My Guestbook is being spammed (Full Version)

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JohnLearner -> My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 16:50:18)

My Guestbook at http://www.handscombes.com/gb.htm is being spammed every few minutes by a robot from Russia - I have had to close it and put in a replacement page explaining to visitors what's happening.

I moved the Guestbook to http://www.handscombes.com/gstbk.htm in the hope that the robot would not find the new URL. Within a very minutes, it was spamming again despite the fact there there are *no* links to that page!

Though I don't understand how it works technically, obviously the robot will find a Guestbook wherever I put it on the site. Does anyone have a solution to this, please?

Thanks in advance,

John.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 17:15:18)

Any logs we can look at? Can you use .htaccess?



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 17:39:35)

Where would the logs be, Bob? Can you use .htaccess - huh? Sorry - I *am* a learner...



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 17:45:05)

OK, I've been doing a bit of quick reading here: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml - now I see why you asked me about it. :)

OK, I need to do a bit more studying on this - as my name implies, I'm always willing to learn...

This looks pretty relevant: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess5.shtml - I'll be looking into it more tomorrow & get back to you...

John.



jaybee -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 18:46:24)

John, it's the same piece of s*** who was hitting my forums (and many others) On a host called boom . ru.

I got round it by putting a hack into the php but I have no idea how to do the same with an FP generated book.

If anyone has any good ideas on how to shut these guys down then please post them. So far they're teflon coated.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 19:22:53)

John, no worries, we will get through this.

Logs are what your server should show. Basically whenever something happens, it gets logged. Some web hosts allow you to view these logs, others do not.

Basically, we need to know what the IP addresses are that this person is using to spam your guestbook. Then we deny those IP addresses from going to your website.
------
After looking at the links you posted, you seem to have answered your own question [:)]

Create a file in your public_html/www/home directory and name it .htaccess

Inside this file, insert:
order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.2.1
allow from all

Where 192.168.2.1 is the IP address of the person trying to spam your guestbook.

Also, if you notice the IPs are:
192.168.2.1
192.168.2.13
192.168.2.8
192.168.2.14

Then you can use this:
order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.2.
allow from all

Or you could use:
order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.2.1
deny from 192.168.2.13
deny from 192.168.2.8
deny from 192.168.2.14
allow from all

Also, you may want to test this too. Grab a friend, find out their IP (you can tell them to goto ipchicken.com to find it, or another way) and paste their IP in the .htaccess file. Have them visit your site to test it.



Andrew888 -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (2/28/2005 20:56:05)

Add a picture with letters (im sure youve seen this when signing up for forums) that the guest MUST type out to sign the guest book. The "bot" cant read the letters because in HTML it will not say the letters, just the picture name..



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 10:05:47)

Here's one solution suggested to me by my host, ADDR.com: http://www.junkeater.com/

It looks cool, but apparently doesn't work with FP extensions: http://www.junkeater.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=42

Since I use the FP extensions on the site concerned, I'm looking into Bobby's very helpful explanation of how to proceed.

Bobby, ADDR.com are OK with .htaccess files, so I've uploaded a file called h.htaccess - WinXP won't let me call it simply .htaccess

I've put this text in:-

order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.2.1
deny from 192.168.2.13
deny from 192.168.2.8
deny from 192.168.2.14
allow from all

Is that correct, please?



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 10:10:21)

jaybee, try Junkeater. It's free, though you have to register. It's got a Forum if you need it for installation help. :)

Andrew, I like your idea. Is it easy to do? I mean, putting the image file there is simple enough, but is there any special script needed to verify that the visitor has typed in the correct characters?

Thanks (and to Bobby!),

John.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 10:22:02)

John, once you upload the file, rename it to .htaccess.

.htaccess

Is the entire name of the file. Test it out, tell us how it works.



jaybee -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 10:35:23)

quote:

we need to know what the IP addresses are


That's the problem, they keep changing. As soon as one gets blocked they're back on another one. I went down the blocking route and I was in there twice a week adding another one.

JOHN!!! If there is an htaccess file in there already take a copy of it before you make any changes.

If you haven't got it right your site will vanish.

Thanks for the Junkeater link but I don't need it. My hack to PHPBB is working beautifully.



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 10:47:37)

OK, jaybee, I've taken note of what you said. Thanks for the tip.

Bobby, I'm logged directly into the site now, but it still won't accept that change of name to the file...



dpf -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 10:54:57)

is .htaccess apache only?



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 14:07:40)

He is running Apache 1.3.33. Be back shortly.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/1/2005 14:29:05)

Ok back for a bit. If you already have a .htaccess file, you cannot rename the b.htaccess to .htaccess.

What you will have to do is edit the current .htaccess file in your home directory and add the code you posted earlier.

Jaybee said the IP addresses were never the same, so if this is your case, using .htaccess will not help, unless you know the IP ranges.



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/2/2005 6:17:41)

Hi, Bobby,

Whatever I've done seems to have worked - the Russian robot has stopped posting! :)

Just out of interest, how did you find its IP addresses? I looked in the HTML, but couldn't see any.

You said: "Ok back for a bit. If you already have a .htaccess file, you cannot rename the b.htaccess to .htaccess.

What you will have to do is edit the current .htaccess file in your home directory and add the code you posted earlier." I couldn't change it, either in my home directory (on my PC) or when logged in to the server, but if the Russians have stopped posting, then so be it.

From what I've learnt here, I understand the implications of what Jaybee said about IP addresses - I see how .htaccess works now.

Another bit of knowledge under the belt!

Thanks to you all (but I may be back if things get rough again out there... ;).

John.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/2/2005 11:40:23)

It wouldn't be inside the HTML, it would be inside of the logs for your server. I would contact your host and try to figure out what the IPs were. If you know when the posts were made from the spammer, you can figured out what IPs were on your site during that time.



jaybee -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/2/2005 12:19:14)

quote:

I see how .htaccess works now.


It does a lot more than that. Permanent redirects being another pretty useful function.

Do a google for htaccess and you'll find some pretty good explanations of the capabilities. However, like I said before, you only have to have a line break in the wrong place in one of the statements and your entire site vanishes. You need to be very careful and always take a copy first.

You should check your control panel, mine has an option to edit .htaccess on it.



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/2/2005 17:37:58)

jaybee,

I mentioned http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml at the start of this Topic, and I'd recommend anyone who wants to know more about .htaccess to have a look there.

Between looking at that site, and help from Bobby & yourself, I've advanced well. I realise that .htaccess does a lot more than just block unwelcome robots. It's very useful knowledge...

Bobby,

My host is www.addr.com - they're fine, but I can't seem to get into my logs there. I'll have to contact them.

Regards,

John.



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/9/2005 10:27:00)

The problem's resolved - no more attacks! Thanks to you all for your help.

John.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/9/2005 11:34:07)

Did the people just get lazy or did you fix the issue?



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (3/9/2005 12:13:05)

As it was probably a robot, I guess I fixed it, Bobby.

I'm quite busy, so I didn't want to spend any more time on it anyway, and I've learned about .htaccess, so that's great.




JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/12/2005 10:43:00)

Well, it's all started again last week - really a blitz of spams - so I've had to close the Guestbook. All my host could do was recommend http://www.junkeater.com/ , but it doesn't work with FP extensions. I've ascertained that now.

The .htaccess solution is not that easy to use, especially as I can't seem to get into the log files of my host to find out the IP addresses of the spammers... (I'm changing host next year!). ;)

Bravenet is a service I like, so I've created one of their Guestbooks for now ( http://pub3.bravenet.com/guestbook/244109370 ), but of course popups are the problem.

I'm willing to pay a bit, so I may upgrade with them. If not, does anyone know of a good customizable guestbook service at a reasonable rate, preferably with an IP banning utility? (Which Bravenet does offer).

Thanks,

John.



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/12/2005 10:53:20)

I should add that I've been googling to see what's available - obviously the choice is pretty big. It's a question of sorting the wheat from the chaff, so what I need really is a recommendation, perhaps from one of you that has used or is using a guestbook service and therefore know it's OK.

