Spam bot invasion

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Revision as of 25 August 2017 at 16:47.
The highlighted comment was created in this revision.

Spam bot invasion

Hi Skilgannon,

I think you have page deletion permission. We need it, since there are hundreds of spam pages whcih appeared on wiki today.

May be there is a way to get such permissions to new crop of users. Looks like many previously active advanced users are not here anymore.

    Beaming (talk)01:05, 24 August 2017

    An admin can mass-cleanup the spam by using Special:Nuke on suspicious users from Special:ActiveUsers, as well as suspicious edits from Special:RecentChanges.

    In the light of this, I would like to nominate User:Beaming and User:Cb for admin rights.

    Skilgannon's email can be found in Contacts.

    More discussion on this attack can be found here and here.

    More suggestions:

    • IP-ban these bozos.
    • Do some of the stuff mentioned here.
    • Merge all spam accounts together so we can keep track of them more easily.
    • Delete/hide spam entries from Special:RecentChanges.
      MultiplyByZer0 (talk)03:25, 24 August 2017

      I also nominating User:MultiplyByZer0 because of active presence at wiki and a lot of clean up effort coming from this user.

        Beaming (talk)14:27, 24 August 2017
         
        Edited by author.
        Last edit: 14:52, 26 August 2017

        Current time: 2017-08-25T02:29:49.958Z Spammers left to go: 220

          MultiplyByZer0 (talk)03:38, 24 August 2017

          Thanks for listing those bot! I think we should take action as soon as possible, e.g. disable account creation and delete spam accounts.

          Then may be we should try to add some CAPTCHA for new users?

            Xor (talk)07:57, 24 August 2017

            I made CAPTCHA suggestions here.

            I believe it is possible that these spammers are not bots, but low-paid humans working in huge "spam farms". A registration CAPTCHA should therefore require at least basic knowledge of Robocode (e.g. name one sample bot).

            In any case, nothing is going to happen until Skilgannon wakes up.

              MultiplyByZer0 (talk)09:37, 24 August 2017

              Great ideas! Thank you for your effort!

                Cb (talk)11:22, 24 August 2017
                 

                Yes registration only CAPTCHA can be easily skipped by low paid humans, however it seems that the spams are created by machines — therefore adding a CAPTCHA when creating/editing pages for new users may help ;)

                  Xor (talk)01:21, 25 August 2017

                  Given that every new spam user posts about 3 pages and then stop, I would say that bots hacked the CAPTCHA algorithm.

                  I think we should make registration harder and then we will be fine.

                    Beaming (talk)01:36, 25 August 2017
                     
                     
                     

                    I have blocked and deleted the pages of the following entries. (Move them to a bottom list or something?)

                    Abdul
                    Abhi2828
                    Abhishek.upadhyay11
                    Adamsmith
                    Ahmad1234
                    Ahmadd123
                    Ajaykapadia2
                    Akki
                    Alex
                    Alexa
                    Alexdogge1
                    Alexyokei
                    Alhaji
                    Amit8923
                    Andoralifs
                    Andrusmith1
                    Anisingh
                    Anjilajolia
                    Anjilajoliaa
                    ANNU17
                    Anshu01
                    Araja
                    Asdasd
                    Ashish12345
                    Ashish786786
                    Astrologerbaba16
                    Avisupport
                    Baba786
                    Bisafepa
                    Bitcoinsssupport
                    Blizzardbluee
                    Bookentry
                    Bradyswan
                    Brandi84
                    Bujelizala
                    Caira
                    Caleb
                    Cbkjvjvkd
                    Chorsupport
                    Chunnu7294383gulabo
                    Cooljass1
                    Cuwerokume
                    Cybertechnisdhhdh
                    Dabbu
                    Dante
                    Dasfgs
                    Dear
                    Depih12
                    Dev123
                    Dexter6789
                    Dfasffasf
                    Dfgvfgvfsd5
                    Dfjhfgj
                    Dfsdf
                    Dgdfhfgjhfgh
                    Dhanraj99
                    Dinni999
                    Dk923478
                    Dolka01
                    Dpkapadia1
                    Dsgdfhg
                    Dsgsdhjfe
                    Dykywipy
                    Ellis S Skinner
                    Emma000001
                    Emmawatson
                    Emmie2680
                    Engineer123
                    Ergugfdguf
                    Eswt
                    Faer
                    Fairsearches.pradeep
                    Faisal
                    Faulkner
                    Fdbhdf525
                    Fibarip
                    Frankgel
                    Fransis99
                    Fullsupport
                    Gakllerjohn
                    Gattu
                    Ghfdhfg
                    Ghufgt567121
                    Gibson
                    Ginjuilinhj
                    Gk707027
                    Gofyozilto
                    Gopalamj
                    Gtrtgum
                    Guwogepome
                    Hajsfdjorkgpgk12
                    Harryji
                    Hemantvar
                    Herry9
                    Ginjuilinhj
                      Chase03:20, 25 August 2017

                      Hi Chase,

                      Could you please revert back Help:Editing?

                        Beaming (talk)04:56, 25 August 2017
                         
                          Beaming (talk)14:54, 25 August 2017
                           
                           

                          Okay, it looks like GrubbmGait and Voidious are blocking spam accounts, and account creation has been disabled.

                          We still need to fix the main page, though.

                            MultiplyByZer0 (talk)20:22, 24 August 2017

                            I have located the main page here: http://robowiki.net/wiki/$$_1-855-665-7666@_HP_Service_Phone_Number_HP_Service_Phone_Number_Support_Number0572

                            Unfortunately, I do not have permissions to move it back.

                              MultiplyByZer0 (talk)20:33, 24 August 2017
                               

                              Thanks everyone for jumping in here! I turned off account creation again (for now), blocked a bunch of accounts, and mass deleted the pages they created. Also restored the Main Page (thanks for pointing to it!). I'll continue later, but I am a little busy at work atm / today...

                              We have faced a lot of wiki spam - we have Captcha on account creation, some custom anti-spam code, no anonymous edits. But eventually we just fell too far behind. Like MultiplyByZero said, I think these may be a mix of bots and real people. Surely we could get to a decent setup with upgrading MediaWiki and finding the right plugins, we just never made time (yet).

                              And yeah, I'd love to discuss getting a new admin or two on board! We haven't added anybody new in a while and indeed all the current ones are sort of retired.

                                Voidious (talk)20:56, 24 August 2017

                                Thanks a lot User:Voidious, User:GrubbmGait, and User:Chase-san for cleaning the wiki. Special thanks to User:MultiplyByZer0 for tracking spamming users.

                                  Beaming (talk)04:22, 25 August 2017
                                   

                                  I have been through all the accounts of the 'Active users list' and Mass deleted and blocked the appropriate accounts. Seems that all New created pages are deleted at this moment. In that active users list still some spammers are listed, but they did more subtle things like minor edits and moving pages. Someone with a bit more knowlegde of wiki-stuff should go through their contributions and try to erase those.

                                    GrubbmGait (talk)17:33, 25 August 2017

                                    Thanks for this colossal work. I've seen you deleting non stop for at least an hour.

                                    Would you be able to revert some important pages as well? They are listed above this thread in reply to Chase-san.

                                      Beaming (talk)17:36, 25 August 2017

                                      Talk:Main Page has been restored afaik. But for the other two, without knowing where they went, it is hard for me to revert them.

                                        GrubbmGait (talk)17:47, 25 August 2017