Damn bots

[nrc]

Sorry, we're currently under attack by bots. No idea why they're bothering with us but thousands of bots are trying to send thousands of posts and private messages. I believe all the posts and messages are failing. Please let me know if you see any SPAM messages on the forum.

Unfortunately all this activity is overloading the system and we may get taken offline in the process until I can block these things. Sorry about that.

[Off Camber]

Well that was no fun. To stop the torrent of bad bots I had to block large groups of IP addresses that originate from countries where such misbehavior is permitted. Hopefully I didn't screw up and block anyone real.

If you hear of anyone having trouble accessing the site please let me know.

[SteveH]

Thanks, boss

[devilmaster]

i was noticing that we have like 10000 users online atm... :saywhat:

Is this AI trying to learn more about FTG? :tony:

[nrc]

Got us again. Looks like I'm going to have to block more IPs.

So stupid. They're just trying to blindly spam us but every attempt fails because they're not logged in and have no approved accounts. Just the traffic is still enough to cause problems.

[Off Camber]

I've lowered the session inactivity timeout to from 20 minutes to 10 to try to clean up their blocked sessions more quickly. You will get idle timed out quicker now. Sorry. Not sure if the "remember me" option at login solves that.

[devilmaster]

finally down to 403 'guests'. hopefully the worst is over....

[nrc]

Things have definitely quieted down. Not sure how much of that is because they've gone elsewhere and how much is because I've blocked about 150 networks where they were coming from.

[nrc]

Argh. They're back.

[devilmaster]

Less than 250 when I logged in about an hour and a half after you posted.... got em again this round

[edit] nvrmnd. 2200 when i went back.. Is it just a mass attack trying to find vulnerabilities?

[SteveH]

What is their end game? As if anyone here knows.... But I fail to see the value of attacking this site.

[nrc]

What is their end game? As if anyone here knows.... But I fail to see the value of attacking this site.

I'm not sure. It doesn't appear that they're probing vulnerabilities specifically. It looked like they were attempting to post but I think they may just be hitting the links blindly as the crawl. So they may just be obnoxious bots except for the scale of it, the fact that they are pretending to be actual browsers rather than bots, and the fact that they completely disregard the robots.txt entries that tell them not to do what they're doing.

There was a recent vBulletin vulnerability so maybe they're doing reconnaissance for that, but that only appears to affect more recent versions of vBulletin.

:irked:

[TravelGal]

but that only appears to affect more recent versions of vBulletin. :irked:

:laugh::laugh: So obsolescence has its place?

[nrc]

:laugh::laugh: So obsolescence has its place?

We'll call it well tested. :)