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#1

Tress

Tress

So I'm guessing we need to stop guest posting for a while.


#2

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

I guess. Though now I DO have access to name-brand prescription drugs at low, low prices...


#3

PatrThom

PatrThom

name-brand off brand, you mean.

--Patrick


#4

Bowielee

Bowielee

It's getting bad... there's currently a thread that is entitled "girls fucking dogs" and god help me, I just thought it would be spam... no, those images were uploaded. My brain needs bleach now.


#5

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Bowielee said:
It's getting bad... there's currently a thread that is entitled "girls fucking dogs" and god help me, I just thought it would be spam... no, those images were uploaded. My brain needs bleach now.
Click to expand...
(grizzled internet vet) I've seen worse (/grizzled internet vet)

Though they need to go. That stuff could probably get Dave in trouble with his host.

Speaking of, where are our mods? Just when they thought they could take a weekend off...


#6

North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Oh trust me, I've been putting these suckers out all day.


#7

Dave

Dave

Sorry! Yesterday was my wife's birthday and I did absolutely 0 on the computer. But I'm back and here's what I did:

  • Turned off guest posting. Frankly I'm surprised it took that long for them to discover it. But ow that they have I guess we can't have something nice. Not sure it'll help, though. Almost all of the spam was from newly created accounts. Only a handful were guest posts.
  • Went through the new registrant's list and pruned like a mother fucker. There were a couple that May or may not be a spammer, but we'll see.
  • I banned or discouraged a shit-ton of IP addresses. If you don't know what discouraged means, in XF there's a cute little thing where if you mark them as discouraged it subjects them to random page loads, unwanted redirects, error messages at random intervals, etc. Anything to make their life here hell. If they get through all that to post spam that will be removed...more power to them!
Big shout-out goes to NR who battled these assholes for a few hours. You think it was bad? You should see the stuff you missed. He had deleted a lot of stuff. I'm going to be bouncing in and out for a time, but I'll keep an eye on the place. Thanks to all who sent reports and to DarkAudit who tweeted/emailed me - otherwise I wouldn't have seen yet what was going on!


#8

Dave

Dave

Just got a second wave of registrations, mostly from Russia and the like. I have closed registration for a short period of time.


#9

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Closing off Russia to registration ever or even looking at the site might be a good idea.


#10

Dave

Dave

edit: I have turned registration back on, but now they have to go through me for approval. Let them waste time to just get rejected.[DOUBLEPOST=1345390772][/DOUBLEPOST]
DarkAudit said:
Closing off Russia to registration ever or even looking at the site might be a good idea.
Click to expand...
I think you are right.


#11

Jay

Jay

When you ban ip addresses do you on
U put in a single ip or a cluster?


#12

Dave

Dave

Single IP. And it's amazing that since I made it so they had to be approved nobody has tried to sign up.


#13

redthirtyone

redthirtyone

I'm just curious as to just HOW successful could this kind of spam POSSIBLY be? Surely no one truly buys that shit on impulse thanks to some random incoherent spam on a message board, right?


RIGHT?!?!








apparently they do


#14

PatrThom

PatrThom

It's a numbers game. The materials cost for sending spam emails is so low nowadays that even 5 responses out of 10,000 spams is enough for a respectable ROI.

--Patrick


#15

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Interestingly, it's STILL cheaper to hire a room of Chinese guys to send spam than it is to make a program to do it.


#16

Bowielee

Bowielee

redthirtyone said:
I'm just curious as to just HOW successful could this kind of spam POSSIBLY be? Surely no one truly buys that shit on impulse thanks to some random incoherent spam on a message board, right?


RIGHT?!?!








apparently they do
Click to expand...
It's not actually purchasing things that nets the profit, it's redirecting people to either a site that gerates revenue through hits, or in a worst case scenerio contains malware that will infect your computer.


#17

redthirtyone

redthirtyone

But I can't even fathom the jughead that would even follow the link on these things.

At least some of the email spam I've seen has some effort to actually make it look legit & perhaps warrant a clickthru. Hell - I've seen some reallllly legit looking Mists of Pandaria beta invites.

Side note: I used to get WoW spam all the time. then I cancelled my acct for about a year & a half - no more spam. Back in march I re-upped thru the Scroll of Ressurection deal, & within a day I started getting spam again. Then last week we hear of the security breach. Perhaps they've had a security problem longer than they think eh?


#18

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

redthirtyone said:
But I can't even fathom the jughead that would even follow the link on these things.

At least some of the email spam I've seen has some effort to actually make it look legit & perhaps warrant a clickthru. Hell - I've seen some reallllly legit looking Mists of Pandaria beta invites.

Side note: I used to get WoW spam all the time. then I cancelled my acct for about a year & a half - no more spam. Back in march I re-upped thru the Scroll of Ressurection deal, & within a day I started getting spam again. Then last week we hear of the security breach. Perhaps they've had a security problem longer than they think eh?
Click to expand...

As a former PC tech, lemme tell ya, lots of people. Lots of people follow those links. They'll download any fucking thing.


#19

Zappit

Zappit

Ravenpoe said:
(grizzled internet vet) I've seen worse (/grizzled internet vet)
Click to expand...
Hmm...does that mean you're a tremendous perv, then? :p


#20

GasBandit

GasBandit

I for one think it's hilarious that "discouraging" is a thing in forum software controls.


#21

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Zappit said:
Hmm...does that mean you're a tremendous perv, then? :p
Click to expand...
Why yes. Yes it does.


#22

Dave

Dave

This is a cross-post from what I put on the mods forum. Not sure why I left it there as it affects everyone, so here it is:


Just did a few behind the scenes changes.

  • I turned back on registration.
  • I added something called KeyCapture, that makes you have to complete a picture to register.
  • Added something called XenUtils that checks out Askimet & other spam sites & will refuse registration if there are hits.
Since I loaded these about 1/2 hour ago, we've blocked 5 registrations for spam. I'm keeping my eye on it, but on Xenforo.com there's a thread that started Saturday and is 15 pages long. This thread is about how a hacker/scammer group called XRUMER has written a script to get past Xenforo spam controls. They then published a list of a couple thousand Xenforo sites and started hammering them. It's not just us.
But let's see if we have this under control.
Click to expand...
Since I wrote that the number of rejected spammers is almost 50. Keeping my fingers crossed.


#23

GasBandit

GasBandit



#24

Hylian

Hylian

Great and I had finally found the perfect image reply for the next time we got a spambot. Oh well I guess I will post here here just because I have been saving it.



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