Spammer

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-25 00:35:38

Well, I mean that was simply awful, and obviously unsustainable as a forum. Even now the rate of spammer signups is quite high.

I've seen forums where you have to answer a simple common-knowledge question to register. That would probably cut down the rate of spammer registrations by a significant amount.

Glandu · 2011-11-25 02:59:54

Whose member of Appolo 11 did not land on the moon?

James Burk · 2011-11-25 03:11:42

Josh Cryer wrote:

Yes, they're all spammers. We are only using ReCAPTCHA as a spam deterrent currently.

That's actually not true And in a couple days will DEFINATELY not be true.

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-25 10:26:39

Glandu wrote:

Whose member of Appolo 11 did not land on the moon?

Michael Collins.

Rxke · 2011-11-26 03:17:00

You're clearly a spambot. A human and grammar nazi would reply: 'WHICH member'

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-26 09:19:48

lol didn't even notice it. That's not necessarily common sense, but it is easily wiki-able. The question I saw on the website I was on was "Who is Britney Spears?," with the answer being "A Woman who sings songs."

Glandu · 2011-11-28 03:41:30

Sorry for my crappy english. I'm native french speaker, & my first foreign language was german. It's easy Wiki-able, but someone who makes the research is likely to be interested in the topic.

Rxke · 2011-11-28 04:11:48

:oops: Sorry Glandu, I did *not* try to make fun of you, your English is *not* crappy, I'd even say it is better than a lot of native speakers on the internet!
I'm Dutch speaking myself, French being my second language.

SpaceNut · 2011-11-29 21:42:59

Newest batch of yup you guessed it

kedvdeshca New member 0 Today
krbrfpobcd New member 0 Today
naoraaenly New member 0 Today
yogwdrfnuf New member 0 Today
vnyseowcag New member 0 Today
jgdpllcvld New member 0 Today
cywichpzku New member 0 Today
stkpoblgzu New member 0 Today
saybltnhoe New member 0 Today
azbdrnykzg New member 0 Today
Hotounnigoutt New member 0 Today

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-29 23:16:38

Glandu- Ideally, it would be something that every human would know, but no spambot. Perhaps a logical catchpa, or something?

Glandu · 2011-11-30 03:43:54

JoshNH4H, SpammerHunter wrote:

Glandu- Ideally, it would be something that every human would know, but no spambot. Perhaps a logical catchpa, or something?

could be. The thing would be that it would be a lot of questions, be it "is the triangle blue or green?"(while embedded in a red square) or "who was the first Russian in space?". But if there is only one answer, bots will always answer "Collins". So my first idea, I fear, was not good.

Could be always the same question - but that changes often, maybe every day or two. That would be a tedious work to make them, though. I'm not sure, though. Those who work with brute force would break any question.

Rxke · 2011-11-30 03:52:19

that 'find the kitty' captcha thing was a cool idea. Kittenauth, IIRC

Square of 3X3 images, animals,, spot the cat(s).

yep:

Kittenauth

http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2006 … _bett.html

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-30 09:53:24

Glandu-Something to keep in mind is that (I don't think) anyone programs spambots just to screw with newmars, given that as far as forums go we aren't that big. Even if our catchpa could be automated pretty easily, if it's unique I would be surprised if someone modified their spambot just to get through it.

That said, the find the kitty idea is, imho, fantastic, given that you would need an incredibly advanced spambot to get past it.

Midoshi · 2011-11-30 11:31:45

Assuming a bot just randomly picked 3 different images from the 9, that would filter out 98.8% of attempts.

Probability of random success:
3/9 x 2/8 x 1/7 = 1/84 ~ 1.2%

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-30 12:06:26

A 100fold reduction in spam attempts would plenty to make me happy. We'd have to cycle the pictures occasionally, but there is no shortage of cat pictures on the Internet.

That's a hundredfold reduction assuming they know what to do, though, which is very possibly not the case for many of these spambots.

