Spam attack • The Dodge Challenger Message Board

by **Adrian Worman** » 13 Jan 2011 12:13

Has the spam fritter attack stopped Dave? See something on t.v about it a few days ago, said that there had been a sudden lull in spam attacks, but reckoned a big surge was due. How does the spam affect this website? What do they hope to extract from us?

by **dave-r** » 13 Jan 2011 12:28

I am currently deleting 10 spamers per day. This has been going on for 6 days solid (60 user requests) so I assume we are on some sort of target list. Unless it is just one person that has decided to hassle us as much as possible. It is hard to tell and really it makes no difference. I think they are multiple spammers but more seem to be from one person than from any other.

It is no hassle deleting them. But I like to get them off asap so I am monitoring the board. I get an email on my mobile every time someone tries to register and I can log on to any PC that is handy to get them off.

The only hassle is for any new users that might want to register. I might accidently delete their request by mistake. It is only a very small chance though.

Maybe JR can do some trickery to track the IP addresses and keep blocking them. But he is a busy man and I am not sure how helpful that would be.

by **dave-r** » 13 Jan 2011 14:25

For example I just deleted the 7th one just now. So there will be at least 3 more before I go to bed tonight. All I can do is try to make it as much hassle for them to register as possible. It is certainly piss easy for me to delete them (three clicks) but they just seem too stupid to realise this.

by **Jon** » 13 Jan 2011 15:45

Here's a little info:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2 ... -spam.html

by **Adrian Worman** » 14 Jan 2011 11:57

Read that Jon, can't imagine having nearly a 5th of all mail as spam, thats ridiculous :!:

must be frustrating to deal with.

by **dave-r** » 14 Jan 2011 12:27

Adrian Worman wrote:Read that Jon, can't imagine having nearly a 5th of all mail as spam, thats ridiculous must be frustrating to deal with.

My wife gets loads. I blame it on all these stupid message forums she goes on. :lol:

by **Adrian Worman** » 14 Jan 2011 12:55

Thats all I hear from Carol, "if ya not on that one ya on tthis one" etc,etc :roll:

by **dave-r** » 15 Jan 2011 8:36

I think this spammer could be one person after all. Someone who does it professionally for a living. He has a grudge now.

I make it more difficult for him by banning each e-mail address and (when I catch him while he is on the message board) the IP address of the computer he is using.
As a result he is trying to make life more difficult for me.

Clearing out the spam must be taking up as much as 10mins of my time up every day!

by **redgum78** » 15 Jan 2011 12:43

Hopefully the tosser gives up soon

by **dave-r** » 15 Jan 2011 15:21

Nah. I had 9 registrations just this morning.

I have disabled registration. So no-one can register.

I don't know if this guy (or guys) is stupid or what? It is obvious they cannot get onto the message board to post web links to their crap.

The guy is just doing it without even putting any web links or real email address in the details now just to get at us (me).

This is the same type of person that calls up women and makes threats down the phone. They get a feeling of power over other people. It makes up for them having no real life or power. They are usually very sad lonely pathetic individuals.

by **Adrian Worman** » 15 Jan 2011 17:10

You get him Dave

by **dave-r** » 15 Jan 2011 17:51

Ha ha!

They had a laugh then because what I thought was registration de-activation was just the opposite! :lol:

Those spammers had a right laugh then didn't you boys. :lol:

by **drewcrane** » 15 Jan 2011 18:44

Yea I saw it, they did get ya one time :disbelief:

by **dave-r** » 16 Jan 2011 9:01

No there were two posts yesterday. Which suprised me as I thought once they realised they could get straight on they would have flooded the place with crap.

But that didn't happen.

So I left the board open all last night to see what would happen and this morming there was only one spam post but 6 or 7 registered as users without posting anything which is the usual overnight number. Which makes me think we are just on a list that gets ran through every night by that many spammers.

I have switched registration approval back to "admin" now.

by **dave-r** » 19 Jan 2011 15:02

Because of the huge numbers of spammers trying to access this messageboard it may be that some real new users get blocked by accident.

Even worse. I may have blocked one or two existing members ip addresses by accident.
I hope not. :s008:

I is bloody annoying having to delete so many spammers several times a day.
I don't understand what they are trying to achive? They cannot post anything. All they can do is put links to strange places in their profile application which no-one is going to read or click on.

I can only presume someone has the intention of shutting us down. Which if this goes on much longer I will do. It is becoming too much hassle.

by **drewcrane** » 19 Jan 2011 17:44

Yea I would have lost my patience along time ago, I hope you stick with it Dave as this board is important to all of us for valuable info :thumbsup:

It would be nice to see one of these cowards face to face :fight:

Dick knobs!!!!!!!!!

by jr » 19 Jan 2011 20:06

Banning by IP seldom helps. Spammers have botnets of potentially hundreds of thousands compromised home and business PCs under their control to choose from. Of course if it's just single person who dislikes our toys and believes that everyone should drive Honda Prius blocking IP-ranges could work, but there's always bunch of open proxies one can use.

I'll look again possibilities of upgrading forum on next weekend. Had some problems with new version last time I tried, but guess it's worth trying again. This won't affect functionality of current install as I'm going to do my tests on separate server.

