Spam attacks - and a change

[Gryzor]

Hello guys,
During the past few days the wiki (itself, not the forum) has become the target of persistent spam attacks. Only a handful of spammy edits have made it to the air and were immediately deleted, but I got tired of patrolling and instituted a system upon which a new user has to become approved by a sysop in order to edit pages.
Because this setting is a bit complex, I cannot guarantee it works 100%; supposedly all existing users are not affected, but if you happen upon any trouble editing or creating pages, please do let me know at once...
Cheers
Gryzor

[Bryce]

There is a problem: Even after I'm logged in, I can't edit any pages, the "edit" button is missing?

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Ah damn, so it didn't work. Damn, damn, damn. Pity... I'll undo it.

[AMSDOS]

I always get the feeling their following me!    Would you think they would pick on the Facebooks, Twitters and the other communications networks out there - - simply because their's more of them than there is of us!! 

[Bryce]

Maybe they feel that people who are interested in old computers are more likely to be interested in little blue pills than the teenies who spend their life on MyFace, Twitbook et al?

Bryce.

[AMSDOS]

Maybe they feel that people who are interested in old computers are more likely to be interested in little blue pills than the teenies who spend their life on MyFace, Twitbook et al?

Bryce.

MyFace I heard is supposed to be using technologies which incorporate the advertising based on what attributes you enter about yourself, or so I heard, so eventually some hacker will probably crack this wide open and send you advertising based on what they think you should do!    Twitbook & co aren't they simply means to spread rubbish on mass, I guess their only any good if people want to be spammed!    (Sign into my account if you prefer spam - that sort of this I guess!  )

[Devilmarkus]

There is a problem: Even after I'm logged in, I can't edit any pages, the "edit" button is missing?

Bryce.

I think that happened, because Gryzor has to move the already existing users to his new usergroup.

[Gryzor]

Nevermind, I finally enabled some SORBS supports, hopefully this will slow them down...

[Bryce]

Thanks Gryzor, there goes any chance I had of finally selling the last of those "appendage enlargement" pills. And I had hoped that the money would support my MegaFlash development

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Hash now, mate, send me a board and I'll give you the user db, how 'bout that?

[Bryce]

Hash? If you send me that, I won't be able to complete the design at all And as for selling the user db, you're starting to sound like Zuckerberg

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

*hush.

Zuckerberg - minus the monies and the girlzzz...

[Gryzor]

Because the spam attack is continuing, I have now implemented a CAPTCHA, another edit anti-spam and a blacklist method. The CAPTCHA should only appear when registering a new user, while the edit method and the black list should not be visible to anyone. If, however, you run into anything weird please let me know at once...

Feel free to play around with creating new users and testing things (although, please use normal names as I tend to delete random character-based usernames without a second look... Also please do try to trick it and post some spam in the "test" wiki page to check things!

[Gryzor]

Hello guys,
I'm currently manually blocking around 5-10 spam user creations on the main wiki site daily. By doing this I have eradicated almost 100% of spam posts, but I'm getting bored of this. So I added the following lines to the .htaccess file:

Code Select Expand


RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:VIA}                 !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:FORWARDED}           !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:USERAGENT_VIA}       !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X_FORWARDED_FOR}     !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:PROXY_CONNECTION}    !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:XPROXY_CONNECTION}   !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:HTTP_PC_REMOTE_ADDR} !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:HTTP_CLIENT_IP}      !^$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [F]

However, I'm worried that this may exclude some people from accessing the wiki from work (especially multinationals who use proxies), so could you please give me your feedback?
Cheers
Themis

[Metr]

I'm currently logged in from a multinational and using a proxy. No problems found atm

[Gryzor]

I'm currently logged in from a multinational and using a proxy. No problems found atm

Thanks for that. Some proxies do not use the 'proper' header information and thus will pass through (including some spammers), but I just wanted to check out this solution as well...

[Bryce]

I just successfully made a change to a Wiki Page through a German proxy.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Damn, it seems proxies do not adhere to the protocol any more

[MacDeath]

   
• (User creation log); 23:12 . . Fridkadi (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 22:19 . . Jedjahm (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 11:45 . . Archnor (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 08:33 . . Eruemars (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 08:33 . . Geermam (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 05:46 . . Dalmeng (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 02:38 . . Valeilai (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 01:46 . . Pencaro (Talk | contribs) New user account

30 March 2011 

   
• (User creation log); 06:08 . . Bellsif (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 04:52 . . Eiddheer (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 02:35 . . Apolnay (Talk | contribs) New user account

29 March 2011 

   
• (User creation log); 10:59 . . Oxlgarv (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 08:41 . . Verevart (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 08:05 . . Harlcro (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 04:34 . . Daelnata (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 03:16 . . Leitbroo (Talk | contribs) New user account
• (User creation log); 02:32 . . Nickfynd (Talk | contribs) New user account

Are those all Spam proxies or are those the new poeples interested in CPC since the Batman, Demo in eastern europe

[Gryzor]

No, these are actually people from China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and other exotic prox - erm, countries wanting to donate me money for the great work I do

[Devilmarkus]

No, these are actually people from China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and other exotic prox - erm, countries wanting to donate me money for the great work I do

*cough*

[MacDeath]

Was it an April fool ?


Anyway i was just asking...

[Gryzor]

Was it an April fool ?


Anyway i was just asking...

Which part? Only the donations part was a lie but it was intended as irony, not an April Fool's joke

[MacDeath]

Category:SPAM
I created it...
If anyone of you find such spam page, apply this category to the page so the Admin can use his mighty Banhammer !


Please mighty Admin :
http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Category:SPAM

use this link.

[Gryzor]

Well, the silly thing is:

For every twenty spam accounts, nineteen are blocked within minutes after their creation.
For every ten of those who get through without me noticing or while I'm asleep, only one stays long enough to post an article.
For every ten of those articles, er... NONE are read by anyone (when I get there the page counter is always 2: one is the spammer, the second is me).
And, funniest of all: these spam articles are not meant to lure you to buy stuff but to promote other sites in Google's rankings. However, I have set the nofollow directive for our installation, so Google does not even consider them[nb]the downside of this is that all the other external sites are not benefited from our linking, but I will undo that when the spam attacks are over[/nb]! So it's just a huge waste of time...