[RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

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/a3
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by /a3 »

With regards to Q&A, it's possible to see if your question is on XRumer's list (XRumer is a popular forum spamming program).

You can download the trial of their program from their website (I would suggest not running any executables though). I used a fake email address to download it.

Last time I checked they had a file which had a few thousand questions/answers in it. There's probably a lot more in it now though. It's only a matter of time before someone uses the file to automatically check if a Q&A is safe or not... ;)
$ git commit -m "YOLO"

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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by Pony99CA »

ecwpa wrote:So, Q&A without defaults is the way to go.
Probably, but you might want to read the hammered by newly registered members topic on phpBB.com. Q&A isn't as safe as it was before.

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brunoais
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by brunoais »

I think this is something we need while doing this:
Stef775 wrote:Why can't we log which question is answered right by a spammer, so you know the broken question
(source: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... #p13201422)

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brunoais
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by brunoais »

K'ay. I got an idea that just might work.

So... What is the thing that all these forum "spammers" do? They register, activate and then start spamming. Right?

There's one interesting thing in here. There's seems to be an interesting pattern in the posts they make.
Sounds like, for all these users, they do not make any useful post (we can think of 3 posts, just to be sure) before they start spamming.

We could make a message checker system that would work with the same idea as thunderbird's message evaluator (it uses it to evaluate if an e-mail is junk or not).

Code: Select all

For each post from a user with less than 4 posts post:
	var words = break the post into individual words.
	var urls = also we look for all urls
	var urlImages = also we look for all urls that are images.	

	Foreach (words as word)
		Evaluate the probability that that word is related to spam.
		Compare it to the previous one
		Compare it to the next one
		Associate a number to it. (That number is the probability that that word is related to spam).
	
	Then do the same about the urls.
	Then do the same about the image urls.
	The objective is to see if it contains words like buy or it's a bit.ly (or something like that)
	
	Then gather the final result. It is a number between 0% and 100% (we can use other scales, if it makes sense)
	
	Using a threshold, we can then separate what to do with that post.
This is kinda resource heavy but it seems to be quite effective. At least with thunderbird, it works like a charm to me!

We can do this in a more accurate and strict way in the form to contact the admins.
We create a form that, while the user is not in a "accepted" state (has, at least, 3 accepted posts, or so) his request to the admins is filtered. Only certain kind of stuff is allowed.

Yeah... bots can go through these protections but they can only pass with content they don't want to insert. All these bots seem to be only interested into placing ads of some sort. Ads have patters. We may gain something in here! This will not prevent spam but it will prevent the kind of spam all these bots want to place in the BB's.

What do you think?

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callumacrae
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by callumacrae »

brunoais wrote:K'ay. I got an idea that just might work.

So... What is the thing that all these forum "spammers" do? They register, activate and then start spamming. Right?

There's one interesting thing in here. There's seems to be an interesting pattern in the posts they make.
Sounds like, for all these users, they do not make any useful post (we can think of 3 posts, just to be sure) before they start spamming.

We could make a message checker system that would work with the same idea as thunderbird's message evaluator (it uses it to evaluate if an e-mail is junk or not).

Code: Select all

For each post from a user with less than 4 posts post:
	var words = break the post into individual words.
	var urls = also we look for all urls
	var urlImages = also we look for all urls that are images.	

	Foreach (words as word)
		Evaluate the probability that that word is related to spam.
		Compare it to the previous one
		Compare it to the next one
		Associate a number to it. (That number is the probability that that word is related to spam).
	
	Then do the same about the urls.
	Then do the same about the image urls.
	The objective is to see if it contains words like buy or it's a bit.ly (or something like that)
	
	Then gather the final result. It is a number between 0% and 100% (we can use other scales, if it makes sense)
	
	Using a threshold, we can then separate what to do with that post.
This is kinda resource heavy but it seems to be quite effective. At least with thunderbird, it works like a charm to me!

We can do this in a more accurate and strict way in the form to contact the admins.
We create a form that, while the user is not in a "accepted" state (has, at least, 3 accepted posts, or so) his request to the admins is filtered. Only certain kind of stuff is allowed.

Yeah... bots can go through these protections but they can only pass with content they don't want to insert. All these bots seem to be only interested into placing ads of some sort. Ads have patters. We may gain something in here! This will not prevent spam but it will prevent the kind of spam all these bots want to place in the BB's.

What do you think?
They will simply start duplicating old topics (such as introduction or GD topics) for a few topics before spamming. It won't work on small forums, but it will on bigs ones where the moderators don't read every single post.

Also, instead of doing this ourselves, why not just use Akismet?
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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by Pony99CA »

callumacrae wrote:Also, instead of doing this ourselves, why not just use Akismet?
:lol: I was going to ask the same thing myself. It sounds like brunoais is just trying to reinvent the spam filter. That's why E-mail spammers started including random snippets of prose (to lower their spamminess).

On another topic, does anybody know if spambots like Xrumer accept cookies?

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callumacrae
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by callumacrae »

Pony99CA wrote:On another topic, does anybody know if spambots like Xrumer accept cookies?
They would if they had to
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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by Pony99CA »

callumacrae wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:On another topic, does anybody know if spambots like Xrumer accept cookies?
They would if they had to
Sure, but I'm wondering if they do now. If not, phpBB could probably set a random cookie on the Registration Agreement page and check that it was set on the Registration form page. If it wasn't set, display an error.

Yes, that would prevent people who turn cookies off from registering, but they could easily turn cookies on.

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Re: [RFC] stop distributing worthless CAPTCHAS in 3.1

Post by Oleg »

Pony99CA wrote: If not, phpBB could probably set a random cookie on the Registration Agreement page and check that it was set on the Registration form page. If it wasn't set, display an error.
It is so trivial to read/forward cookies that doing anything like this is very much pointless.

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Master_Cylinder
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Remove broken captcha options...

Post by Master_Cylinder »

Since spambots have defeated most of the captcha options, shouldn't those broken options be removed from the core so new admins don't select a method that doesn't work?


Discuss... :D
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