Problem is that current version running here is long ago end-of-life so what I need to do is migrate content to completely new install rather than try to patch existing. There's migration tools available, but with few problems due non-standard features patched to old version.

- attachments disapper
- attached pictures are no longer shown as embedded part of page
- images embedded from external sources such as Flicker are not shown
- content migrated to from Dave's original forum (posted pre October 2003) are stored in HTML encoded format in database. New version doesn't allow HTML encoded content for security reasons and those posts end up looking like crap plus any embedded images disappear.

Pics are quite important part of this forum and I really don't want to lose old pre Oct 2003 posts either.

by **dave-r** » 19 Jan 2011 20:08

Yes i had already decided banning IPs was not working. Just before i realised I probably accidently banned a member.

Turned out I was right about that. :oops:

Sorry Steve! :oops:

by **Adrian Worman** » 19 Jan 2011 20:20

jr wrote:Banning by IP seldom helps. Spammers have botnets of potentially hundreds of thousands compromised home and business PCs under their control to choose from. Of course if it's just single person who dislikes our toys and believes that everyone should drive Honda Prius blocking IP-ranges could work, but there's always bunch of open proxies one can use.

I'll look again possibilities of upgrading forum on next weekend. Had some problems with new version last time I tried, but guess it's worth trying again. This won't affect functionality of current install as I'm going to do my tests on separate server.

Problem is that current version running here is long ago end-of-life so what I need to do is migrate content to completely new install rather than try to patch existing. There's migration tools available, but with few problems due non-standard features patched to old version.

- attachments disapper
- attached pictures are no longer shown as embedded part of page
- images embedded from external sources such as Flicker are not shown
- content migrated to from Dave's original forum (posted pre October 2003) are stored in HTML encoded format in database. New version doesn't allow HTML encoded content for security reasons and those posts end up looking like crap plus any embedded images disappear.

Pics are quite important part of this forum and I really don't want to lose old pre Oct 2003 posts either.

Luckily for me I don't understand any of that :lol:

Is it a software issue?
Is it something that requires upgrading?
Is it going to cost money?

by jr » 19 Jan 2011 20:40

Adrian Worman wrote:Luckily for me I don't understand any of that
Is it a software issue?
Is it something that requires upgrading?
Is it going to cost money?

Software - yes.

Upgrading - kind of. Clean install of forum software and migrating content from current forum to new installation.

Money? Don't worry, I'm already warming up my printer. Ain't that exactly what FED and ECB both do so it must be acceptable solution.

by **patrick** » 20 Jan 2011 6:32

dave-r wrote:No there were two posts yesterday. Which suprised me as I thought once they realised they could get straight on they would have flooded the place with crap.

But that didn't happen.

So I left the board open all last night to see what would happen and this morming there was only one spam post but 6 or 7 registered as users without posting anything which is the usual overnight number. Which makes me think we are just on a list that gets ran through every night by that many spammers.

I have switched registration approval back to "admin" now.

I hardly ever bother to log out, when finished with the website. :shock:

Should I do this after each use? :s022:

by **dave-r** » 20 Jan 2011 9:17

jr wrote:- content migrated to from Dave's original forum (posted pre October 2003) are stored in HTML encoded format in database. New version doesn't allow HTML encoded content for security reasons and those posts end up looking like crap plus any embedded images disappear.

Pics are quite important part of this forum and I really don't want to lose old pre Oct 2003 posts either.

Maybe if we can identify those threads, and filter out the ones we feel we don't need any more, I could copy and re-post them back into the updated forum?

The number of spammers is increasing almost daily now. Probably doubled since I started this thread. I have deleted 10 just this morning already.

by **dave-r** » 20 Jan 2011 9:19

patrick wrote:I hardly ever bother to log out, when finished with the website. Should I do this after each use?

No need mate. You don't have to worry.

by **Adrian Worman** » 20 Jan 2011 15:01

dave-r wrote:
patrick wrote:I hardly ever bother to log out, when finished with the website. Should I do this after each use?

No need mate. You don't have to worry.

Same here Pat, never occured to me it may cause a problem tho' :oops:

by **patrick** » 21 Jan 2011 8:47

In Dave, I trust!!! :s017:

by **dave-r** » 21 Jan 2011 8:47

Fool!

by **patrick** » 21 Jan 2011 8:49

I'm logging out! :roll:

by jr » 22 Jan 2011 20:30

If you see some errors on forum today and tomorrow it's due me doing version upgrade. I think I found solution to problem with 2003 and older posts which was biggest challenge. Attachment inlining is also fixed.

by **Adrian Worman** » 22 Jan 2011 22:59

jr wrote:If you see some errors on forum today and tomorrow it's due me doing version upgrade. I think I found solution to problem with 2003 and older posts which was biggest challenge. Attachment inlining is also fixed.

I still think I'm living on another planet to you, but I'm very grateful for the work that you're doing for this board :wink:

..........and keeping the Daveman from going mad :mrgreen:

by **dave-r** » 23 Jan 2011 0:08

Adrian Worman wrote:..........and keeping the Daveman from going mad

I past that point years ago. :lol: