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Public service announcement #2
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Fry the Sailor
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PostPosted: Sat May 06, 2006 12:19 pm    Post subject: Public service announcement #2 Reply with quote

New member growth is great, but it seems many are associated with some website and never make any posts.

I don't mean to complain, but I think a few of these so-called "members" can be cut out of the site! No offense to the real people out there Smile
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Dan
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PostPosted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

They're just spam bots that've gotten out of hand the past few weeks. I delete 'em as I see 'em...

Dan
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Fry the Sailor
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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2006 3:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Now they're at work in the forums!
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Dan
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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2006 5:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robots' work never ends...

Dan
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Fry the Sailor
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PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2006 10:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Perhaps a small change in how signups are done could help. Nothing difficult. Maybe like a survey or something.
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Dan
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PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2006 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It already has the visual confirmation requirement in place, but the bots have apparently figured out a way around that. I haven't looked to see if there's an update to the forum software to combat it...

Dan
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Conway
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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 8:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Software is THAT sophisticated now !!!???
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Dan
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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 9:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Apparently. Sad Just think if people would apply that sort of effort and intelligence to more pressing needs...

Dan
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AM_Runner
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PostPosted: Wed May 17, 2006 6:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah I always think about things like that as well - why do people concentrate on such things...
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Dan
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I found what they're apparently doing:

Quote:
It looks like also that this was a distributed attack : many differents IPs trying the same thing in a very short time.

I just made a try: I randomly took a phpBB confirmation picture, I loaded it in Photoshop, I made some simple and trivial transformations, I saved the result, and I submitted it to Omnipage Pro (OCR).

I got a pretty good result.

I think that the picture is just not enough elaborated; it is also very similar on every attempts.

I think that spammers have found a way to make OCR recognition on it. Maybe not working all the time, but with a percentage of success sufficient for being useful for them.

Looking at the logs, I can see also that there was a line for the reading of the visual confirmation picture, but nothing for reading other pictures on the same page.

I added a new check to hopefully curb the attacks (30+ per day), and I've got one more thing to try if that doesn't do the trick...

Dan
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Fry the Sailor
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

yes!
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Dan
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 7:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like it only barely slowed them down... Rolling Eyes It's gotten to the point that I'm paying extra per month in bandwidth because of the hammering the forums are taking from bots.

Dan
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