Recently Was Spammed With Porn

[NGU Matt]

Heres the crazy part.

The user registered with the same IP every time and managed to exploit our inferno shoutbox to shout in there without the 10 post requirement.

He was also able to register in less than 10 seconds each time, which is pretty impossible.

I have no idea how they did it, but it's definitely a vunerability in 3.8.1 forums so keep an eye out.

This is the IP, I even wildcarded it but banning it did nothing. I had to close registrations temporarily.
96.229.139.22

[Brandon Sheley]

You should add some no spam mods
the 10 sec registration is done with a program

[Swampfox]

Its not impossible for a bot, they auto fill in the forms, there is a mod available here (Isbot) that blocks registrations that are too fast.

the IP ban should work, but bots usually use different IP's, so IP banning is futile

vbulletin has some built in human verification options, captcha is useless, I suggest switching to the question/answer feature

[dekaybrown]

I used a question answer verification, all bot registrations halted......

Also I'd suggest that you set all registrants to a moderator hold for the first few posts, That way if the applicant has nothing to offer your forum, you can delete the posts before your members even see them, and ban the user right away.

[NGU Matt]

But I don't think it could have been a bot though because when they registered, the user was a real person because of how they bypassed the shoutbox post restriction and was talking to us in the shoutbox, where I just banned them from there, but it wasn't even 10 seconds after, that was just an example. It was more like 5-10, and all the names were custom each time.

[BlueNinjaGo]

Bots are sophisticated now adays.... just add one of the mods they mentioned and you won't have a problem... we have a question and it solved everything.

"What is the fifth word in this question?"

Any human can do that, but no bots have.

[dekaybrown]

Mine is a simple one too ;-)

Who is on the front of a US one dollar bill.

Never had another "bot" register again since.

Once they defeat that, I'll use another question.

It really does work!