Or... How can I create a guestbook in FP2000 (using FP Extensions) that I can protect from spam, without using the default one? I s'pose that the Form Page Wizard may be the way to go...??

John.



dpf -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/12/2005 11:22:53)

are the spammers adding email addresses or url's? is that something you allow your regular guests to add? If not, you could use javascript to validate the entries before submision and eliminate any post with either:
@ or www. or any combo of:
.com, .net, .etc
just a thought



jeepless -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/12/2005 11:58:54)

John... One of my clients ran into the same problem you're having with spam in the FP guestbook. They didn't have an .htaccess file to work with since they're hosted on a Windows server, so I had to find another solution. I did some experimenting with the "file format" setting for my client's guestbook and found one that SEEMS to have eliminated their spam problem. It was just a matter of changing the file format setting for the guestbook to use the "Formatted text within HTML" option instead of FP's default. Look at my recent post under Guestbook formatting to see what I'm talking about.

Frankly, I don't know if this change truly fixed the problem or if the spam bots simply left on their own. My client's spam bots were also coming from Russia, but he hasn't seen them since we changed the file format. Common sense would tell me that this simple change shouldn't have fixed the problem, although it should help since any links left behind would just be text and not active links. But oddly enough the spam bots went away just as soon as we changed this setting.

Try making the same change to your guestbook. I'd be very interested to know if it cures the problem. My client's spam bots went away but I really don't know if it was purely by coincedence or if it had something to do with changing the file format setting. I guess it's worth a shot....

Richard



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/12/2005 12:51:15)

Hi, Richard,

I've done what you suggested at http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/fb.asp?m=262826 and tried to upload the Guestbook to http://www.handscombes.com/gstbk.htm

Can you believe it? My FP is not uploading properly today - very strange. But I can fix that, and I'll let you know in due course how your remedy works...

Thanks a million,

John.



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/14/2005 8:36:43)

OK, Richard, I've fixed the FP problem. My Guestbook is back at http://www.handscombes.com/gb.htm and also at http://www.handscombes.com/gstbk.htm

I've changed the file format setting for both the Guestbooks to "Formatted text within HTML" - I'm going to give it a few days to see what happens, then I'll change http://www.handscombes.com/gb.htm only to the FP default. If that gets spammed again, we'll know that your solution works! [;)]

Howzat!

Have a fun day,

John.

Ah - just realised that this won't work as they are a copy of each other. Never mind - let's see what happens anyway...



jeepless -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/14/2005 11:05:30)

John... I've been wondering if you were able to get your guestbook uploaded again and if you made the change to the file format. Thanks for the update.

You presented a good idea I hadn't thought of... build two separate guestbooks with each using a different file format, then see which one still gets spammed. That will tell us for sure whether changing the file format has any effect on stopping spam bots. I'm going to try that this morning with my client's site and will report back here when I have some results, although it could take a few weeks for the bots to find both guestbooks.

What I'm really curious about, if the file format truly does stop these bots, is why it works? The only reason I can possibly see is that the spam bots hijack the guestbook "--webbot--" component to insert their links instead of actually posting through the guestbook form itself. In my client's guestbook (with the change to the file format), if a visitor posts a link using the form it still shows in the log but only as text and not as an active link. But I haven't seen ANY spam since making this change even though the weblogs show that bots from Russia are still crawling the site! Therefore, I can only surmise that the bots are not using the form itself. Changing the file format must somehow defeat these bots by rendering the webbot useless to them. That is, if this change truly works. On the other hand, all of this could be nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence! Once I get the 2nd guestbook put up, we'll see if any of this is true.

Please keep me updated on how your guestbooks perform...

Richard



JohnLearner -> RE: My Guestbook is being spammed (4/14/2005 11:35:36)

OK, Richard - will do...

I've had a thought: At the moment, there are no links to http://www.handscombes.com/gb.htm - I've changed them to go to the Bravenet G'book.

I gather from your latest post that the bots scan the whole site, therefore I assume they'll find the Guestbooks anyway, or should I put the links back?



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