CincyBattletech

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: ItsTehPope on September 09, 2010, 11:44:59 AM

Title: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 09, 2010, 11:44:59 AM
Travis and myself is aware of all the spam accounts that have shown up of late and a resolution is in the works, including large scale IP bans of several nations that were invaded by Hitler
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Knightofargh on September 09, 2010, 12:04:35 PM
So in former Soviet Europe spam reads you?

Crushing the spam bots is a worthy goal. Best of luck.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 09, 2010, 02:13:51 PM
So in former Soviet Europe spam reads you?

Crushing the spam bots is a worthy goal. Best of luck.

As it stands, I'm thinking that to make my life easier i'll be putting in a request for a shun on several /8 blocks that are under APNIC and RIPE NCC control
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 09, 2010, 02:22:26 PM
The 83.30.0.0/16 network has been banned.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: serrate on September 09, 2010, 05:50:55 PM
Is that all it takes?  Or will further bans be incoming?  I'd hate to see registrations completely locked down like the old site, but then the old site did successfully stop spammers.  I hope there's a middle ground that works.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 09, 2010, 06:29:48 PM
Is that all it takes?  Or will further bans be incoming?  I'd hate to see registrations completely locked down like the old site, but then the old site did successfully stop spammers.  I hope there's a middle ground that works.

Btechunits registration was a cumbersome nightmare, and stunk of the bullshit you hear about clubs that require secret handshakes and passing muster to get into.  All this ban did was block 65K IPv4 addresses that are assigned to APNIC.  Since this is a message board focused on Battletech and other wargames/RPG's in the midwestern United States - and to be honest, I could ban all of the IPv4 addresses allocated to APNIC and we'd lose maybe 4 people who could contribute positively to this board, none of these people who are actually registered here, or in all likeliness give a shit.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 12, 2010, 03:21:15 PM
Based on the new influx of spammers tonight, I have added several /8 subnets to the ban list.  For those of you who don't know what a /8 means, several IP blocks that are 16,777,216 IP addresses of hosts are flat out not accessing anymore.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 13, 2010, 02:50:30 PM
Up to 112 million IP addresses banned.  And yes, if I could find the ranges assigned to Russia, Poland and say, all of APNIC they'd be banned in a heartbeat.

Then again, if we were on IPv6 this would be so stupidly easy its sad...
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on September 22, 2010, 10:03:03 PM
It looks like the most recent steps taken have helped solve the issue significantly- several APNIC nations are no longer allowed to register and have upped the CAPTCHA complexity.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Knightofargh on September 22, 2010, 10:24:40 PM
Which raises similar questions of woodchucks and wood chucking, would a CAPTCHA stop a spammer from Kamchatka?
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: maddyfish on September 23, 2010, 10:00:11 PM
It looks like the most recent steps taken have helped solve the issue significantly- several APNIC nations are no longer allowed to register and have upped the CAPTCHA complexity.

Thankfully I am already registered as I can never figure out those CAPTCHA things.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on October 06, 2010, 08:04:49 PM
For amusement value - I did some guesstimation on the current IP ban list - we're at 194 million or so banned IP's. 
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: maddyfish on October 07, 2010, 07:37:39 AM
For amusement value - I did some guesstimation on the current IP ban list - we're at 194 million or so banned IP's. 

Wow tough moderators here
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on October 07, 2010, 04:52:56 PM
For amusement value - I did some guesstimation on the current IP ban list - we're at 194 million or so banned IP's. 

Wow tough moderators here


Uncaring moderators actually.  Knowing how IP's are assigned regionally helps out as well - in all but two instances a 12million chunk of IP's were banned because they were coming from nations that would have no reason to register/post here and were also known for being massive spam-pits.  The two instances that were not large IP bans were from the United States oddly enough.  In those instances I only blocked a smaller, 255!ish IP range.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on February 07, 2011, 03:00:18 PM
For amusement value - I did some guesstimation on the current IP ban list - we're at 194 million or so banned IP's. 

Wow tough moderators here


Uncaring moderators actually.  Knowing how IP's are assigned regionally helps out as well - in all but two instances a 12million chunk of IP's were banned because they were coming from nations that would have no reason to register/post here and were also known for being massive spam-pits.  The two instances that were not large IP bans were from the United States oddly enough.  In those instances I only blocked a smaller, 255!ish IP range.

After seeing some oddities in the user login attempts today, I've done IP bans in parts of the US/UK today, but these are smaller IP bans than usual (255 IP chunks rather than the 12 million I tend to do in the past)
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: maddyfish on February 07, 2011, 05:51:43 PM
Good. Some dude in the UK has been trying to steal my email account. NUKE those guys.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Darrian Wolffe on February 07, 2011, 05:58:13 PM
What do you expect us to do?  Sic Anonymous on them?

...actually...
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on February 07, 2011, 06:12:31 PM
What do you expect us to do?  Sic Anonymous on them?

...actually...

The last thing I want to do is owe Anon a favor....
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Knightofargh on February 07, 2011, 08:01:24 PM
What do you expect us to do?  Sic Anonymous on them?

...actually...

The last thing I want to do is owe Anon a favor....

"Not your personal army" is the phrase I believe...
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: serrate on February 07, 2011, 08:15:07 PM
Just out of curiosity, will you be able to allow specific IP's from these banned chunks if/when the need arises?
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on February 07, 2011, 09:37:58 PM
Just out of curiosity, will you be able to allow specific IP's from these banned chunks if/when the need arises?

I actually check which registry owns the IP space in question before doing bans.  If it belongs to a RIR that isn't ARIN, generally speaking, the entire large block gets banned.  If it belongs to ARIN or a portion of RIPE that isn't a pit of scum and villainy, I'll do smaller ban blocks.

If the host machine in question is on DHCP and part of a botnet, I have to ban the whole subnet...if the user in question has his own static IP, I can work around it, but if he's on DHCP as well as the botnet...not a whole hell of a lot I can do there
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on February 07, 2011, 09:38:24 PM
What do you expect us to do?  Sic Anonymous on them?

...actually...

The last thing I want to do is owe Anon a favor....

"Not your personal army" is the phrase I believe...

Very true, but there is also "for the lulz"
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: maddyfish on February 11, 2011, 08:11:45 PM
New user dillymaynard looks like a spammer
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on February 11, 2011, 08:25:15 PM
New user dillymaynard looks like a spammer

Oh I know he's out there.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: ItsTehPope on February 12, 2011, 01:34:06 AM
77.x.x.x banned.