Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Troll/ip-tracker, detect multiple accounts/trolls [3.6 compatible]

Continuosly information about updates can also be found here.

Edit 2007-08-07

Since the script needs to be rebuilt from scratch due to some problems with it, I've decided to temporarily stop the distribution. On larger sites, this script may cause heavy lagging when active. There has also been reports on "duplicate keys", that should be fixed. To prevent more problems cause by this hack, it's removed and cannot be downloaded.


History

In 2005 a forum was founded, for a short period of time that was intended to work as a service for people with a common interest - a reality show. The forum grew big and the traffic was very intensive. Moderators worked day and night to assist the forum. Traffic and events in the show made people show different kind of feelings and some of them showed this in strange ways. They said "I'd better register 10 nicknames, just to secure that noone can ban me". Sometimes, when they got banned, they registered new nicks and sometimes they switched ips but they didn't post anything the same day. Next day, they switched ip again and it suddenly got much harder to trace their nicks back to the start.

In 2006, the forum opened again (new season) and we was prepared for this. A script, specialized to trace trolls, was written and the main purpose was to trace things that vBulletin missed. This plugin was requested at the vBulletin forums.


Now, it's here, as a beta production - a trolltracker that stamps all visitors even if they don't post anything. It also, partially, checks if an ip-address can be traced from anonymous proxies by reading headers that proxies are sending to he server (HTTP_VIA and HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR).


Templates to change (Optional): 3


Attached

trolltracker-2.0.3beta.zip - the main archive with the tracker and extras
iptracker.php - A quickfix for the coming version 2.0.4 that changes the SHOW COLUMNS-behaviour-bug in the tracker


The archive

The zip should contain the following files

• The product, currently named product-trolltracker_beta.xml because of it's beta status
• iptracker.php, the tool that makes it easier to trace nicknames and ip's
• iptracker_search.php, htmlcode - the searchform that iptracker.php is using (old code that never used templates)
• trollpost.php, a quite slow script that imports ip's and usernames from the post-table to make it possible to trace older data. (If you run this over a web-interface, it might not work, because of timeouts --screendump--)

How to install

1. Copy *.php to your forumroot
2. Install the product code (choose overwrite if you're upgrading)
3. Check the configuration from your admincp (settings for usergroups that can run the iptracker.php is made from there)

Additional information


Track older ips (2.0.x)

If you want to import older posts, you can do that, but because of timeouts (and bad scripting) trollpost.php may timeout if you run the script from a web-browser. This part is, currently, unsupported, but if someone has any ideas here, feel free to notify me.

OPM Support

The ip-tracker supports RBL Monitor.


How to use it

Use the tracker by calling http://your-forum.com/iptracker.php


Database

The installation creates a table named user_troll for your forum.
The FQDN-support also adds a table called user_trollresolver for the resolver cache (like the one used in the OPM monitor)

Information and issues

• There is no version 1.x - that version was private (this is not an issue)
  
• It's still a beta, so bugs may still annoy us
  
• Testing on vBulletin 3.6.0 rc1: Works fine
• Importing posts with trollpost.php might give strange results if you are using the multiple account detector (AE): reports in forum that are posted with a specific userid makes it look like a troll is using other usernames too

To do

See CHANGELOG for full details


Show the tracker in navbar (v2.0.1+)

To show the tracker in the navbar (only for the admingroups that can be found in the options), edit your template 'navbar' and add this code where you want it to be shown:

 <if condition="$show['trolltracker']"><td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="iptracker.php">Trolltracker</a></td></if>

I chose to put it in the end of navbar, right after this code:

        <if condition="$show['member']">
<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="login.php?$session[sessionurl]do=logout&amp;logouthash=$bbuserinfo[logouthash]" onclick="return log_out()">$vbphrase[log_out]</a></td>
        </if>

How to show trolls in the onlinelist

Edit template:
whosonlinebit

Find:
</tr>

Add above:

    <if condition="$show['trolldata'] AND $userinfo['trolldata'] != ''">
            <td class="alt1">
            $userinfo[trolldata]
            </td>
        </if>

Edit template:
WHOSONLINE

Find:

</tr>
$onlinebits

Add above:

    <if condition="$show['trolldata']">
            <td class="thead">
            <b>Trolldata</b>
            </td>
        </if>

Support, help, contact

Any questions, requests and bugreports can be sent to me by PM, mail or via threads at http://vbulletin.tornevall.net/


Don't forget to install this plugin

[Alfa1]

My forum has become slower and slower until it started crashing(time outs) daily. Then I tried many things, but nothing helped. Then I deactivated the troll tracker and my site was as speedy as ever again. There are quite a lot of entries in the tracker. Is it possible that the amount of entries caused my site to slow down so much that it crashed?

