Those of you that read blogs regularly have probably noticed a recent increase in the amount of SPAM showing up in blogs. Our team has been doing a great job of removing it as soon as it appears, so maybe you've been lucky enough to miss it. In the meantime, our development team has been working on various technical solutions to stop the influx.
We first assumed this was a typical, automated (bot) spamming effort, but when we employed normal countermeasures, they didn't work (honeypots and CAPTCHA for those keeping score at home). Based on that, we started to suspect the attack was not automated. Then, based on some new evidence we stumbled on last night, we are now confident that we are being hit by a network of human spammers (sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie). Doing a bit of research indicates that this is a new and growing trend. Here's one link where you can read more about it (I promise this isn't a site for erectile dysfunction or cheap fat loss pills, but it may cause your eyes to glaze over if you are geek-averse):
What is really startling is that it is supposedly cost effective (i.e. profitable) for people to spend time creating bogus email accounts, registering on our web site, opening an email, clicking a validation link, logging in, and then posting a blog with a link to some questionable product, only to have us come along zap their account. I can understand bots, but real people slogging through this over and over only to have it deleted? Amazing that someone can actually make money doing this.
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I'm sure a solution will be found, until the spammers tactics change again, then another solution will be found ect. ect.
The spam problem kind of reminds me of the Alt and Bot wars in MSN chat rooms about 10 years ago.
First came what we called worms, the had nicks like ....'..."10...'..." , accomplished by modifying the NULL value in MSN source code and mirroring it on a IRC site. MSN killed that one, then came black bot, a few more I forget that MSN also eliminated.
Next up was a site in Norway, Odin with there unkickable bot, eliminated also.
Eventually Viper bot was created by a group in the UAE, MSN never completely eliminated it, except in their monitored chats.
The Alt's mainly used faking nicks or spys to get hosted in a room and take it over. The bots described above where used to counter them but they could also be used to gain control of chat rooms.
All of that made for some real interesting evenings in those days.
August 13, 2009 at 5:07 p.m.Actually, if you want to get sofistomacadeeeed.
You could hook up a camera to read the screen, using a program to go around that little trick. I'm not going to elaborate for obvious reasons. Back in 93' we went through every senario that we could imagine.
In fact my computer tech superviser went on to work for Netscape; and then became head of the computer science department of a large Texas university. He doesn't write, or call; you know the story.
Anyway, most of this crap gets by; using the same tricks others use. I got on the internet in the 80's before browsers, I'm not going to elaborate.
Anyways, wait until holographic chips are common place; then you better damn well have bio chip protection protocals.
My spelling sucks, but all you really need to know online is 010001101110, ta ta.
I'm still a little pisses about the twitter crap, really they couldn't do something better with their time; like save the world or something.
August 13, 2009 at 4:47 p.m.Exactly... that's the thing I was referring to called "CAPTCHA". ("Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart"... I swear I didn't make that up! ;)
August 13, 2009 at 3:54 p.m.Interesting, I guess one advantage to using real people instead of a bot is that real people can get by the "enter the letters above to verify your a real person" thing.
August 13, 2009 at 3:45 p.m.