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UFOPaedia swarmed with spam bots.


heniv181

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There has been a substantial increase in spam from bots on the ufopaedia wiki lately, Hobbes is doing a great work of keeping them at bey but....

 

it might be time to take a new look on the security and the version state of the wiki?

 

//Kokkan - Heniv

 

*Reloads shotgun*

 

I'd like to propose that Heniv be made into an UFOPaedia administrator to help with these issues. I've known Heniv/Kokkan from XCOM's 2K forums for more than a year and I think that his wiki experience would be useful.

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Can automatic user account creation be disabled or changed to require an admin to approve a new account? Approving new users would have to be less time consuming than deleting and blocking the spammers as well as undo anything they have posted...
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just hold the fort a little longer.

 

Don't worry, I've got a safe spot. It's just that the spammers keep coming and coming...

https://www.ufopaedia.org/images/thumb/c/ce/Bad_Things_%28EU2012%29.jpg/800px-Bad_Things_%28EU2012%29.jpg

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Okay, looks like lots of new changes in the newer versions (current site is 1.16, latest version is 1.22), so I'm going to clone the site to a subfolder and run the upgrade on that copy (and note down how to actually do it this time :)) then let you guys test it before switching over tomorrow night if that seems reasonable?

 

I'll post again once the copy is made and upgraded.

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Just requesting the web hosts to upgrade PHP to version 5.4 (we're on old 5.2!). It's a requirement of the new version of the softwar that runs UFOPedia and the PHP devs aren't supporting 5.2 any more.

 

There may be some repercussions to this, so I'll be keeping an eye out over the next few hours to see if anything goes awry with ufopedia.org or anything on StrategyCore.

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Just requesting the web hosts to upgrade PHP to version 5.4 (we're on old 5.2!). It's a requirement of the new version of the softwar that runs UFOPedia and the PHP devs aren't supporting 5.2 any more.

 

There may be some repercussions to this, so I'll be keeping an eye out over the next few hours to see if anything goes awry with ufopedia.org or anything on StrategyCore.

 

Thanks Pete!

 

Meanwhile I'm getting an error while I'm trying to edit the https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Squads_(EU2012) page. Could this be related?

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Hi Hobbes

 

Please give it another go and let me know how you get on.

 

It was basically a bit of code that was suddenly out of date after the PHP update, but it was an easy enough one to fix fortunately.

 

I'm hoping to have the new test version ready soon.

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Spammers will never go away as some modern spammers are just humans paid to post junk so they will generally get past spam filters. Automated spammers should be reduced by the new version - if you want to look at the changes between version 1.16 and 1.21 (latest stable version) on this list you can see a changelog: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes

 

The ConfirmEdit module is the main thing that has changed - rather than relying solely on reCaptcha, which is easily bypassed by spammers nowadays, there are a lot of other options available which are generally more successful in stopping automated spam: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit#CAPTCHA_types

 

I'm also hopeful there are similar options for new registrations so we don't just end up with spam accounts that then can't edit - I'd rather not have the spam accounts, but we can't have everything I guess.

 

I'm still having issues getting the new version to work but will let you know once it's ready to test.

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Pete, whatever ju-ju you've worked on the wiki appears to have taken effect. Hobbes and I haven't had to ban anyone for a bit.

 

I hope we caught the lot of them, as I have this sneaking suspicion we may have let a few slip through the cracks. They'll show themselves in time I guess.

 

- NKF

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Ermmm... I haven't done anything yet :D We're still running the old version. I wonder if there was some issue with the older version of PHP causing a security issue with the software.

 

That or the sign-up form just doesn't work any more (would be worth someone testing and deleting the test account afterwards if you can - I know less about that software than you guys unfortunately!).

 

Weirdly the new version I'm trying to get to work only works with caching switched off, but that's no good as each page load is 4-5 times slower as a result. It might just be because it's in a subdirectory and looking for things that aren't there, but I'll need to schedule in a few hours when folks are happy for me to turn the site off to test this out as I don't want to catch people mid-edit or lose anything because I'm rushing about. I might have time this weekend, or definitely next weekend - hopefully the spammers will stay away until then!

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Perhaps some other site they were attacking has dealt with the spammer and spambots at the source? Either way it's been nice and quiet for a bit which is nice. Also set a time to do the maintenance and we can slap it as a big message on the front page.

 

Because voodoo is too mainstream? grin.gif

 

Only matters if zombies are involved. Not sure about rubber chickens with pulleys though.

 

- NKF

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Very unlikely yuo can sever stop spammers at the source. The majority is automated from botnets and suchlike, the human ones are from poorly-paid people in countries where they don't bother tracking people down ever.

 

The internet is sadly lawless in that regard.

 

It would be better if it was Lawless in this regard:

 

270397.jpg

 

smile.png

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