Author Topic: Spambot Rampage  (Read 22708 times)

Felderburg

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Spambot Rampage
« on: February 23, 2016, 05:06:03 PM »
So I went to the wiki, and noticed that the recent changes list is filled with spambot articles. I've also seen several mod deletions of spambots and their articles in the last few weeks. What's going on?
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LateNights

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2016, 05:24:49 PM »
You mean you missed the three pages of spam they had here yesterday?

All within an hour or so...
« Last Edit: February 23, 2016, 06:14:59 PM by LateNight »

Felderburg

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2016, 05:27:30 PM »
Apparently. Turns out the rampage is ongoing right now, as we type.
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame

Codewalker

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2016, 06:12:35 PM »
Thanks for pointing it out. The wiki is set to read-only, cleanup is ongoing and for now new user registration has been disabled.

Apologies to anyone who registered for a Titan account in the last couple days. It was impossible to separate the hundreds of spambot accounts from any real ones, so I locked out every account created in the last 2 days. If you got unintentionally swept up in it, you can use the 'reset password' feature to send an email to the address you registered with and unlock your account.

Blondeshell

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2016, 08:52:14 PM »
I discovered it yesterday afternoon and started going at blocking the accounts as they kept creating new ones. Once it finally stopped, I started going about deleting the spam posts -- manually, mind you. At least 80 different accounts and 1500 articles, first showing up late Sunday night, but hitting full-force Monday morning. I planned to work on it more tonight, so I'm glad an automated process took over. My mouse-clicking hand was getting preeetty sore.  :P

Codewalker

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2016, 09:28:48 PM »
I saw that in the recent changes when I went to search to see if there were any that I'd missed. Your name came up in the delete log with about 1500 entries and my jaw dropped a little...  :o

Vee

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2016, 12:19:21 AM »
Wait, you mean there's not one phone number you can call for everything ever?

On a positive note it did lead me to discover how useful the mark all as read button is.

Aggelakis

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2016, 12:23:26 AM »
On a positive note it did lead me to discover how useful the mark all as read button is.
I use this every day. It's so useful. I start at the thread list of "unread posts since last visit" (here). I read pretty much everything in new efforts, then poke my head into threads at random if they've got more than a few new posts (generally indicates excitement or conflict), then mark everything else read. Especially the forum games threads. Especially.
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eabrace

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2016, 12:42:04 AM »
...then mark everything else read. Especially the forum games threads. Especially.
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Felderburg

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2016, 01:47:58 AM »
Is there no captcha when people create a titan account? Or is there, and it's not working?
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame

Aggelakis

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2016, 02:12:08 AM »
No. You don't even have to put in a valid email address (there is no account confirmation/validation).
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JoshexProxy

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2016, 04:04:52 AM »
it was probably 4chan. they do this sorta thing as a game, they roll for a target from a list of wikis to decide which one they raid with mass spam edits. they also decide what text to use by rolling from a list of texts supplied by the people taking part in the raid.

it is monstrous of them, this is the kind of trolling I don't support.

Did they remove description text on enemy types? (I was looking at some the other day and noticed orange text saying there is no description. I also noticed some images weren't loading).

Felderburg

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #12 on: February 25, 2016, 05:01:23 AM »
Did they remove description text on enemy types? (I was looking at some the other day and noticed orange text saying there is no description. I also noticed some images weren't loading).

Unlikely, as they were mostly creating new pages. If you see orange "missing information" it's there so people know to edit the page and add in the missing info. Which images weren't loading?

Also, it likely wasn't 4chan, per TonyV's post about it.
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame

JoshexProxy

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2016, 03:25:08 AM »
Unlikely, as they were mostly creating new pages. If you see orange "missing information" it's there so people know to edit the page and add in the missing info. Which images weren't loading?

Also, it likely wasn't 4chan, per TonyV's post about it.

some of the AVs, not sure which ones now (and don't have time to go look at present), I was mainly crawling through the low level enemy group pages.

Felderburg

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #14 on: March 03, 2016, 06:34:56 PM »
It is possible that the images were never there to begin with: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Articles_Missing_Images
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame

Blondeshell

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #15 on: March 08, 2016, 10:08:41 PM »
Spammers are back. Starting to work now at shutting them down again...

Aggelakis

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #16 on: March 08, 2016, 10:37:12 PM »
Limited this time at least. Did they get around the new login restrictions somehow? Huh.
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Codewalker

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #17 on: March 08, 2016, 10:39:37 PM »
Probably by paying somebody in a third world country less than minimum wage to solve captchas and register dummy email accounts to send the confirmation to.

At least that takes longer to do, so it's easier to keep up with and they can't mass create hundreds at a time.

Sekoia

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #18 on: March 08, 2016, 11:10:54 PM »
They're using disposable email addresses. I'll try to update registration to block those today or tomorrow.

EDIT: Correction, only some are using disposable addresses. Others are using gmail/yahoo. Sigh.

Sekoia

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #19 on: March 08, 2016, 11:20:56 PM »
Okay, I found an alternate solution. I'm using the autoconfirmed feature. Users are now autconfirmed after 24 hours. Prior to that, accounts have the same lack of permissions as anonymous users. After that, accounts have the normal user permissions.

So spammers will have to wait a day to spam. If that doesn't work well enough, I can increase it to a week.