I believe a lot of people saw what happened on the phpBB forum when there was no ReCATCHPA or email verification, right? 1500 spam signups in a week. We can't catch them all, but if we get it down to one a month, who could possibly complain? That is, so long as we don't keep legitimate users from signing up.

Josh Cryer · 2011-11-30 21:48:31

Apparently with the software they're using, ReCAPTCHA is brute forcible (they use OCR). So that explains why they're getting through it, it just requires a lot of processor power.

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-30 22:47:29

Does that mean that the kitten-clicking ReCAPTCHA would be brute-forcible too?

SpaceNut · 2011-11-30 23:06:38

Here is the latest attempt

UTBloorpory New member 0 Yesterday

Josh Cryer · 2011-12-01 00:07:58

JoshNH4H, the probability of solving the kitten CATCHPA is decided by how many unique pictures of kittens you have, ultimately. If you only have 3 pictures of kittens then the software can do a comparison to whatever it has in its database. Solve it once and the software can solve it indefinitely. xrumer is apparently the software they use. Here's an interesting article on the subject.

BTW, thanks SpaceNut, but I'm checking the userlist daily, so you don't have to keep reporting them.

StopForumSpam submissions to date:

SpaceNut · 2011-12-01 20:19:23

Thanks Josh as I was wondering about the ability to ban and remove posts that I once had but that is one less thing for me to deal with....

Grypd · 2011-12-07 06:03:54

Spammer registered today Viagra

Rxke · 2011-12-07 06:05:56

... Who's spamming all over. and you can only flag one post per minute, so we WILL get flooded

Rxke · 2011-12-07 06:07:43

Oh, and if a crawler (Google, Bing, Yahoo) catches those spammy posts, we'll pay dearly with ranking I'm afraid. Or am I mistaken?

Josh Cryer · 2011-12-08 19:39:51

I zapped 'em all and banned gmail with a comment to send an email to admin to sign up. 20+ a day is too much, my fingers were dying every morning and every evening they'd be back. Should have much fewer spammers now.

Out of 192 spammer addresses, 190 were from gmail.

JoshNH4H · 2011-12-08 19:45:48

Did we re-institute the requirement to click on a confirmation email as well as fill in a ReCAPTCHA? It's a real shame to lose the legitimate users who have gmail accounts (such as yourself, if for whatever reason you were to choose to re-register now).

I'm not saying that it might not be necessary, and you absolutely should not have to do that much deleting of spammers. But is there a way to do it without blocking gmail addresses outright?

Last edited by JoshNH4H (2011-12-08 19:46:13)

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#401 2011-11-25 00:35:38

Re: Spammer

#402 2011-11-25 02:59:54

Re: Spammer

#403 2011-11-25 03:11:42

Re: Spammer

#404 2011-11-25 10:26:39

Re: Spammer

#405 2011-11-26 03:17:00

Re: Spammer

#406 2011-11-26 09:19:48

Re: Spammer

#407 2011-11-28 03:41:30

Re: Spammer

#408 2011-11-28 04:11:48

Re: Spammer

#409 2011-11-29 21:42:59

Re: Spammer

#410 2011-11-29 23:16:38

Re: Spammer

#411 2011-11-30 03:43:54

Re: Spammer

#412 2011-11-30 03:52:19

Re: Spammer

#413 2011-11-30 09:53:24

Re: Spammer

#414 2011-11-30 11:31:45

Re: Spammer

#415 2011-11-30 12:06:26

Re: Spammer

#416 2011-11-30 21:48:31

Re: Spammer

#417 2011-11-30 22:47:29

Re: Spammer

#418 2011-11-30 23:06:38

Re: Spammer

#419 2011-12-01 00:07:58

Re: Spammer

#420 2011-12-01 20:19:23

Re: Spammer

#421 2011-12-07 06:03:54

Re: Spammer

#422 2011-12-07 06:05:56

Re: Spammer

#423 2011-12-07 06:07:43

Re: Spammer

#424 2011-12-08 19:39:51

Re: Spammer

#425 2011-12-08 19:45:48

Re: Spammer

Board footer