God damn spammers

EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
edited June 2005 in Internet & Media
It started a few weeks back, my guestbook and shoutbox started to get flooded by spam from casinos and god knows what. I'll leave the garbage in for a while, the shoutbox is on the left ( http://atomnet.co.uk ).

I put it checks for the shoutbox that if it contains poker, casino etc it rejects it, but as you can see, now there isn't any logic to the posts at all.

I thought I could ban the IP addresses, but every single post is from a remote unique US dial-up account.

What to do?
:mad2:

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    I hate to say it, but unless you have some sort of authentication to post in the shoutbox, there's probably nothing you can do about it.

    A bot is posting in there, so perhaps you could do something to change the interface (like rename the form or something) because it's probably a well known exploit that some bot just scans for and starts posting in if it finds it.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2005
    Enverex wrote:
    It started a few weeks back, my guestbook and shoutbox started to get flooded by spam from casinos and god knows what. I'll leave the garbage in for a while, the shoutbox is on the left ( http://atomnet.co.uk ).

    I put it checks for the shoutbox that if it contains poker, casino etc it rejects it, but as you can see, now there isn't any logic to the posts at all.

    I thought I could ban the IP addresses, but every single post is from a remote unique US dial-up account.

    What to do?
    :mad2:
    Ban the ip ranges :p
    example 69.123.*
    That will ban everyone in that ip range.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    primesuspect wrote:
    I hate to say it, but unless you have some sort of authentication to post in the shoutbox, there's probably nothing you can do about it.

    A bot is posting in there, so perhaps you could do something to change the interface (like rename the form or something) because it's probably a well known exploit that some bot just scans for and starts posting in if it finds it.

    It can't be a specific exploit for the shoutbox as that is simply just something basic that I wrote myself. Authentication would also kinda remove half the point in the box itself...

    Grayfox: I think banning entire US ISP's may be a tad counterproductive.

    I've changed the "name" of the boxes, so I'll see if that works.
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    Can you add one of the authentication options like the picture of a couple of letters that you have to type in before it accepts the post?
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    hmm, thats an idea, or even something that says "Type egg in the box below" as bots wouldn't be able to follow that... But, I've changed the forms now and it may be ok, before they were "name" and "text" but now they are complicated...
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    Something like this.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2005
    Enverex wrote:
    It can't be a specific exploit for the shoutbox as that is simply just something basic that I wrote myself. Authentication would also kinda remove half the point in the box itself...

    Grayfox: I think banning entire US ISP's may be a tad counterproductive.

    I've changed the "name" of the boxes, so I'll see if that works.

    Its not nessicarly just one isp its also other ip's that buy bandwith off of them.

    if you get complaints unban the range.


    (Ive been doing this for years in my video game servers and my forums when I had them)

    Yah the other guys idea would work too but it would be more effective to ban there ip range :P
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    DanG wrote:
    Something like this.

    I know what you mean, there just isn't any point...
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