Miscellaneous Hacks - Ban Spiders by User Agent

What this mod does
With this mod you can enter User Agents to watch or ban, you can also recieve emails or have an Output.txt created and updated with time and date of visits. It doesn't just have to be spiders, you can watch, log or ban any useragent!

How to install
Simply import the product ban_spider, the mod is active by default but none of the other options are turned on.

What is a UserAgent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

Understanding a UserAgent string
http://user-agent-string.info/parse

Genuine User Getting Blocked?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=105

Tools to help
http://whatsmyuseragent.com/SwitchingUserAgents.asp
http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/SimulateUserAgent.asp

FAQ
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=137

How does it work?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=381

What's a bot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spambot

How do i ban a bot?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=318
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....7&postcount=51

Where's output.txt located?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=216

Bad bot lists
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=259
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=224
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=281

Tested on vb3.7.x, vB3.8.x , vB4.x.x but should work on any version.

__________________________________________________ __________________
Special thanks to:
Lior
KH99
BoP5
for helping me sort out a few issues

...and beta testers
ForceHSS (Special thanks to Force for latest testing)
ozzy47
GreyHost

If you use this please mark as INSTALLED

History
9th June 2011 Orginal xml added
12th June 2011 Added both email notification and text file logging
22nd June 2011 Version 2.0.0, Added create thread on activity

1. Added match facility you can now use something like Yandex and it will match MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; YANDEXBOT/3.0; +HTTP://YANDEX.COM/BOTS)
2. Added clickable link to visited thread

22nd September 2011 added user redirect url selection
08th October Beta testing started for thread creation.
20th October Beta testing started for emailing.
21st October Beta testing complete Ver 3.0.0 uploaded
29th October minor fix added to cope with empty userid on thread creation
30th October Beta testing automatic redirection to spiders/bots IP
31st October New xml uploaded with automatic redirect to IP
25th November Minor fix for blank forumid fixed
26th November 2011 Fixed version check & create thread Off by default
17th December 2014 Version 3.1.0 uploaded, Hook changed extra logging and statistics added by Ozzy47 (Chris)
18th December 2014 Version 3.1.1 uploaded, prevented spiders being counted when mod turned off.
17th December 2014 Version 3.1.2 uploaded, due to rogue code from another mod
The Bad Bots list is now included in the product
Please prune out all those that you wish to be able to see your site (i suggest you definately prune out "DA" and "Custo" :

Support will now only be given to those who have this mod marked as INSTALLED

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by bigtree

Thats a serious list. I would like to get rid of all BS spiders on my site but I worry about ranking? What effect does a list like this have?

How do we tell if a guest is a bad spider?

You can't other than doing lots of net searching, check out honeypot project and sites like that.

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

If you want to pm me access i'll take a look but it wont be until around 5pm gmt

Thanks ...

Here's a pic of my current "Who is On-line" display showing "Baidu" spiders with the mod active...

Regards,
Doug

[Simon Lloyd]

Doug i see, can you pm me a link to your site..etc, there's nothing much i can do without being able to investigate your site, one thing you might want to check is that you don't have any leading or trailing spaces around the Baidu in your list, so it shouldn't look like this
" Baidu" or "Baidu " (without the quotes of course )

[EasyEazy]

Just what im looking for. Installed and will see how it goes.

Thank you.

[fly]

Thanks. I recently switched from Apache to Nginx. I used to have an .htaccess that worked great, but Nginx doesn't use em.

This saved me from having to figure out how to do it with Nginx.

[KissOfDeath]

Is it just spiders this bans or users aswell?

got a few spambots making spam posts for example

AtaTuvisio "173.193.227.141" resolves to 173.193.227.141-static.reverse.softlayer.com, so i've added "static.reverse.softlayer.com" to the list but it does not seem to be doing anything, am i understanding this wrong?

also have some the resolve to "localhost" what do i do about those?

[Simon Lloyd]

Localhost? thats your server then???
If you have banned that useragent then after your WOL timeout (and after they have tried moving to view another thread..etc) will be gone!

Anyway aside from that the resolved UA that you are showing isn't their UA its their IP resolution, go to WOL at the bottom there's a dropdown "Display User Agent" change that to yes and then find them

[KissOfDeath]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Localhost? thats your server then???
If you have banned that useragent then after your WOL timeout (and after they have tried moving to view another thread..etc) will be gone!

Anyway aside from that the resolved UA that you are showing isn't their UA its their IP resolution, go to WOL at the bottom there's a dropdown "Display User Agent" change that to yes and then find them

Ah i understand now, thanks a lot of the spam posters are mozzila so i guess i can't really ban that, trying to find a ballance that does not wrongfully ban people, tried the plugins that use stopforum spam but the block someone just for using an isp like AOL or Ttiscali and you lose legitimate traffic.....

the local host ones are weird it's not my server the ip address is completely different to my server "113.165.164.99" for example

[Simon Lloyd]

No matter , just ban their UA and you'll be good!

[Alan_SP]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

To NOT create threads (which of course was my recommendation) then simply uncheck the radio button for "Create Thread"

I installed vB4 version (I followed at first vB3 version). I have vB4.1.2PL4.

I read that someone had problems with "phantom" threads created after installing mod. I too just had this experience.

Of course in settings I selected that threads aren't created at all. Also, I had empty place for forum and user ID.

But threads where created, using user ID 1 (first user I created when installing forum). Forum ID is missing, I see empty name instead forum's name.

All of it I see with Valters Advanced Forum Statiscs: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=235841

It looks like:

Activity from Bot No. 7 (Baidu) in your list 0 0 primus ▲ 25-11, 05:31

Note that the last thing is no forum name, i.e. empty space.

I can't see them in What's New. Or anywhere else in forum. When I try to access them I get error message. I don't know where they are really.

This is link to last one: http://slobodni.net/showthread.php?t...8&goto=newpost

Threads are created, but I don't know where. Also I don't know where can I remove them and how? 6 Threads are created at the moment.

Trying to prevent this, I put forum ID in settings as well as user ID, so I could at least delete threads upon creation.

So, mod creates threads somehow even if option is disabled. How and where, not sure, but I see them.

Interesting thing is, it created only this six threads and at the moment there aren't any new threads. I think there should be more spiders activity from banned bots. Very strange.


EDIT: Just noticed this:

You had this in conditions:

PHP Code:

$vbulletin->options ['bs_report_createthread' 


I just changed this to:

PHP Code:

$vbulletin->options['bs_report_createthread' 


Note there was one space. Not sure if this is bug that caused thread creation or not, but I just removed that one space.