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Looks like http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/ has been totally defaced has anybody got a recent backup to fix it?

That really sucks. Spammers of all types should be caught, carved up into little bits, packed into small tins and handed out as Victory Spam to party members in our forthcoming Big Brother state.

Or perhaps just have their nipples slowly removed through the power of many many paper cuts.

Fin.

On 28/07/05, John Woodard mail@johnwoodard.co.uk wrote:

Thanks to Darren at php4hosting.com who kindly hosts the web site for us a recent backup has cured the mess that the spammers left the wiki in. All should be well for now at least until one of the spamming scum does it again. Oh the joys of having an open access wiki!

Hants, Surrey and Wolves LUGs used to suffer really badly with this on their wikis. The Hants LUG people developed some patches to the wiki they use (usemod) to help to reduce the amount of spam that gets through. These patches were rolled out to Wolves and Surrey also. Some still does of course - they're inventive little gits these spammers, but the vast majority has been curbed.

You might want to have a look at the AntiSpam [1] page on the HantsLUG wiki to see what was done, and how this might help you guys.

Cheers, Al.

[1] http://hants.lug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AntiSpam

Thanks to Darren and everyone else involved for working on this

while I was away. I had some ad-hoc spam tools, but it looks like they would have been overwhelmed even if I had time to use them.

If anyone has time to put similar patches into our phpwiki, or upgrade it or port the wikitext to another spam-resistant wiki, let me know and I'll give you the code or set up access (if Darren's OK with another person with shell access).

Thats fine by me

I'd really like to keep open publishing and I'd also like it if we can copy useful and slow-changing contents to /articles/ instead. Any suggestions?

Maybe we could use the IP tools and just put restrictions on the pages that edit the wiki?

If there is anything I can help with let meknow

Darren

"John Woodard" mail@johnwoodard.co.uk writes:

Thanks to Darren at php4hosting.com who kindly hosts the web site for us a recent backup has cured the mess that the spammers left the wiki in. All should be well for now at least until one of the spamming scum does it again. Oh the joys of having an open access wiki!

A wiki I help operate was having a lot of trouble with spam - basically you need someone to check it daily and revert any spam found. Having more than one despammer helps.

We tried blocking IP addresses that had posted spam initially, but this didn't remain effective for very long.

Since then I've done the following things:

* Changed the name of one of the form parameters. This is plain obfuscation; anyone using an interactive browser to spam will be unaffected, but a spamming script explicitly designed for UseModWiki will find a speedbump.

* Created a list of unsayable strings, and populated it with the names of the websites used by the wiki spammers (or in some cases substrings of those names, though obviously this needs a little care).

* Changed the hostname (for unrelated reasons). This has probably helped in the short term but obviously isn't a viable general solution.

* Added a 'revert' link to undo a change. This doesn't reduce spamming directly but makes itf easier to cleanup.

The rate of spamming is now below 1 per day, which is much easier to cope with.

John Woodard wrote:

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-----Original Message----- From: main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Richard Kettlewell Sent: 28 July 2005 14:25 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] ALUG Wiki

"John Woodard" mail@johnwoodard.co.uk writes:

...

Thanks to Darren at php4hosting.com who kindly hosts the web site for us a recent backup has cured the mess that the spammers left the wiki in. All should be well for now at least until one of the spamming scum does it again. Oh the joys of having an open access wiki!

The rate of spamming is now below 1 per day, which is much easier to cope with.

All sound ideas. Over to whoever is looking after the web/wiki at the moment.

I am in the process of writting a backup script that will keep a local copy of the web directory and archive it hourly and daily etc..

Should help in the fight

Darren

They have trashed it again in the mean time

I have restored the backup again, and this time the hourly backups will ensure we can roll back properly.

I have also blocked non-UK IP's as a temporary measure, it seems that US ones are a problem and that the spammers are using proxy servers etc...

The measure is not perfect but should keep is safe until a decision is made as to what can be done to protect the site.

Since doing it we have had 8 blocks, all from various places.

ARG.... :)

Darren

-----Original Message----- From: main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Darren Sent: 28 July 2005 19:31 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] ALUG Wiki

They have trashed it again in the mean time

I have restored the backup again, and this time the hourly backups will ensure we can roll back properly.

I have also blocked non-UK IP's as a temporary measure, it seems that US ones are a problem and that the spammers are using proxy servers etc...

The measure is not perfect but should keep is safe until a decision is made as to what can be done to protect the site.

Since doing it we have had 8 blocks, all from various places.

ARG.... :)

Thanks for keeping an eye on it.

Cheers, BJ

At 03:04 AM 7/28/2005, Steve Engledow wrote:

...

...

Looks like http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/ has been totally defaced has anybody got a recent backup to fix it?

That really sucks. Spammers of all types should be caught, carved up into little bits, packed into small tins and handed out as Victory Spam to party members in our forthcoming Big Brother state.

Or perhaps just have their nipples slowly removed through the power of many many paper cuts.

Russia's Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment:

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/07/25/spammerdead.shtml

Cheers!