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Fry the Sailor
Junior Varsity
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 169
Location: Michigan
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 Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 12:19 pm Post subject: Public service announcement #2 |
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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 
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Dan
Chief Pontificator
Joined: 22 Mar 1999
Posts: 9334
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:04 am Post subject: |
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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
Junior Varsity
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 169
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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Now they're at work in the forums!
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Dan
Chief Pontificator
Joined: 22 Mar 1999
Posts: 9334
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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Robots' work never ends...
Dan
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Fry the Sailor
Junior Varsity
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 169
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 10:54 am Post subject: |
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Perhaps a small change in how signups are done could help. Nothing difficult. Maybe like a survey or something.
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Dan
Chief Pontificator
Joined: 22 Mar 1999
Posts: 9334
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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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
Olympic Medalist
Joined: 25 Aug 2001
Posts: 3570
Location: Northen California
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 8:59 am Post subject: |
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Software is THAT sophisticated now !!!???
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Conway
Speed Thrills |
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Dan
Chief Pontificator
Joined: 22 Mar 1999
Posts: 9334
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 9:40 am Post subject: |
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Apparently.  Just think if people would apply that sort of effort and intelligence to more pressing needs...
Dan
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AM_Runner
All-Star
Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 776
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Wed May 17, 2006 6:04 am Post subject: |
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Yeah I always think about things like that as well - why do people concentrate on such things...
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Dan
Chief Pontificator
Joined: 22 Mar 1999
Posts: 9334
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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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
Junior Varsity
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 169
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:51 am Post subject: |
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yes!
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Dan
Chief Pontificator
Joined: 22 Mar 1999
Posts: 9334
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 7:14 am Post subject: |
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Looks like it only barely slowed them down...  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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