Bad Behavior Integration
 

This is a simple integration of the Bad Behavior Script. Bad Behavior is a PHP-based solution for blocking link spam and the robots which deliver it. Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site?s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.

I use this in conjunction with the Project Honeypot addon and the vBStopForumSpam addon. The three ought to be considered a layered defense at reducing spam and other unwanted traffic to your site that simply consumes resources.

*NOTE: The Project Honeypot addon has now added Bad Behavior implementation, which makes this implementation superfluous if you are using that plugin. Do not install if you have the latest version of the Project Honeypot.

I don't want to take credit for implementation as the idea originated with this thread

This is a simple implementation of the script and it will work but it will not provide any logging. I'll leave it to others who know more about how to improve this to enable logging.

Installation instructions:

1. Extract the contents of the zip file and upload the contents of the upload folder to your forum root. (Note: Latest stable version of bad behaviour can always be found here
2. Install Product.

Updates:
01/21/2010: Created Product file in lieu of plugin code to make it easier to install/uninstall.
01/22/2010: Added Bad Behaviour files for convenience.
01/24/2010: Simplified installation and included the php code within the plugin for the generic implementation of Bad Behavior per simonhind's suggestion below.
01/09/2011: Updated BadBeheavior.zip and included bad-behaviour files to 2.0.39
Added BadBehavior2.1.8.zip to include 2.1.8 developmental version

Reserved.

Very interesting - tagged. I'd like to read some firsthand experiences with using it on vBulletin forums before I install.

Tagged until I update to vB4 (tomorrow probably). Thanks much!

Does this work on vb 3.8.3 ?

So it's just the bad-behavior folder you up to the forum root and not the rest of the stuff?

Yes.
When you download the latest zip file it contains a bad-behaviour folder with php files in it as well as another bad-behaviour folder.

Upload the entire directory and file structur from the zip file.

Will be trying this today, Hopefully it will stop the likes of xrumer etc too . Since upgrading to VB4 ive suffered alot with link spam since the "CYB- advanced permissions based on post count" hasnt been released yet

Please let me know how it works out. The instructions for integrating with PHP based scripts is pretty straightforward but I'd love to hear back from people that it is actually cutting down on link spam. I'm hoping somebody will assist me in figuring out how to integrate logging because that is beyond my programming skills as I have little time to dedicate.

Do any big boards or high traffic boards run this? If yes, was any negative performance hit experienced?

wtf, my forum is gone and I get this:

Warning: require_once(bad-behavior/bad-behavior-generic.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/global.php(28) : eval()'d code on line 10

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'bad-behavior/bad-behavior-generic.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/xsquid/public_html/forum/global.php(28) : eval()'d code on line 10

I can't even get in my admin panel, is this a joke??????

I get viewing directory contents not permitted on the forum and the above trying to get into the admincp, how can i get rid of this?

I know that a lot of high traffic PHP sites use this. It's been used on Wordpress for quite some time and I've had it running on several of my own, which is why I implemented this for my board. My own board gets about 5000 hits a day but that's not a big board per se. I can tell you that it doesn't slow down my board but does seem to reduce load.
It is not a joke. I used the same product file to install my own instance and I have never had this problem.

Is it possible that you have a CHMOD problem for a folder or files? I honestly don't know what is causing your problem because I have never experienced it.

I disabled the plugins through config.php to get into the admoncp and uninstall it, board is back up. It's remaining unstalled, not touching it again.

Did you upload the directory contents in the zip file into your forum root? The zip file unzips into a bad-behaviour folder and you should upload that into your forum root.

The "no such file" seems pretty obvious that it cannot even find the file. Do you have a bad-behaviour-generic.php file within a bad-behaviour folder on your forum root?

How does this relate to vb and caching/ x-cache?

After installation, do we need to edit any settings?

There are no "settings" for this. This is the generic implementation of Bad-Behaviour. You may want to ask the script developer more about how his script works. My assumption on the above is that the script protects activity that is occuring within PHP activity and cached content is often put into html files that the script would not be able to detect.

Does this script protect against download tools like httrack? That would save a lot of bandwidth.

