrong with lurkers, having been one myself, but , at least in my case, have found that I learn things from even those who start their post with "this is my first map".
And look forward to learning from each new poster.
SeerBlue