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View Full Version : The Major Spammer Targets on our Wiki


Knockwood
01-06-2006, 08:13 PM
There are a few pages that seem to attract spam--so much so that their presence on the Recent Changes list is automatically suspicious. I'm wondering if anyone out there can tell us why... also, I'm putting up information on the spam we're seeing in general.

First, I've already mentioned how each project's Main_Page winds up a target. There are a few projects, however, that seem to attract more than their share:
-RPG_Lexica:Main_Page (grrrrr...)
-GURPS:Main_Page
-Irradiated_Fur:Main_Page
-M&M_Serial:Main_Page

-Not as much: the Main_Pages for Alia, ATHANATOS, Stardust & Aetherwinds, Horizon Virtual, and Encyclopedia Galactica.

Second, many of the 'standard' pages get hit (which bolsters my opinion that the spammers are using automated scripts):
-General Disclaimer
-Protected page (this one's normally empty on ours)
-Help talk: Contents

Third, there are some pages that keep showing up as spammer targets for reasons I can't tell:
-Blue Planet
-Category: Dogs in the Vineyard
-Talk: Urban Nomad
-A few times, we've had a Talk: (IP address) page filled with spam from another IP address.

The spam we've seen most often is a block starting with:
<div id="kbektt#####" style="overflow:auto;height:1px;">
followed by links to several sites concerning popular medications (******, Phentermine, ******...) This guy is really getting on my nerves.

Help talk: Contents keeps getting replaced by links to other meds sites; sometimes they start it with a bogus message ("Nice site, have a look at mine: http://I-sell-phentermine.pl").

Last month we had a few pages replaced with a page consisting of a paragraph introducing the topic of Internet Telephony followed by a bunch of links about it. Weren't even subtle about it, either.

The weird one is the newest variant... just a simple link to a Northwest Airlines site. It popped up on a few pages, without explanation.

Opinions, strategies, commiserations? :) --Kwd

PS: When Search is working, I do search for some of the major Spammer keywords, like ****** and Phentermine, and scratch any spam I find. If there is any spam I missed, let me know, and I'll scrap it.

ShannonA
01-06-2006, 10:21 PM
Lock all the standard pages that are getting hit. Can't do that with the main pages. I'll be happy to work on a solution to that but it's going to be several weeks since I'm going to be building out new column software next week and a new machine the week after.

Shannon

Curufea
01-08-2006, 06:08 PM
I recommend the two strategies I suggested in the other thread-
Include the blocked wordlist code in the local setting PHP so pages can't be edited and saved that contain those words
Change edit settings such that only registered users can edit a page.

As to "why these pages" - I would suggest that these pages are linked from somewhere that gets a lot of web-bot traffic, such as blogs or pages with lots of advertising.

kaje
01-21-2006, 09:23 AM
Hey watch for forums spammers too, I dont mean the person kind, the automated kind. My forums got hit 2 weeks ago by some automated forum account that posted really random "innocent" posts but the signature was like a link to porn and crap.