XF 2.1 Massive spam issue

[PJK]

Last Friday I randomly had 6,000 new registrations who posted a lot. One of the mods manually went through and spam cleaned as much as possible, it took hours. I then required manual approval for all new registrations. Today, I got 50+ email notifcations from users spamming via PM, which were accounts created on Friday. And today, hundreds more registered and are under approval. I disabled registration and also updated the registration question on Friday.

What's the best/fastest way to clean up these PM/registration/post spam of hundreds of people and how can I prevent them going forward? I've used XF for years and never had this issue until now.

Thanks.

 

[whynot]

and also updated the registration question on Friday.

Make 20 hard to guess for bots, enable only 5 of them.
When spam increasing disable(do not delete) that 5 and enable another 5.

 

[nocte]

I'd recommend a CATCHA instead of Questions: Once a spammer knows at least 1 question/answer combination they can automatically spam (just reload until the known question appears).

 

[alextam]

I'd recommend a CATCHA instead of Questions: Once a spammer knows at least 1 question/answer combination they can automatically spam (just reload until the known question appears).

Which CATCHA you recommend? the default google CATCHA was blocked in China

 

[nocte]

Which CATCHA you recommend? the default google CATCHA was blocked in China

You could try if hCaptcha runs in China (I assume it does).

XF 2.2 - Assorted improvements

We're fast approaching the time where we're able to unleash XenForo 2.2 on this very forum but, before we do, we wanted to tell you about a few slightly more miscellaneous features that we've been keeping under our hat. Advanced options switch The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already spotted...

xenforo.com

.. but you need XF 2.2 in order to have it out of the box.

 

[whynot]

Once a spammer knows at least 1 question/answer combination they can automatically spam (just reload until the known question appears).

That's why they should be disabled and enable (create) new ones.

 

[alextam]

You could try if hCaptcha runs in China (I assume it does).

XF 2.2 - Assorted improvements

We're fast approaching the time where we're able to unleash XenForo 2.2 on this very forum but, before we do, we wanted to tell you about a few slightly more miscellaneous features that we've been keeping under our hat. Advanced options switch The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already spotted...

xenforo.com

.. but you need XF 2.2 in order to have it out of the box.

i am pretty sure CloudFlare is working in China, so i think hcaptcha is working in China. thank you so much, i'll try it

 

[Chromaniac]

Frequently Asked Questions | reCAPTCHA | Google for Developers

Get answers to questions about reCAPTCHA Enterprise, versions, limits, customization, and more.

developers.google.com

do they block recaptcha.net domain as well? there was a discussion on this in another thread few days ago. not sure if xenforo uses this domain over google's.

 

[alextam]

Frequently Asked Questions | reCAPTCHA | Google for Developers

Get answers to questions about reCAPTCHA Enterprise, versions, limits, customization, and more.

developers.google.com

do they block recaptcha.net domain as well? there was a discussion on this in another thread few days ago. not sure if xenforo uses this domain over google's.

not sure, but recaptcha is not working for me on many sites here in China. i think they just block the whole google family

 

[Chromaniac]

from the looks of it, this should be fixed in next update.

Fixed - The domain name used by reCAPTCHA in XenForo.

This thread talks about how reCAPTCHA gets used in XenForo. There are some reasons for certain webmasters to prefer reCAPTCHA over hCAPTCHA, hence this thread. To be honest, reCAPTCHA is not blocked by mainland China only if being accessed through "recaptcha.net". The solution of this bug is...

xenforo.com

xenforo is switching to recaptcha.net domain. assuming you are in china, you can just try loading this domain to see if this works?

 

[alextam]

from the looks of it, this should be fixed in next update.

Fixed - The domain name used by reCAPTCHA in XenForo.

This thread talks about how reCAPTCHA gets used in XenForo. There are some reasons for certain webmasters to prefer reCAPTCHA over hCAPTCHA, hence this thread. To be honest, reCAPTCHA is not blocked by mainland China only if being accessed through "recaptcha.net". The solution of this bug is...

xenforo.com

xenforo is switching to recaptcha.net domain. assuming you are in china, you can just try loading this domain to see if this works?

we usually don't use Google product here in China if it has alternatives, because you don't know when they gonna block it again, but anyway thank you

 

[Paul B]

enable only 5 of them.

Only enable 1.

If you enable 5 at a time, you will never know which one has been compromised by xrumer, so you have to ditch them all.

What's the best/fastest way to clean up these PM/registration/post spam of hundreds of people

The spam cleaner is the best tool for the job.

 

[PJK]

Only enable 1.

If you enable 5 at a time, you will never know which one has been compromised by xrumer, so you have to ditch them all.


The spam cleaner is the best tool for the job.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Spam cleaner works great usually, but with these attacks, it is labor intensive, took about 5 hours to spam clean all the accounts last time. Is there anyway to do it more automated? We're having a lot of issues here. Thanks.

I will be setting this up soon too:

Approval queue tools

Premium upgrade: This XF2 add-on along with the entire collection can be purchased for $35.00 USD. Your Premium upgrade will allow you to download as many XF2 add-ons as you like for one year. Please see the entire collection located in the...

xenforo.com