It’s almost funny, in a wierd twisted sort of way…
Recently the comment spam problem for MovableType users escelated when some script kiddies released an automated comment spammer. The site hails it as:
“the first integrated solution for testing Movable Type blogs for working anti-spamming features”
Six-Apart, the team behind MT(MovableType) released a modification to enable comment throttling—limit the number of comments allowed to be posted in any given period of time—which Jacques Distler improved upon with a further patch which enabled even tighter controls on commenting including IP banning based on comment frequency—they have all been installed here as well.
It seems now however that the poor loser is mad at Jacques for linking to the FloodMT web site. In the comments to Jacques post, One Down a “DV” complained that Jacques was linking to the site and threatened to redirect all visitors refered from Musings to “Goatse” or “Tubgirl”—the two most popular of a slew of disgusting/shocking images out there on the net.
So to spread the fun a little bit once again here is the crapflooders website, or at least the “tool” that he uses: FloodMT
If you are running MT and allow commenting or trackback pings I suggest very highly upgrading to MT 2.661, then applying the patches provided by Jacques to further tighten comment throttling and — to combat the latest annoyance, trackback spamming—trackback throttling.
If you’re a programmer also, you might want to keep an eye on the latest developments at FloodMT to keep abreast of their latest developments to stay, if not a step ahead, then at least only a half step behind their developments.
Edit: 23:55
More of the background from this spate of crapflooding and the history of Dv along with FloodMT and FloodMT.perl (along with a server that seems to be having uptime issues) is available on Phil Ringalda’s site in the post and comments for Throttling Down and Confidential to my crapflooder. Phil is how I found the music of Kris Delmhorst, which I have really been enjoying, so a big thanks for that one Phil.
Damn, now I’m 36.
5 Comments
Did you see his “I’m just Hitler’s banker, not an executioner at the concentration camps” disclaimer, added in the last day or two? Of course, it rings a little hollow since Dv is also Tirel, as in “Tirel hosts this site and hacks on the Perl version.”
They must really be enjoying themselves, though: from what I hear, the life of a Slashdot troll isn’t much fun, since nobody but trolls reads at -1, so they hardly ever get noticed at all. Probably had more attention in the last couple of weeks than they’ve had in their entire online lives.
Yeah, I saw that. Of course it rings even more hollow when they brag on their site about taking down a server they don’t own for 5 hours.
Personally I’m liking the honeypot idea, and now that I’m looking at this site I realize I must change my comment posting to force the preview first. I’ve had my head stuck in my development server on a pair of client web sites so much lately (along with the trip to NY) that I have got to sync this site with the version of MT code and templates living on the dev server. (Of course I did patch this MT for comment and Trackback throttling)
Eric, could you do me a favor and re-save this entry, to retry sending the Trackback pings? I did a lame job of trying to only accept one ping per entry from a particular URL, and ended up only accepting one ping per blog instead. Should be fixed now, unless I just changed it to some other lame behavior.
*Snort!*
I see that “Dv” is also redirecting your link as well. I guess he doesn’t give a crap about his Google PageRank. (Real comment spammers would be crawling *all over* each other to be linked-to by the likes of us.)
Too funny! At least he found something a relatively different. Or maybe I’m just too old and out of the mainstream of the Somethingawful crowd to recognize it. Hmmm. I guess I’m going to have to put a disclaimer on the page and maybe relink. Of course, I do have lots of other hosting sites, most on different servers…maybe just a few redirected links….
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