[dutchbb]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

My forum has become slower and slower until it started crashing(time outs) daily. Then I tried many things, but nothing helped. Then I deactivated the troll tracker and my site was as speedy as ever again. There are quite a lot of entries in the tracker. Is it possible that the amount of entries caused my site to slow down so much that it crashed?

Looks like I'm in the same boat. I got high loads yesterday and today the load was over 200, shortly after I got a database error. I disabled the script and everything was back to normal...

[parabat]

Hi

Can anyone tell me why I'm getting this error when I run a general report?

Warning: preg_replace(): Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 0 in /iptracker.php on line 9

I'm running vB3.6.4

-Parabat

[Keyser S?ze]

ok my site went down for a few hours, qwhen it came back up i was getting this error

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.4:

Invalid SQL:
SELECT * from user_troll WHERE userid = '2230' AND realip = '71.161.49.82' AND deleted = 0 AND fqdn = 0 ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 1;

MySQL Error : Can't open file: 'user_troll.MYI' (errno: 145)
Error Number : 1016
Date : Monday, January 15th 2007 @ 09:11:38 AM
Script : http://www.emuasylum.com/forums/index.php
Referrer :
IP Address : 71.161.49.82
Username : Ice
Classname : vb_database

any suggestions?

[UncoderMom]

Is there a way to stop this from counting aol proxie users from being marked as trolls?

[Sadie Frost]

Originally Posted by Keyser S?ze

ok my site went down for a few hours, qwhen it came back up i was getting this error

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.4:

Invalid SQL:
SELECT * from user_troll WHERE userid = '2230' AND realip = '71.161.49.82' AND deleted = 0 AND fqdn = 0 ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 1;

MySQL Error : Can't open file: 'user_troll.MYI' (errno: 145)
Error Number : 1016
Date : Monday, January 15th 2007 @ 09:11:38 AM
Script : http://www.emuasylum.com/forums/index.php
Referrer :
IP Address : 71.161.49.82
Username : Ice
Classname : vb_database

any suggestions?

Try running a repair on your tables from the admincp. I know I've had those MYI errors before and I *think* that's what I did to fix them but you might just want to search on vb.com about it to be sure.

As for the whole user_troll file not existing error, I've been trying to help DannyBoy8406 with fixing this, and he too has a table prefix. So it looks like the hack is not calling the table prefix from the config file properly. Not sure how to fix it other than adding it manually. Anyone have any ideas?

[Sadie Frost]

Okay I think I've got it. On line 273 of the xml file

	$vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE user_troll SET alert = " . TIMENOW . " WHERE userid = '" . $vbulletin->userinfo[userid] . "' AND deleted = 0 ORDER by alert DESC LIMIT 1");

Update user_troll is missing the table prefix.

[swatkins]

With this mod track all the IP's a user has used before? Is it stable enough to install now?

[Ignicoccus]

Hi,

I installed the Mod today. It began showing the expected data in "Who is online". I disabled "Block Trolls" (value 0). But some AOL useres were locked out of the forum. I could not see an option to disable this, any hints ?

There were four useres from AOL who go a message like this :

iptracker v2.0.4
225 entries in tracker
Your ip is x.x.x.x.
You have been using the following nicks:
nick1
nick2
nick3
nick4

(IP and nicknames have been changend)

Thy were blocked out, but the system did not send a PN to inform me.

I disabled the mod to let these users back in, any way to fix this problem ?

[Harley-Heaven]

Just wanted to say "THANKS!!", this worked like a dream!!

I have two ID's on my board - it caught me...... plus it alerted us to two husband and wife members, which we knew about. Gives us a real comfort feeling.

Excellent mod!! Great work.