[Kaelon]

One of my over-zealous (read: bored) users demonstrated an exploit / flaw in vB earlier this evening that I'd like to share with the rest of you to see if: (a) this has been solved; (b) there is a hack which corrects it; or (c) if any of you have come across the issues and have implemented a fix.

This applies to vBulletin 2.2.6, though I suspect it may apply to all previous versions as well.

Problem: When a user enters nothing but a bunch of smilies in the entire "Message:" field of a post, the server's load rises above 5.00 (much higher at times) while processing the smilies. The post is then not made, and the server executes a cold flush of the system RAM.

I've repeated this test several times, and the results seem fairly consistent. Flood a vBulletin with enough smilies and you can basically take it out of commission.

Possible Solution: Eliminate the use of smilies on the forums in question, or implement an algorithm that limits the number of smilies that a user can enter into the Message field. The question is - how exactly would one eliminate the smilies? Just remove them from the list of smilies in the vBulletin Control Panel?

Thoughts on this anyone?