SFML community forums
General => General discussions => Topic started by: Laurent on October 26, 2013, 09:32:00 am
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Hi
Today I got many reports in my e-mail box from you guys, reporting spam on this forum. I'm glad you care about keeping the forum clean, and I thank you for that :)
However there was really a huge number of reports, my mail box was full of them. So, maybe you could send reports for less obvious moderation issues, and don't care about robots? Don't forget that I'm on this forum everyday, sometimes every hour, and that I always read every single post. If there's obvious spam, be sure that I will see it and eradicate it quickly ;)
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One or two people as moderators would fix the "issue". ;D
*runs and hides* :P
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Maybe you can let the forum disallow new threads with the stupid title "I am the new one", because there is another of these spams already. :P
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because there is another of these spams already. :P
to report or not to report... ;D
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Anybody wants moderation rights to help remove spam? :P
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Why not? Would also be helpful to split interesting offtopic discussions to separate threads (which seem to occur often recently) ;)
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I spend far too much time here so mod powers would be cool.
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Wait what? Not sure if serious or just joking. ???
Sure I can help, but not sure if you would choose me. ;D
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There's another spam thread. :(
Anybody wants moderation rights to help remove spam? :P
Sure but only if it's under your control and possibly crippled to just hiding threads for you to later review.
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WTF some bots are on a spamming spree...
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I've added some anti-spam filters. Let's hope it will be enough.
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Nope ;D
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Nope indeed! There are already another dozen this morning. Looks like the bots are set to hit any forum with "General" in the title at the least. Maybe turn on required e-mail/administrator verification before a new user can be made for a while? Not sure what else this forum software has for a backend against this kind of spam
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The captchas and the "What does the S of SFML mean?" question have been easily overcome. On the other hand, there are not as many spam posts as automation would possibly allow. It looks like a sophisticated attack specific for this site, and with active human help. Even people registering manually would be a possibility under these circumstances. Probably SDL developers :P
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Maybe giving people mod rights wasn't such a bad idea after all.
I wonder how the bots crack the captchas...
I wonder how I crack the captchas at other sites some times, some flavours of them are so convoluted it's idiotic.
It looks like a sophisticated attack specific for this site, and with active human help.
Why would anyone do that. ???
(Quotes might not make sense, they're all Nexus' but he edited his post two times when I was writing so.. ::) )
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I don't know things about web stuff and pretty concerned. I can pretty guarantee those post weren't just written and I think they are all bots, all of those post links to what seems to be like malicious sites.
Seems to be a lot of work. I hope the site is not compromised I really need to keep in touch with resources in this forum :'(. I am doing a game for school and its pretty bad timing...
Is there any help that we or I can do?
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Why would anyone do that. ???
For the same reason these spam posts exist in the first place.
If it were just a random generic bot crawling the web, why would it overcome the SFML-specific question? As an experiment, Laurent can change the question to another letter of SFML and see how long it takes until they adapt ;)
Seems to be a lot of work. I hope the site is not compromised I really need to keep in touch with resources in this forum :'(. I am doing a game for school and its pretty bad timing...
Don't panic, it's mainly annoying at the moment.
If the spam attacks didn't stop, one could follow The Hatchet's advice and verify users before they can post, at least for a certain time...
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For the same reason these spam posts exist in the first place.
Still makes no sense. No one is going to click through that and it's not like forum is overflowing with spam, it's just a dozen posts a day and Laurent removes them promptly.
If the spam attacks didn't stop, one could follow The Hatchet's advice and verify users before they can post, at least for a certain time...
The (un)solution might be to give most active veteran regulars mod rights for some time. :P
I'm thinking myself ::), Nexus and Exploiter. But we would have to agree to just touch spam, no running the forum, splitting threads or the like so that Laurent doesn't have to police us instead of the bots.
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Hmm, from my experience administrating the SFGUI forum, I can say that most of these "spam waves" originate from the same IP address block, mostly some block allocated for mobile devices. And obviously the ISPs to whom these blocks belong can't (or don't know how to) cope with so many of their clients becoming a part of botnets. I just suggest to Tank ranges to block and it stems the spam tide... if just for a while.
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FRex, I meant the bots were configured by humans to answer the SFML question correctly. (Or maybe it's simple enough to be figured out by trial and error of smart bots...)
binary1248, but then you also exclude legitimate users (even with low probability). It might be a last resort, but so far the situation is not unbearable to require such strict measures. Making the registration process harder would also be a possibility, but that again annoys honest people. On the other hand, registering is only something you do once.
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If it were just a random generic bot crawling the web, why would it overcome the SFML-specific question? As an experiment, Laurent can change the question to another letter of SFML and see how long it takes until they adapt
It's already a new question (changed this morning) ;)
I also re-enabled the mod which previously caused some troubles with human users. I had never had any bot before I disabled it, not even a single one.
Let's wait a little bit, maybe today's spammers had registered just before I enabled the anti-spam mod (I forget to check before I deleted them).
Hmm, from my experience administrating the SFGUI forum, I can say that most of these "spam waves" originate from the same IP address block, mostly some block allocated for mobile
Indeed. But I don't want to block ranges of IP unless there's really no other solution.
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Your post is 9th on list of last posts, 6 posts before yours are spam.
I'd say it's not going well. :P
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Whenever you remove some posts it takes like 1min for the bots to get their new posts up again... ;D
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Probably would be a good idea to give at least one member (Nexus? exploiter? binary?) the power to delete these posts for you.
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All the new spams from this evening are from "users" registered two weeks ago. Who knows how many are waiting... :-\
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There are fu*king TONS in last registered sort:
http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;desc;start=0
It seems everyone who has 0 posts and filled in both email and website(some miss website and seem genuine non posters) also have broken English signature with link and personal text that is garbage or ad too.
We are overrun like H.E.L.L. pages from 1 to 37 are mostly filled with THEM, not users.
Seriously - what happened?
Edit: after running some nix tools and bash over list of member I count 679 among last 900 registered as bots(a.k.a. 0 posts, set mail, set website, set personal text). Might contain non bots or false positives from my mistakes. :P
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:o
When I have some time to waste I'll try to start removing them...
Good news: no new spam tonight ;D
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I hate and despise spammers. if I had the skill I'd code a robot designed specifically to hunt down other robots and blow up their PC's but unfortunately I'm just a noob >_< :D happy to help, I know how annoying running a forum can be which is why I only have a chat room.
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if I had the skill I'd code a robot designed specifically to hunt down other robots and blow up their PC's
It's not that easy, the PCs are often owned by harmless users. See botnet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet)
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yeah :( I know about botnets thanks to cryptocurrencies, people have been using them to steal coins off miners.