Changing Registration URL for IPB

[Petru]

Hey Guys.

I'm hoping someone will be able to help me out with this.
I'd like to change the default User Registration URL for my Forum,
The reason I need to do this is because over the past month I'm getting 25K+ views per day from Spam Bots trying to register on the forum.

I have been thinking of a solution to this issue for quite a while now and It's really driving me up the wall, The Server keeps Hanging/Crashing and SQL
Database sometimes Crashes too. the forum is not very active. it's simply a small support forum for Clients, the monthly bandwidth on the account is 22GB and counting.
so i figured the only way I'm going to stop this is if I change the Registration URL because that is where the spam bots go first.

The Spam Filters are set pretty high so they don't usually end up getting past it. but the fact that I'm getting thousands of registration attempts from thousands of different IP's is a big issue
And something that the Server Security can't fix.

This is the only logical solution i can think of. If someone has a better Idea please share it with me.

Regards,
Petru

[steve00]

have you set question and answer in admincp ?

are you using ips spam filter ?

[TwistedMerlin]

He's already mentioned the spam filters are preventing registration, what he wants is to prevent the ips from hitting his board altogether.

The only thing I can think of is .htaccess but if its thousands of ips it could be a hell of a task.

OP are the ips all coming from similar ranges?

[Petru]

Hi Steve00

As I said. The users are not registering. The spam filter is fine. The problem is that they are flooding the server with their connections 24/7. It's not a DDoS attack either as the requested URL that they are viewing is the registration page. They don't ever hit the home page. So the bots are programed to jump straight to the Registration page. I need to change it to a different URL so i can redirect the old one back out of the Forum so it's less pressure on the server.

[Petru]

Hi MerlinJay.

I've looked over the IP's really well to determine how to fix this issue. The problem is that there must be some kind of virus flying around which lets the spammers use their victims to attack servers. When someone floods the server I generally get info on their PC. Like their OS and Host Name etc. most of the IP's that our server blocks are things like (Jays-PC) or something like that and they come from all over the world. so htaccess is a bit useless because the there are thousands of IP's that it could come from. I could end up blocking the neighbor and not even know about it. I've set up cloudflare to hopefully reduce a majority of the connections but at the end of the day the only way to fix this is to change the registration URL because that's the only thing that the Bot's visit. I can't think of anything else.

[TwistedMerlin]

You could technically rename the register file and skin the new link in to your template, but I'm guessing that you'd also have to edit every function/call to that file.

Bare in mind I'm not a hundred percent sure on that, maybe you could message a member of staff and ask them to move your post to the feedback section so the devs have a better chance to see it.

[Petru]

MerlinJay.

I was thinking the exact same thing. But also figured I'd need to change many more files than just a "few" as you said. Best to talk to IPS directly I think.
They should include something like this in a future update. I'm sure many people like me would love something like this.

Thanks :)

[Birched]

If you are using apache and your clients are not in every country, you could try using something like this : http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/mod_geoip2/

This extension will allow you to terminate all connections from a given list of countries, or accept connections only from a list of countries. I have found that I get a lot of spam (and bot) connections from China, and blocking all Chinese IP addresses has been useful for us, given who uses our site. We have a lot of international use, so we've blocked only a few countries, but I know that there are sites who retail only in the US, for example, and block all non-US connections.

[Grumpy]

If you really want to change the address, one way would be to...

1. Block all requests that match registration page from your htaccess. Best to do this at webserver level and not your php.

2. Come up with a new URL. Preferably something simple and query based like /forums/index.php?registration=here

3. Update every instance where registration link is given to the new URL. Like in your templates. I imagine header/login/forgot password section is really only place it would exist.

4. In your index.php, at the very very top. Check if the query exists and is correct. If so, alter the server variables to make it like the real registration page.

Then in IPB's view, they came to the normal registration page. And your spambots get 403's.

I can't really come up with the actual code for this at this very moment... tired.