Re: coordinated spam attack on wikicreole.org and jspwiki.org

Janne Jalkanen wrote:
>> - Block edits from the source IP addrs that these came from
>> * Will adding SpamFilter patterns for the IPs do this?
>> (I'm guessing not, but thought I'd check to be sure)
>
> In 2.6, it does, kinda. 2.4 does not. However, I'm *so* going to 
> update the 2.6 spamfilter to prevent this kind of stuff asap.
>
>> - Do a CAPTCHA challenge during registration and/or page updating
>
> 2.6 does captcha *if* it suspects the page is spam. It would not help 
> in this case.

Glad to hear that 2.6 has some capabilities in these areas. It does 
leave some sites in a bit of a bind, though. (Do I want to run on a 
version blessed as being production-ready, or one that provides the spam 
controls that most production sites will need?)

>> - Validate a user's email address during registration (by sending
>> it a code that they must subsequently provide back)
>
> I don't know how this would help, since the bot can register as well.

I think it could help if combined with a way to blacklist registrations 
from certain email address patterns. So for example, if we see that all 
of the spam users are registering with [email protected] addresses, we 
could blacklist spammer.com. Currently, even if that capability existed, 
the spammer could just put in whatever email address they wanted (since 
there will be no validation step). With the validation step in place, at 
least they'd have to keep coming up with new email addresses/domains to use.

Thanks,
Jamey