Help! Spam Bot Attack

[kennethsia]

Hey everyone,

Lately my forum has been intentionally attacked by spam bots who advertise bad stuff and I do not know how to stop them. It's been two weeks since the first strike and I've done everything I could - from tweaking the captchas to closing the whole registration. Even thought of banning their ISP but apparently it is hard and people refuse to guide me on that one. It is driving me mad.

If it helps, the bots strike as a group of (usually) ten users, all named the same except for the numbers at the end. For instance: nocturnal111 nocturnal123 nocturnal384, etc.

If anyone knows how to defend my forums please reply and I'll be grateful.

Thanks in advance.

[tinkerbell]

Hi kennethsia,

Most of us know how you feel, Banning IPs isnt hard you can find the option in your-

admin cp - vbulletin options - user banning options.

Before you try that you might like to try banning the offenders as normal and installing this mod No Spam

It worked for me and I haven't been spammed since.

Good luck

Tinks

ps. it would be helpful to people trying to help you if you say which version of vbulletin you are using.

[kennethsia]

Thank you tinkerbell, your help is highly appreciated. Unfortunately I have already tried to IP ban them but they have a dynamic IP, and I have also tried to use NoSpam! instead of the usual captchas but last night's attack proved that it wont stop them.

The moderators team of the forum and myself have already banned at least 300 bots and I dont wish my mods to keep working that hard. It is just too much to handle for a regular person.

Oh and my vB version is 3.6.5.

[Dismounted]

Do they keep registering even if you don't delete them?

[tinkerbell]

The only other thing I can suggest at the moment is to ban then moderate all registrations so you have to manually allow them in before they can post, which you have probably tried. Sorry I cant be of more help and good luck.

Tinks

[kennethsia]

Originally Posted by Dismounted

Do they keep registering even if you don't delete them?

Yes they do.

Originally Posted by tinkerbell

The only other thing I can suggest at the moment is to ban then moderate all registrations so you have to manually allow them in before they can post, which you have probably tried. Sorry I cant be of more help and good luck.

Tinks

Got that right, I have already tried to moderate the registrations. Problem is that our forum is linked with a game server, and they advertise hacks for that game on their profile.
Having the registration moderated for the long term will be unfair for the huge community we have so I will only do this as a last resort.


Thanks both of you for trying to help.

[theFAILURE]

To stop Spam Bots from registering, use the NoSpam alternative to CAPTCHA upon registration.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...hreadid=124828

I use this, and I have not had a spam issue in over a month.

[Lynne]

We moderate all first posts for your first day of registration. This stops 99.99% of the spam on our site. Usually a spammer registers and immediately spams and then leaves. So, their spam goes into the moderation cue and the mods delete it instead of allowing it. After one day, the users are moved to a usergroup that is unmoderated.