The site is under attack
Re: The site is under attack
Ok guys, I think I fixed the problem for now. Looking at the detailed access logs, the site was indeed under attack from a shitload of leeches bot and crawlers mainly from China. I cannot understand why the same bots were recrawaling the whole site every 10 minutes or so. Anyhow, I banned them all using .htaccess files and fake member went to zero (this also affected the wiki and news btw). I could restore guest access and reopened registration. It's not perfect but now there's much easier targets out there for them.
Re: The site is under attack
Had a bit of a ramp up the last few days, and today I've banned almost 20 random named bots. Mostly, they seem to just create 1 spam thread each.
I'll stick on it, but might be worth temporarily disabling registration and/or changing the verification question. I feel most potential Uzebox users are hardcore enough to know something more detailed about the platform.
I'll stick on it, but might be worth temporarily disabling registration and/or changing the verification question. I feel most potential Uzebox users are hardcore enough to know something more detailed about the platform.
Re: The site is under attack
It's an endless and hopeless war to fight these bot. And with generative AI it's just going to get worst! I'll disable registration temporarely as you suggest, but we need to find a solution to this!
Re: The site is under attack
I changed the board registration so it has to be approved by an admin. So at least we can check in periodically for usernames that are not nonsensical and delete the rest. Should at least stop the topics spam.
Re: The site is under attack
Nice, this seems to have solved it for now! Of all the things they might harness AI for...they jump right to the most degenerate things against open source software/hardware
Re: The site is under attack
I also changed the registration question and now there is zero bogus registrations. When discovered by spammers that question gets replicated quite fast amongst bots apparently.