Huge Spike in Guests on Board

[hunter22375]

I have WAY more guests on my board than usual. I normally run about 600+ and right now I am at over 3800!!!!!! Also, I am receiving about 500 undeliverable emails a day in my inbox as if people attempted to sign up with a bogus email and could not confirm it. Neither the board or my third party member management system show all these failed sign ups and I have human verification turned on using Captcha. Has anyone had this happen to them? Is it some sort of an attack to overwhelm my board?

[Bluemax712]

One thing to check is make sure your MySQL server isn't exposed or at least limit outside connections to it.
There is a relatively new vulnerability that is trivial to pull off if your server hasn't been patched yet.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/it...e-1614990.html

[hunter22375]

I read the article and, for the most part, have an idea of what I had an idea of what it was saying. What my question then becomes is, why aren't all these new fake members showing up in vB or my third party member management system? Because regardless if a member fails to confirm their email because they provided a bogus one, their screen name still shows up and they get added to the total member amount.....which has not changed along with the hundreds of undeliverable emails I have been receiving.

[Bluemax712]

I only mentioned the MySQL vulnerability thinking if it is open to outside connections
it could be attracting people looking to break in.

Do you use Glowhost Spam-O-Matic (highly recommended)
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...t=Spam-O-Matic

It will block a lot of bots and has a good logging system telling you what it's doing

[hunter22375]

Thanks, I don't pretend to know alot about server management so I appreciate the help. I'm not even sure if how I described the issue made sense...lol. I will look into that. Thanks again.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by hunter22375

I have human verification turned on using Captcha.

Which captcha are you using? The Question & Answers or the one that requires entering in a few characters?

[hunter22375]

Originally Posted by Andy

Which captcha are you using? The Question & Answers or the one that requires entering in a few characters?

The one that requires entering characters.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by hunter22375

The one that requires entering characters.

That's the problem. It's been cracked years ago. Here's what I suggest you do.

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...-on-your-forum

[CAG CheechDogg]

Originally Posted by Andy

That's the problem. It's been cracked years ago. Here's what I suggest you do.

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...-on-your-forum

I disagree with you Andy, if that was the problem I would have it on my site as well. I only use the reCaptcha with characters and I have had no problems with it.

He has to make sure his Publick and Private Keys are valid first of all.

I don't even know where you got that it got cracked years ago, lol.

hunter22375 if you need further assistance with this contact me via pm buddy, there are other ways to stop this from happening in your forums.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by CAG CheechDogg

I disagree with you Andy, if that was the problem I would have it on my site as well. I only use the reCaptcha with characters and I have had no problems with it.

He has to make sure his Publick and Private Keys are valid first of all.

I don't even know where you got that it got cracked years ago, lol.

Please type this into google.com

reCaptcha cracked site:vbulletin.com