Bot attack?

[pima1234]

Good thing I'm studying Cybersecurity. Wish I could help. This one's pretty intense at the moment.

 

[Greg Ferguson]

It is.

The admins made changes a while back which seemed to have closed the doors, but they must have found a new way to attack. :-/

 

[AtomicJeff]

How do these 'bots' register?

 

[pauly]

Arseholes. I’m still at a loss as to what they think they are achieving.

It is.

The admins made changes a while back which seemed to have closed the doors, but they must have found a new way to attack. :-/

 

[Greg Ferguson]

How do these 'bots' register?

I don’t know the mechanism. I was in IT for many, many, years and have ideas of how to slow this down, but they wouldn’t be friendly to new users.

 

[MrGuitarabuse]

Bloody hell... First time my ignore button went way more hotter than my F5...

 

[Jamie383]

Ignore button doesn’t seem to help much as I went through five pages just to see this actual post by a forum member. Good things are always ruined by some arse eventually it seems

 

[Deleted member 99513]

I bet the admins have been working hard to stop this damn flood of Spam, so a big THANK YOU to them! looks like they are on top of it as it has finally slowed down.

 

[<null>]

I've always wondered if something like the Aldi grocery chain's quarter deposit for a shopping cart could be adapted to help forums fight spam accounts. It could be something like a $1 deposit for 90 days of write access to the forum - after 90 days you get your deposit back but lose write access. If an account is banned for spam, that account's deposit is forfeited and not returned. Nothing so elegant would probably work due to tax reasons, transaction processing fees, and implementation complexity, but it does seem interesting as an idea.

 

[Greg Ferguson]

Arseholes. I’m still at a loss as to what they think they are achieving.

Once they figure out a way to script their way through the signup process they launch their code.

If the forum had a mandatory waiting period before it would accept a post from someone new it’d probably stop a lot of the spam. Xenforo is used by many forums and the spammers wouldn’t want to waste time rewriting their code to adjust to that delay just to pester this one. But that’s a disservice to the community.

I think they’re getting 1/1000 of a cent per post, but have absolutely no idea what would entice us to call their phone numbers or click on their links so they’re just pissing us off with no reward.

 

[Greg Ferguson]

Ignore button doesn’t seem to help much as I went through five pages just to see this actual post by a forum member.

There were a bunch of different accounts being created; It was the largest I ever saw. I probably added 30 names to my ignore list.

 

[pima1234]

There were a bunch of different accounts being created; It was the largest I ever saw. I probably added 30 names to my ignore list.

Yes, biggest one I've seen in all my years on here (or any forum, for that matter), as well. Thank you to everyone involved in stopping the attack.

 

[pima1234]

Turns out it was all my fault. I use "123456" as my password for everything...

 

[Greg Ferguson]

Turns out it was all my fault. I use "123456" as my password for everything...

Add a decimal point somewhere. That’d fix it.

I think they’re exploiting the signup process and without a more rigid validation mechanism or process we’re going to see it continue.

 

[pima1234]

Turns out it was all my fault. I use "123456" as my password for everything...

I'm joking, of course.

 

[CenturyBreak]

Damnit! They're back tonight!!!

 

[State of Epicicity]