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

[TMM-TT]

Fixes and something to wait for...


CHANGELOG

2.0.4 [beta]

• Using short-time cache to look for duplicates instead of scanning the whole database (based on cookietimeout)
  
• The above cache is used with the whos online-list too
  
• Added cache for alerts so reports only will be sent on changes in the usernames
  
• 2 phrases fixed
  
• Added username exclusions (usernames/userids that won't be blocked)
  
• Fixed the SHOW COLUMNS-problem in iptracker.php
  
• Fixed a serious injection problem

2.0.3 [beta] (bonus release)

• Autoblacklist banned users

2.0.2 [beta]

• Alerter caused blank page when PM-reporting disabled
  
• Trolltracker now blocks other usernames too if there's a match with the list in options
  
• Trolltracker now blocks linked IP-addresses listed in options

2.0.1 [beta]

• Added class="alt1" into tables in iptracker*.php
  
• Added "exclude guests from result" in the iptracker (option that won't count users with id 0 - guests, etc)
  
• Added report/alerter by PM/forum
  
• Added field alert into database
  
• Added autodetection on search (if a searchstring contains XX.XX.XX.XX it will be treated as an ip)
  
• Done some minor changes to the userlink-function (the one that can bind new usernames to their old ones faster)
  
• Fixed the userlink-lookup in iptracker.php (made details)
  
• Added function to block specific nicknames when reaching the trigger limit
  
• Using strftime for date/time-fields (Tested with vB 3.6)
  
• Added search-depth in iptracker.php
  
• Added "exclude rbl-results" in iptracker.php (Won't show proxies if any)
  
• Added $show[trolltracker]-condition so the tracker can be shown for admingroups in templates
  
• Added trolldata to who's online
  
• Added highlighted searchresults for iptracker.php
  
• Admins will now be excluded from the dupe-checker
  
• Blocked users are now shown as blocked in "Who's Online"
  
• Scanner using vbphrases instead
  
• Queries to database rewritten (JOIN)
  
• Added group for administration of the trackerdb (removal of entries)
  
• FQDN Compares on undetected users
  
  

To do

• Add trolldupes.php - quickscan the database for duplicated nicknames and list them
  
• iptables support (?)
  
• Add exclude userids from scanner (mainly for fixing the AE-Tripper issue)
  
• IRC/Eggdrop support for online-tracing and support
  
• Autoblacklist banned users
  

[Tyegurl]

thanks so much for this....i happen to have one single member who this will be useful on....not that he hides himself lol but at least i will be able to track him better i hope.

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by Tyegurl

thanks so much for this....i happen to have one single member who this will be useful on....not that he hides himself lol but at least i will be able to track him better i hope.

It will be easier in 2.0.1, with the Who's online part.

[Ski-Whiz]

I like this!! Question, will this cause my database to grow to a HUGE size, since it tracks every IP to hit my forums?

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by Ski-Whiz

I like this!! Question, will this cause my database to grow to a HUGE size, since it tracks every IP to hit my forums?

No, if there's an old matching ip (together with userid/username), the plugin will do an UPDATE instead of INSERT to that entry.

[Ski-Whiz]

ah, ok...

That's great, I was kind of worried.

Consider this installed.

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by Ski-Whiz

ah, ok...

That's great, I was kind of worried.

Consider this installed.

Nice! As fast as I'm done with the report-via-PM/forum-function, I'll try to release v2.0.1 - check the 2nd post in this thread for news

[Ski-Whiz]

Great!

I had to edit the font colors in the search.php file, but no biggie. Every site will differ..

Thanks!! Great hack!

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by Ski-Whiz

Great!

I had to edit the font colors in the search.php file, but no biggie. Every site will differ..

Thanks!! Great hack!

In next release, I'll remove all those fonts and sizes, so it follows the CSS classes instead.