Hello all,

Robots posting spam signups and messages are driving me insane. They signup using some sort of spam script I assume and post obscene messages, viagra and gambling messages.

Is there a quick change I can make to the UBB program files to stop these spam-bots? I would love some simple change in the signup and posting pages to make the spam-bots incompatible with my tweaked board.

Thanks for any assistance. If I figure out anything, I'll post it of course.

What version (and script) are you using?

First I'd make sure flood protection is turned on, then email verification is on for new registrations.

Hi AllenAyres,

Thanks for replying. I'm using UBB.classic 6.7.2 with flood protection on.

A lot of my members are very computer un-savvy, and they have trouble with the signup process. Quite unlike the skill-level of UBBDev members...so, email verification is beyond most of them.

Is there a change to the GET or POST line in a UBB script that will allow me to universally change the name of the "submit" variable involved, so that pre-made spam scripts fail?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Here, BTW, is a logfile of the attack, if that helps (note the 404 errors at the start)

Host: 212.174.151.117

/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Http Code: 404 Date: Aug 19 03:58:35 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 20459
Referer: http://mysite.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

//mysite.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Http Code: 404 Date: Aug 19 03:58:39 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 20445
Referer: http://mysite.com//mysite.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

//mysite.com//mysite.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Http Code: 404 Date: Aug 19 03:58:47 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 20448
Referer: http://mysite.com//mysite.com//mysite.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/forum/1.html
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 03:58:59 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 55821
Referer: http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/forum/1.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=register_page&submit=agree
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 03:59:28 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 33067
Referer: http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=register_page&submit=agree
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/ubb/login.html
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 04:00:00 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 23817
Referer: http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/ubb/login.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 04:00:06 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 22081
Referer: http://mysite.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 04:00:12 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 55820
Referer: http://mysite.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/1.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=newtopic;f=1
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 04:00:21 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 43071
Referer: http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=newtopic;f=1
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 04:00:28 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 22321
Referer: http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=newtopic;f=1
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/1992.html
Http Code: 302 Date: Aug 19 04:00:32 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 0
Referer: http://mysite.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/1992.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/1992.html
Http Code: 200 Date: Aug 19 04:00:40 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 42784
Referer: http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/1992.html
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

hmmm.. email verification just sends the new users a link to click on, should be pretty simple if they are able to post in a forum Barring that about your only choice is to turn on registration moderation and approve each new user.

I'm not so sure about changing the post or get variables, everything is so interconnected. You may consider moving to threads, threads has an http referrer check that will only allow posts from within the actual forum, not sent from a spambot off-site

The main problem with Email verification these days are spam filters had to turn mine back on due to the script spammers as well.