What the heck is up with these bots?

Post your comments, suggestions, questions, etc. about IndyDDR.com here. Also use this forum to report issues or get help with the site.

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Merk
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Posts: 8274
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Bloomington / Ft. Wayne
Contact:

What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Merk » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:40 am

Guys, lolololololololol why are there like a billion bots shit posting all over our beautiful forum all of a sudden?

Don't get me wrong, I like how goofy the situation is, but I'm curious as to how this shit even happens.
Image

User avatar
Ho
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 5645
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:26 am
Location: The Ho-House

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Ho » Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:05 am

It's been like 6 bots...just each of them has been posting many messages. :P

I guess they finally figured out our super secure quiz about what the abbreviation for Dance Dance Revolution is. It's worked pretty well (better than the phpBB CAPTCHA) for years.

I went ahead and switched us over to Google reCAPTCHA to see how well that does. I think I've cleaned up all the trash in the meantime.
Image

User avatar
Ho
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 5645
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:26 am
Location: The Ho-House

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Ho » Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:20 am

I guess it was actually more like a dozen or 20 bots (today). It's just that only about 6 of them were able to or had started posting. I am nuking them all with extreme prejudice.
Image

User avatar
Amp Divorax
Heavy
Heavy
Posts: 2922
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:34 pm
Location: Near some arcade place that has the same initials as Drum and Bass

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Amp Divorax » Tue Mar 01, 2016 1:01 pm

Thank goodness. Anymore russian bots and I'm starting a feedback thread asking for a built in Russian Translator.
Memorable 2016 quotes:
Ho wrote:You can break arcade games and I will fix YOU!

User avatar
Ho
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 5645
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:26 am
Location: The Ho-House

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Ho » Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:38 pm

I think our memberlist shrank by a whole page today.

But I guess it grew by that much today, so I've really just restored the balance.
Image

User avatar
Merk
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Posts: 8274
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Bloomington / Ft. Wayne
Contact:

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Merk » Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:17 am

Thanks for taking care of those bots again, those things are ridiculous!
Image

User avatar
Ho
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 5645
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:26 am
Location: The Ho-House

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Ho » Fri Jul 06, 2018 11:08 am

I had been doing it, but I think MonMotha has been on it this past week or so.

I have to say I'm kind of disappointed with re:captcha 2. Either that, or it would be even more ridiculously bad here without it?
Image

User avatar
MonMotha
Site Code Monkey
Site Code Monkey
Posts: 2505
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:18 pm

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by MonMotha » Fri Jul 06, 2018 1:44 pm

I'm pretty sure re:captcha is just a tool for Google to automate and train their "machine vision" systems at this point. I have my doubts as to how effective of a CAPTCHA it really is.
A normality test:
+++ATH
If you are no longer connected to the internet, you need to apply more wax to your modem: it'll make it go faster.
If you find this funny, you're a nerd.
If neither of the above apply, you are normal. Congratulations.

User avatar
Potter
Heavy
Heavy
Posts: 4856
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 6:57 pm
Location: above the abyss
Contact:

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Potter » Sat Jul 07, 2018 7:39 pm

it's super ghetto, but back when I was running a phpbb forum, I used code similar to this to sloppily password protect the ucp.php file (that gets used for registration) https://stackoverflow.com/a/45869294

Then make the display text "just enter xxpasswordxx" humans can get past it in a couple seconds but bots are too stupid to realize what's going on and don't even recognize the page, went from 3 or 4 bot signups a day to 0 in 3 years

downside: ucp.php is also used for checking PMs and moderator stuff, so you'd have to quickly enter the pass when viewing those too, but meh
Riot wrote:My hair alone is like 5mb.
Merk wrote:Badyyyyy.. wanna go fiiiish? wanna go.... fiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIsh?? Wanna go fishin'?!?!?! Him's a Badyyyy

User avatar
Merk
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Posts: 8274
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Bloomington / Ft. Wayne
Contact:

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Merk » Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:05 am

Meh, my PM inbox is full anyway so I am all for this ucp.php file
Image

User avatar
Merk
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Posts: 8274
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Bloomington / Ft. Wayne
Contact:

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Merk » Fri Jul 20, 2018 2:37 pm

At least I know what ISO 4001 is now -- these effing bots are crazy!
Image

User avatar
Ho
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 5645
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:26 am
Location: The Ho-House

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Ho » Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:39 am

LOL! The signature of one of the bots...
captchabot.png
captchabot.png (2.96 KiB) Viewed 34662 times
Image

User avatar
Merk
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Posts: 8274
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Bloomington / Ft. Wayne
Contact:

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Merk » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:29 am

Ah shit I had to turn off signatures since that one dude had that giant "RAPE" text in flashing rainbow colors and lord knows in TYOOL 2018 if someone looking to be victimized saw that I'd be immediately canned and jailed with no due process.
Image

User avatar
Merk
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Lady Banned Son of Switzerland
Posts: 8274
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Bloomington / Ft. Wayne
Contact:

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by Merk » Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:29 am

Should we just do some sort of manual process to accept new members? These bots are ridic
Image

User avatar
MonMotha
Site Code Monkey
Site Code Monkey
Posts: 2505
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:18 pm

Re: What the heck is up with these bots?

Post by MonMotha » Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:29 pm

I went ahead and changed the settings to require admin approval. I guess Ho can start getting some emails.

Re-captcha is clearly broken. I'm convinced it just gets kept around because Google uses it to train their machine vision systems. I don't think it's particularly effective as a CAPTCHA anymore.
A normality test:
+++ATH
If you are no longer connected to the internet, you need to apply more wax to your modem: it'll make it go faster.
If you find this funny, you're a nerd.
If neither of the above apply, you are normal. Congratulations.

Post Reply