Anti-spambot security suggestion and couple of other things

[Gwarsbane]

As of late the forums I help admin at has been getting at least 5 to 8 spambots a week, on mondays we're usually hit with 3 or 4 of them.

I'm not quite sure how the php back end works with the database so this is something that might work to help keep out the bots, would be to randomize the number thats given to each section thats gets created.

Give it a say 10 number and letter reference code. So instead of the very first section being "index.php?showforum=1" it would be something like "index.php?showforum=4B7wJ2jaiJ"

The bots goto certain numbers to post in them. If they can't find the certain numbers then they can't post. I don't think they would be able to create a bot that searched for an odd number/letter cause it would just take too much processing power on the bot users end to do something like that because every forums thread numbers would be different from every other thread number out there. Something like this would create something like 3,656,158,440,062,976 different combos for letters and numbers for each posting section (36 to the power of 10)

Not impossable for a programmer to get a bot to do that, but would make the spammers cpu work that much harder. And toss in one more little trick on the bots. If it fails to pick a correct thread number more then 3 times in a row, it automatically puts them into a possible bot group which has 0 posting abilities. This way the admins can do what they want with it. Leave it there or move it into the members group (just incase its a real person thats just not too bright and putting in the numbers instead of clicking on the links).


Updating the Captcha code would be good for short term but the bot makers will figure it out again quickly. And its not really possible to keep changing it every week or month to keep a head of the bots. Something like the above might help out in the longer term.

If the bots are just lookin for "index.php?showforum", using the 3 error message move suggestion could be used then. have it do something like "if 3 error messages happen and user has less then 10 posts then move them into the possible bot group and inform admins" Maybe even have it so that a specific admin or number of admins are contacted via PM. Or even just have it post a message to a specific forum (that the admins set up) about a the user being moved into that group.



Another idea that would be nice would be to have the report message to have different send to options. Right now when a report on a thread is made all admins are sent a PM. Well even though we have many admins, not all of them need to get that message.

Having options to have reports sent to either, all admins (and any other groups selected) or no PMs at all.

Or specify certain people by putting in their names. Maybe to a max of 10 people.

Or post in a specific section (that the admins specify). When a report is made it would check to see if a post by the same name is made and if it is, it will post all other reports in that thread. And the thread title could easily be made up of something like "Post #, in thread #, in section # reported"

Or if say all admins, 2 peoples names and thread post is selected it will PM all the admins and the 2 people and post in that thread.


Reason I am suggesting something like this is because currently how its set up when more then one person reports a thread the admins get a few report messages about the same thing. Recently on the forums I help admin at I was pmed with 6 reports about the same thread. I don't really need to be PMed for that I would prefer to see a message in the admin section we have. Also all the other admins get spammed with it, and some only show up every few days so they can get blasted with 10 or more reported threads, depending on the number of bots and/or jerks we have that week.



Hope all of that made some kind of sense. I kind of rambled, but thats mostly because I hate spambots. :)