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

[PHPGeek2k3]

Originally Posted by TMM-TT

Support, help, contact

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

Just a suggestion/request

how would adding the ability to filter out posts from a certain forum and filter out specified users setup in vbulletin options.

Thanks
- James

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by PHPGeek2k3

Just a suggestion/request

how would adding the ability to filter out posts from a certain forum and filter out specified users setup in vbulletin options.

Thanks
- James

Do you mean the product that filters out posts, now?

[Alfa1]

Will there be a function in this hack, that allows us to do a query for double accounts in general? i.e. where one just scans for any IP which has multiple accounts attached to it? That would be the ultimate IMO.

[Alfa1]

I am receiving hundreds of error messages after installing the troll tracker. All are relating to error number 1053

Invalid SQL:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS trolledlinks FROM vb9_user_troll WHERE userlink = '0';

MySQL Error : Server shutdown in progress

Invalid SQL:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS trolledlinks FROM vb9_user_troll WHERE userlink = '0';

MySQL Error : Server shutdown in progress
Error Number : 1053

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE vb9_user_troll SET userlink = '5821' WHERE idx = '7774' LIMIT 1;

MySQL Error : Server shutdown in progress
Error Number : 1053

Invalid SQL:

INSERT IGNORE INTO vb9_session
(sessionhash, userid, host, idhash, lastactivity, location, styleid, languageid, loggedin, inforum, inthread, incalendar, badlocation, useragent, bypass)
VALUES
('cb02a1f7973b190066d3109377098f4d', 0, 'IP removed here', '637bd32a68f483bf605798032a63fddb', 1151510727, '/forum/index.php', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; de) Opera 8.52', 0);

MySQL Error : Server shutdown in progress
Error Number : 1053

And there are many more, but I do not want to hijack the thread. What is the problem?

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by alfa1

Will there be a function in this hack, that allows us to do a query for double accounts in general? i.e. where one just scans for any IP which has multiple accounts attached to it? That would be the ultimate IMO.

You mean something like the example shown in the attachment? Yes, there is a single deep-check now.

Originally Posted by alfa1

And there are many more, but I do not want to hijack the thread. What is the problem?

I found a thread here, about this errormessage but that was with vB3.0 and a dedicated server (and this is the first time I see that error-message). Is that happening, only when using this product? The last message you pasted can't be found in the tracker:

INSERT IGNORE INTO vb9_session

Can it be something else, that happens? :surprised:

[Snake]

Thank you very much!

[Tyegurl]

ummmm i need some help....i logged out of my vbulletin and now it won't let me back in lmfao.....how the heck do i get this removed so i can get back in and then set it up again?

[Tyegurl]

okay now its not letting anyone in....and btw these members only have 1 account from one ip....

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by Tyegurl

okay now its not letting anyone in....and btw these members only have 1 account from one ip....

It sounds like something happened, that shouldn't happen and something that must be fixed soon. Was the option for blocking trolls active?

Can you edit your config.php, try add a line temporarily:

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', 1);

After that, you should be able to login, disable the product and get in again (just don't forget to remove the above line later ).

I'll attach a modified xml that disables blocking of users until the next version is released, just to be sure that it won't happen again. If it was something else that happened, what messages did you see?

[Tyegurl]

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', 1);

i knew that lol cuz when i upgraded i had to do that

duh lol

disabled and working again thanks for the reminder