I recommend you direct such questions to the script developer. The only thing I have done is provide a way for your board to call the functions that the script provides. It worked for me and the script has been very successful at blocking spam attempts on Wordpress sites that I run. I make no claims to having the exhaustive understanding of what the script does or does not do nor what the script developer has in mind for the future of the script.

I simply provided a way to implement the generic mode of the script as the script developer describes on his site.

Yes, it was all there, I deleted and uploaded 4 or 5 times but it still happened. Odd that it would not let me into the cpanel even. Oh well, I'll just pass on it.

So far this script seems to run well on a high traffic site. (2.5 million page views per month)

just to let people know what i got the latest stable release version working
and for those who need support in installing this

place the bad behavour folder in forumroot/includes

also you dont need to upload bad-behavior-generic.php

create a plugin for the php file
call it anything

Product: vBulletin
Title : Bad Behaviour Integration
Hook Location: global_complete
Plugin PHP Code:

Place the whole code from bad-behavior-generic.php leaving out <?php and ?>

locate: 'httpbl_key' =>
place you code there

I'll check this out Simon. So if you put the bad-beviour folder within forumroot/includes the code inside of the plugin knows to go there to reference the other files it needs to run? Also, I'm not sure that putting the http:bl key in is a good idea if they already have your other mod installed. It may check the http:bl twice (once for your plugin and once for this) and cause page delays.

Don't understand this. Can you please explain a little more or give some exp?

Thanks

Simon,

Thanks for the idea. I'm switching to this implementation but, honestly, with your implementation, I'm probably going to just retire using this and just use yours.

After you guys finish your implementation of the HTTP BL dB integration, I hope you'll turn to the Bad Behavior script as it is supposed to provide quite a bit of capability.

Made the modification to the code. You can also simply go to the Project Honeypot implementation to get more of an "all in one" solution.

thanks, for that, if you want to use my mod, thats great
i am turning this into an AIO and updating it with more features

Again, the problem is not bad-behaviour script. If the "exact same problem" occurred to you then, exactly as before, you have to make sure the file is where it is supposed to be.

A "file not found" error is a problem with *your* configuration of the plugin - that is, you don't have the file in the right place.

Is this mod still being updated or worked on? I was not impressed with the honeypot mod because of what was going on it that thread.

Please update this to work with bad bahavior 2.1.8. BB 2.0.x blocks bing spiders and misses important bots.

Thanks for pointing me towards this Alfa1

From what I read on their website, version 2.0.39 has the bing spider ips in it.

You can also whitelist ips of the bots you want to let through.

In the directory, there is a file called whitelist.inc
Add the ips or ip ranges in that file.

I have been having a play with this today and added some other stuff I want denied and its having a great effect on killing junk and not one dos attack today

I love this add on :up:

It's developmental but I've uploaded an implementation of this and am testing on my own site. Let me know what you think.

Does this work with vb3.8.6 as well? My main board is running that.
I will install it on my vb4 boards.

I don't see why it would not. It's sort of version agnostic. The only thing this does is implement the generic Bad Behavior script. The "plugin" is essentially the PHP script from the generic bad behavior script and it is the same effect as calling the php script and all the include files that come with it.

I'm encountering this on vb 3.8.6:

I can think of a couple of things:

1. Did you upload the files in the new uploads folder in the zip download?
2. I was wrong that it worked with vb 3.x.

Sorry I can't help you more than that. My "Not Supported" notice on this gives you the disclaimer that I have it working for me and can offer a bit of help now and again but I can't promise it will work given the variety of ways people have their boards configured or install things. This was my first "product" addon and I built it by copying the xml format of other products. That xml format may be specific to 4.x fora.

You say you use this with vBStopForumSpam, will it work with the glowhost spam o matic? Its the same thing with a few improvements.

I know they both run on the same forum, what I am asking is does this somehow integrate into it?

Is there a way of seeing a log of what its doing?

I was using the Spam thing a while back but if you see that forum I disabled everything but the Honeypot plugin. I can see a lot of Honeypot blocking from the Honeypot site. Bad Behavior is simply another part of keeping bots from clogging up my site.