Chaosforge Forum

General => Forum => Topic started by: Kornel Kisielewicz on January 26, 2011, 06:47

Title: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on January 26, 2011, 06:47
Due to the amount of spam that was recently happening on the forums, we increased the registration security a little. Also, because of the huge amounts of fake spam-users, we did a serious cleaning in the user tables.

Basically, if you had 0 posts, and wasn't part of any group (to shield non-posting Supporters), your account has probably been deleted -- feel free to re-register though!

On the up side, I don't know if it's just me, but the forum seems to be working much more smoothly now :).
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on January 26, 2011, 09:01
It's not just you.  I can attest to the fact that the forums are much faster now than before.

Maybe we can make this a yearly exercise?  =D
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on January 26, 2011, 09:22
The Jolly New Years ChaosForge Forum Massacre? :P
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: ParaSait on January 26, 2011, 12:42
Kornel; YAAM. :P
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kg on January 26, 2011, 13:18
YAFW, outsmarted trolls and spammers themselves!
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on January 26, 2011, 17:16
The Jolly New Years ChaosForge Forum Massacre? :P
Sounds like a good name!

I hope you saved the scripts used to get the job done.  =P
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Shoop da Whoop on January 27, 2011, 10:33
Looks like we still have old user IDs. For example, thelaptop is 1003rd, when we have only 873 users. :)
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on January 27, 2011, 11:18
Looks like we still have old user IDs. For example, thelaptop is 1003rd, when we have only 873 users. :)
Stop spying on my user ID!  =D

But that's a primary key in the table, so I don't think that number is going to change any time soon, nor is it that important too either.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Deathwind on January 28, 2011, 02:05
Sadly this will not stop new fake accounts, AlanSteff for example...
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: ParaSait on January 28, 2011, 08:44
Captchas really don't work anymore for some reason, even on my forum.
But maybe instead of that simple question, you should try my simple technique (http://mpsf.x10.mx/reg.php) (the RetardCheck thing)?
It's a randomized question in a randomized sentence (refresh the page a few times to see the randomness in action). And that works fine for me. :D
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Deathwind on January 28, 2011, 17:06
Its easy to do once but an annoying pain in the ass if you need to register several accounts, I think that would work quite well.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: UnderAPaleGreySky on January 30, 2011, 09:27
If possible, the wiki could probably do with a security update. Awful lot of spam over there. :(
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Cyber Killer on February 04, 2011, 05:53
Captchas really don't work anymore for some reason, even on my forum.
But maybe instead of that simple question, you should try my simple technique (http://mpsf.x10.mx/reg.php) (the RetardCheck thing)?
It's a randomized question in a randomized sentence (refresh the page a few times to see the randomness in action). And that works fine for me. :D

I have a similar thing setup on one of my sites, and every once in a while some spammer is able to bypass this, so it's not 100% proof, but it does help a lot anyway (1 spam account/2 months vs 50/hour).
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: AStranger on February 04, 2011, 11:39
How hard would it be to track the amount of time spent at the "Post Reply/Create New Topic" page? The way I imagine things involves humans actually having to take time typing their message, where as a bot can pretty much just instantaneously create a message. Assuming bots don't already correct for this you could just create a threshold (say 0.5 seconds per word not in mortem tags) and if the post took less time, it probably came from a bot.

In theory the board doesn't have to be immune to bots, just enough of a pain or custom enough that the bot would have to be rewritten slightly. I would assume most spammers go after low hanging fruit and don't fight each forum specifically. It's not foolproof, piracy teaches us that with enough work just about any security can be fooled, but for spammers the question becomes 'is it worth the effort?'.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on February 04, 2011, 16:18
Without jinxing myself, I think that we are starting to have it under control.  It has been a few days since we last saw any spam, so at least the measures are effective against the automated stuff.  And yes, it does cause some pain, but only to those who are not human.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Deathwind on February 04, 2011, 21:38
But we are still seeing the fake accounts being created with ad links in the signature to up their linked by stat. Can we disable links in signatures? Maybe then they will leave...
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on February 05, 2011, 05:34
They never leave.

BTW, thelaptop -- I think an important part of reducing the spam was banning the whole *@ymail.com domain :P
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on February 05, 2011, 06:06
They never leave.

BTW, thelaptop -- I think an important part of reducing the spam was banning the whole *@ymail.com domain :P
Ah, I see I see.

Let's just see how many more domains we need to kill off to keep the peace.  >.<
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on February 05, 2011, 06:28
All of them ;]
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Melon on February 08, 2011, 12:43
Captchas really don't work anymore for some reason, even on my forum.
But maybe instead of that simple question, you should try my simple technique (http://mpsf.x10.mx/reg.php) (the RetardCheck thing)?
It's a randomized question in a randomized sentence (refresh the page a few times to see the randomness in action). And that works fine for me. :D

Just type the twentieth character of this very sentence in the field below. (includes spaces)

0-based or 1-based? :D
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on April 30, 2011, 23:16
Forum Mass Murder has been repeated -- to all valid 0-post users my utmost apologies!
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Silhar on May 04, 2011, 05:06
Yesss... blood...
/me liked it.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on May 04, 2011, 05:18
Yesss... blood...
/me liked it.
Spam bots have no blood.

/me puts on some shades
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kamikaze14 on May 04, 2011, 09:48
Yesss... blood...
/me liked it.
BLOOD FOR THE-
Spam bots have no blood.

/me puts on some shades
/me slinks back to his corner.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: General Patton on July 11, 2011, 20:09
How much of a hassle is it to do this? Perhaps it should be a monthly occurrence.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: ParaSait on July 11, 2011, 20:36
Q: What's the difference between Doomguy and Kornel?

A: Doomguy kills everything that moves. Kornel kills everything that doesn't move.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: thelaptop on July 11, 2011, 21:18
How much of a hassle is it to do this? Perhaps it should be a monthly occurrence.
The fastest way to do this of course is on the back end.  We're making this boticide ad hoc to avoid creating opportunities for the spammers to capitalise on our regular schedule to respawn what they have lost.
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Deathwind on July 12, 2011, 02:03
Time to add some kind of human identification system?
Title: Re: ChaosForge Forum Mass-Murder
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on July 25, 2011, 15:16
Next Wave - 629 Kills.