Problems with website

[catmeow]

I've noticed recently that the website is intermittently unresponsive, ie it works fine for a while then I try to refresh a page and it hangs for a long time. Later on it is working OK.

Has anybody else noticed this? Or is it just me?

Anything to do with the alleged DOS attacks?

[Xanth]

Oh they're more than alleged.

But yeah, it's directly because of them.  Sadly.

[catmeow]

Thanks Xanth

[Bedeekin]

This is actually doing my head in today.. and for a while. It's been one of the reasons I wasn't coming on here. it happens very frequently to me.

[Lionheart]

 The DDOS attacks continue, but not for long!

We will overcome this! 

The 2 new Moderators that are here should give us more around the clock protection from Spammers.

They will give up when they see that their posts are INSTANTLY removed and they are IMMEDIATELY banned for life!

[Bedeekin]

Awesome. If one of the new moderators can ACTUALLY get online to moderate.

I'm a patient swine anyway.

[Lionheart]

 I have it down to an "ART" now.

A lock out normally lasts about 5 minutes.

So I take that time to go stretch my legs and do other things like bathroom breaks etc., lol. 

[Xanth]

I have it down to an "ART" now.

A lock out normally lasts about 5 minutes.

So I take that time to go stretch my legs and do other things like bathroom breaks etc., lol. 

And just so that everyone knows that something is going to be happening...
Adrian has spoken to me and he's wanting to upgrade the forum software to something more current.
The only downside is that it's a big job doing something like that... but the pros far outweigh the cons.

It will take some time and I don't have a timetable at the moment, but it is being worked on. 

[Bedeekin]

cool. It's happening every 3 page changes tonight.

[proyect_outzone]

They will give up when they see that their posts are INSTANTLY removed and they are IMMEDIATELY banned for life!

These are bots. They will not give up. I know a german Forum, where 30-50 new spambots register successfully per day and try to acess writing (moderators have almost given up and changed options, so that moderators  have to activate the useraccounts). No one of these bots can write anything since long time, but they try it still during this long time and there are more than 10.000 Users in this forum now (About 500 of them are real users, the remaining are spambots).

You must change the options for registering, otherwise you will keep this problem. I suggest a idiotic question like "What is 5 x 5" or "enter the word "cat"" or "How much dots are here?: ...." during the register process, which must be changed frequently. Bots have still problems with such, because they must be programmed individually for every question.

[Xanth]

On my own forums I use two layers of protection... And slammers still register.
I'll see if I can make any adjustments to the registration page tonight.

[Lionheart]

 Not all of these are Bots, Proyect!

I have sent a ton of PMs in the past 3 months and have had quite a few responses back.

Most of them taunting at us, but still they were responding.

We even see some of them that come on, make their message, but then wait until a Moderator logs off to post it.

There are all kinds of Spammers coming here, Human and Bot.

[Szaxx]

If you can't beat them join them. Allow a single thread with a limited number of words and time allow them before deletion.
If they are trying to earn a crust this will ease up the attacks.
Relevant laws taken into consideration.
They may become interested in our art too. Yeah...

[proyect_outzone]

If there are really humans, i suggest a different Way.

Any posting with any kind of weblinks should only be made visible to users after moderators checked em (some forums and websites with comment option do already so). If link detection does not work, u can maybe use the URL tags and/or http and www (and .com ect) as search criteria for automatic decision of the forum software.

This should make the forum at least for real humans uninteresting.

[catmeow]

Do these bots actually get past the visual verification part of the registration process? How? Brute force?

[Xanth]

Do these bots actually get past the visual verification part of the registration process? How? Brute force?

Most of them automate the process and get through security like that rather easily.

[Stillwater]

No I feel like visual tests like captchas are still pretty effective; only very sophisiticated algorthms can read them; if they weren't effective at getting at least most of the spammers, then they wouldn't be in such popular use.

[catmeow]

Most of them automate the process and get through security like that rather easily.

So I assume they do some sort of image processing/recognition to get a best guess for the characters in the captcha image and try to register. If they fail, they just try again with a new captcha?

Although CAPTCHAs were originally designed to defeat standard OCR software designed for document scanning, a number of research projects have proven that it is possible to defeat many CAPTCHAs with programs that are specifically tuned for a particular type of CAPTCHA. For CAPTCHAs with distorted letters, the approach typically consists of the following steps:

Removal of background clutter, for example with color filters and detection of thin lines.
Segmentation, i.e. splitting the image into segments containing a single letter.
Identifying the letter for each segment.

[catmeow]

No I feel like visual tests like captchas are still pretty effective; only very sophisiticated algorthms can read them; if they weren't effective at getting at least most of the spammers, then they wouldn't be in such popular use.

I'm guessing in the spam community there is now software around with OCR capabilities to defeat some captchas?

[Stillwater]

Yes, some image processing algorthms similar to what adobe uses can get captchas, but these still have a low success rate and require dozens of tries to get one generally, and not all spammers use such tools.

It isn't an iron roadblock, but it is a pretty big speed bump to hold back some of the flood.

[purpleTiger]

Not being able to get on lately has been annoying, but as this forum can be addictive it motivates me more to do things. Like while I'm waiting for the page to load, I can do the dishes or put washing on

[Stillwater]

Yeah that is me too, lol... I am looking after moderation between other tasks, as the site loads at various times. But hopefully we will have more contiguous up time in the future for you guys.

[Bedeekin]

I've just killed about 250 spammers.

I do notice that when I'm the only one spam killing the site loads up quickly.

[Lionheart]

I've just killed about 250 spammers.

I do notice that when I'm the only one spam killing the site loads up quickly.

Good Job! 

They like to gang up on a single Moderator.

This is why we needed you and IAB so badly now.

We were losing the battle! 

I would come on in the morning and see about 20-40 posts that had to be removed! 

[O.O.P]

Hello everyone,

I am a user in this forum for a long time. I havern'T post any massage to this forum for a long time as well. And ofcourse I didn't do any spam attack. But when I click to the astralpulse.com link, this writes on the page:

"An Error Has Occurred!

Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!
spam"

And I can't enter to the forum and read any post as well. I am writing this message from a proxy site. But it seems not working good as well.

Can anybody help me in this issue?