14th Dec 2014 - Forum registration disabled

[Firejack]

I've had to disabled forum registration as the board is being hammered by spam bots right now. Guess they've caught up with the latest counter measures. I'll have to find some time to look into the latest prevention method later in the week.

For now if anyone needs to register on the forums, reply to this topic. You shouldn't need to register first.

[AmigaFan2003]

Haha yeah - been deleting the spam accounts this am.

[UnstableVoltage]

Just banned 2 more myself (via username + IP) and deleted their spam trash posts. Both originated in Russia by the look of things.

SlekaMug
JuanitaNuH

Looking at the user list, seems they were in with the main batch, so must have just been missed. Fun times.

[Silent]

I'm afraid banning specific IP won't solve anything due to fact, that most of Russia (as well as Ukraine) uses DIP.

For example: my ISP, Ukrtelecom, bought additional pool from GB. We have "global NAT". And there is no effort to change your client IP, if you want to.

Most likely, russian ISP utilizes same network topology. And filthy spammers/fishers abuses this.

If it won't stop, you'll have to ban entire pool, or even region. (like forums.anandtech.com admins did. I was suddenly banned because of region block).

Or you can force strict posting rules. Might help as well.

[UnstableVoltage]

I'm afraid banning specific IP won't solve anything due to fact, that most of Russia (as well as Ukraine) uses DIP.

For example: my ISP, Ukrtelecom, bought additional pool from GB. We have "global NAT". And there is no effort to change your client IP, if you want to.

Most likely, russian ISP utilizes same network topology. And filthy spammers/fishers abuses this.

If it won't stop, you'll have to ban entire pool, or even region. (like forums.anandtech.com admins did. I was suddenly banned because of region block).

Or you can force strict posting rules. Might help as well.

Indeed. But it's better than doing nothing. Can't even ban by email because it's using a free signup provider. Obviously banning the username immediately bans that user from the forums - though most accounts auto-post one or two things when created and never again. The important thing is that the accounts created can no longer post, all their crap has been deleted, and they can't create anything new until we get an updated captcha system.

[Silent]

and they can't create anything new until we get an updated captcha system.

You won't believe me, but they do this manually.

Mostly, there are whole "villages" of low cost/high efficiency human work force.
Lots and lots of illegal immigrants from countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, etc.; come to Russia to find better life.

Mostly, they end up working for minimal wage (5-10$ a day) on construction sites, as brute force;
But some, work as "spam bots". Requirements, as you understand, are minimal.

And all this crap is highly efficient against all those anti-spam precautions. Unfortunately.

[UnstableVoltage]

You won't believe me, but they do this manually.

I can quite believe that, actually. But if that's the case, the only way to prevent against this is manual vetting of posts and new users.

[Theodora]

Never ceases to amaze me we're judged worthy of spamming, i mean we're a tiny community and we're fairly self contained

[UnstableVoltage]

Never ceases to amaze me we're judged worthy of spamming, i mean we're a tiny community and we're fairly self contained

The spammers probably just type "forums" into Google, then work they way down the list. I used to run a phpBB forum many years ago. Even with less than 100 users and a couple of thousand posts, it used to attract spammers. Then there was the time it got hacked - and all they did was change the index.php to a new page with the hacker's tag on it, claiming they'd do it. They didn't steal any info or do anything else - other than highlight the security issue. But still.

[Firejack]

I've just mass deleted 35+ spam accounts + a few random ones. Hopefully thats the end of it for now.

[Firejack]

I've been running Admin authentication of new accounts the last few days and it appears this round of spamming has ceased. I've returned the forums to User Email Authentication. Forum registration is fully open again.