Hackers attack???

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clmbr

 
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Hackers attack???

by clmbr » Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:27 pm

Since yesterday some links and forums titles has been displayed in Chinas like characters. Yesterday it was only links to the forum on the main page. Today all new forum posts (I think by cvr1) are infected, eg California, Canada and Alaska.

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brichardsson

 
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Re: Hackers attack???

by brichardsson » Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:39 pm

those aren't infected posts. it's a junk profile posting spam. guess the admins have their hands full trying to deal with it.
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Re: Hackers attack???

by clmbr » Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:55 pm

Those f... spammers! They are everywhere. Damn parasites!!!

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Scott
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Re: Hackers attack???

by Scott » Tue Aug 04, 2015 4:55 pm

guess the admins have their hands full trying to deal with it.


Yes! :evil:

Those f... spammers! They are everywhere. Damn parasites!!!


Yes, that too. :evil:

It's hard to keep up with, but we're trying. A new member approval system has been proposed.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by brichardsson » Tue Aug 04, 2015 7:45 pm

Scott wrote:
It's hard to keep up with, but we're trying. A new member approval system has been proposed.


i still think you should give a select few the ability to "pend" a member who is spamming, so they can at least be prevented from continuing to flood the board, put them in some kind of holding area pending further admin review.
Don't try to argue with idiots. You aren't the dumbass whisperer.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by Scott » Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:26 pm

i still think you should give a select few the ability to "pend" a member who is spamming, so they can at least be prevented from continuing to flood the board


That's kind of what happens, but the spammers work so fast that they can make many post in just one minute. Those type of spammers are paid spammers and get paid for each spam they make on various websites.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by Wasatch Summits » Thu Aug 06, 2015 3:55 am

Take a look at MBpost.com. Nothing but spam. Got so tired of emails from spam, notifications that I pulled out. Now I see nothing but chinese characters here on SP (sorry, don't know much chinese) that I worry SP is also headed down to the bottom. Please fix it. Love this site, don't contribute much any more, but the info here is really good. Tried to contribute what I could... Would be a waste to let the hacks have their way.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by Josh Lewis » Thu Aug 06, 2015 8:15 am

Was busy climbing for the past 12 days and had virtually no internet service (hardly any phone service when in town). Looks like I missed out on the banning party. :P

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Re: Hackers attack???

by Scott » Thu Aug 06, 2015 12:52 pm

Now I see nothing but chinese characters here on SP (sorry, don't know much chinese) that I worry SP is also headed down to the bottom. Please fix it. Love this site, don't contribute much any more, but the info here is really good. Tried to contribute what I could... Would be a waste to let the hacks have their way.


Agreed.

The spam is too much for anyone to keep up on.

Maybe a security question could be set up for new members? Most of them don't speak English and are from China or Indonesia.

If something isn't done soon, the forums and much of SP will be ruined.

Supposedly this will be fixed in mid-August.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by clmbr » Fri Aug 07, 2015 12:11 am

For instance, I would (with software) screen at list the post’s title for non-English characters and at least hold it for a review. There is no business to post anything in the US forum in other languages.

I would also include a “Report” button (like on other websites) so members would be able to hide/remove inappropriate posts immediately (I would probably limit that power to new or not trusted members who might want to hurt this site, so in such a case moderators would get warning and make the final decision).

There is no way just a few moderators can deal with organized spammers who get more claver and technologically sophisticated every time they face an obstacle. It has to be done by software and community (members). It has to be instant.

Based on my limited observation, the recent spammer(s) had at least two days to freely spam without being removed. I was not sure what was going on but it was taking too long and finally decided to post about it.

I could not get any sense from those posts (except some school names repeated several times) but it could have also been a test for vulnerability of this websites (including administrators) before more logical attacks.

On Meetup website, for example, they create several accounts and attack together (most likely one person). To mislead, they also hide for a while before striking. The problem is some marketers believe it’s a good (and free or low cost) marketing strategy.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by brichardsson » Fri Aug 07, 2015 12:26 am

clmbr wrote:
I would also include a “Report” button (like on other websites) so members would be able to hide/remove inappropriate posts immediately (I would probably limit that power to new or not trusted members who might want to hurt this site, so in such a case moderators would get warning and make the final decision).

There is no way just a few moderators can deal with organized spammers who get more claver and technologically sophisticated every time they face an obstacle. It has to be done by software and community (members). It has to be instant.

Based on my limited observation, the recent spammer(s) had at least two days to freely spam without being removed. I was not sure what was going on but it was taking too long and finally decided to post about it.



+1
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clmbr

 
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Re: Hackers attack???

by clmbr » Fri Aug 07, 2015 2:31 am

And it’s happening now again.

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Re: Hackers attack???

by clmbr » Fri Aug 07, 2015 2:36 am

This time Asia is under spam attack.

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Josh Lewis

 
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Re: Hackers attack???

by Josh Lewis » Fri Aug 07, 2015 2:45 am

Any time you see spam forum posts, let me know (via pm) and I'll blast away at the entire wave. There is a report system, however as I understand it does not hide the post even if many members reported the post. Personally I feel the forum is due for a major upgrade to phpbb 3.1 which supposedly fixes thousands of issues and has new features. :D

For those interested here is what the report button looks like:

report.png
report.png (13.73 KiB) Viewed 6569 times


Unfortunately I have to manually check the moderation control panel to actually see reported posts.

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Scott
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Re: Hackers attack???

by Scott » Fri Aug 07, 2015 4:53 am

According to the moderation logs, 352 Chinese spam message this morning alone. :evil:

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