The New Sudoku Players' Forum

by **storm_norm** » Sun May 17, 2009 7:49 pm

yes... someone is removing topics and it looks like the "last poster" names and "author" of topics names.

by **tarek** » Sun May 17, 2009 7:54 pm

bober's posts need to be removed as well (I have 34 pages of unread posts now) ...

What have we done to prevent future attacks ???

by **ronk** » Sun May 17, 2009 9:23 pm

tarek wrote:bober's posts need to be removed as well (I have 34 pages of unread posts now) ...

Where does one see that? Are you talking about "View posts since last visit?"

by **tarek** » Sun May 17, 2009 9:37 pm

ronk wrote:
tarek wrote:bober's posts need to be removed as well (I have 34 pages of unread posts now) ...

Where does one see that? Are you talking about "View posts since last visit?"

Yes,
My previous visit was before these bot attacks ....

I waited until OnlineOrder was removed, I forgot about bober (34 pages of posts)

tarek

by **StrmCkr** » Mon May 18, 2009 5:19 am

Wed Dec 31, 1969 4:00 pm

all the threads on the main listing are time stamped with the above?

odd.

by **storm_norm** » Mon May 18, 2009 7:43 am

StrmCkr wrote:Wed Dec 31, 1969 4:00 pm

all the threads on the main listing are time stamped with the above?

odd.

hmm,
I googled it and it has something to do with the UNIX zero date. that if all clocks were restored to zero on UNIX systems then the date would read jan 1st, 1970.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

this might have something to do with why the forum clock is different than real time

by **gsf** » Mon May 18, 2009 8:05 am

storm_norm wrote:
StrmCkr wrote:Wed Dec 31, 1969 4:00 pm

all the threads on the main listing are time stamped with the above?

odd.

hmm,
I googled it and it has something to do with the UNIX zero date. that if all clocks were restored to zero on UNIX systems then the date would read jan 1st, 1970.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

this might have something to do with why the forum clock is different than real time

like you pointed out it probably means that the forum clocks are unix based
and the recent fixes (erroneously) reset some fields to 0

but the forum clock skew is a different issue
it means they don't run ntp to keep the hardware clock in sync with a reliable time source
cheap pc clocks will wander, so any pc acting as a server should use ntp
this has been mentioned more than once and it went down the bit bucket
it looks like the current skew is ~24 hours
oh well, we get what we pay for -- at least the forum still has a host

by **Pat** » Mon May 18, 2009 11:11 am

Nhernandez

in PM, Nhernandez wrote:
Re: serious spam problem
We're looking into that now.

I can only remove individual items.

but they did manage to remove the stuff posted by OnlineOrder --
so they obviously did eventually find a way to bulk-delete
(presumably via SQL which should make it really easy)

tarek wrote:bober's posts need to be removed as well

yes indeed
and if they forgot about that, we'll have to do it

fortunately i've also had a PM from udosuk (just a few hours earlier),
directing my attention to the Moderator Control Panel

which does allow me to delete multiple Topics at once

but --

the most i can delete at once would be the 20 shown on one page
i must click the check-box for each Topic i wish to delete
the Moderator Control Panel neglects to show the username --
very dangerous as i might accidentally delete non-spam
(and once deleted, it is entirely gone)

gsf, i'm e-mailing you a suggestion for bulk-delete of bober's Topics

tarek wrote:What have we done to prevent future attacks ???

probably nothing -- the spammers have already registered a spare username (Uchkudukus), and can resume the flood at any time

by **udosuk** » Mon May 18, 2009 2:03 pm

Pat wrote:fortunately i've also had a PM from udosuk (just a few hours earlier),
directing my attention to the Moderator Control Panel
(yes it's there -- and not really hidden --
but if i ever saw it, i had managed to forget all about it)
which does allow me to delete multiple Topics at once

but --
the most i can delete at once would be the 20 shown on one page
i must click the check-box for each Topic i wish to delete
the Moderator Control Panel neglects to show the username --
very dangerous as i might accidentally delete non-spam
(and once deleted, it is entirely gone)
gsf, i'm e-mailing you a suggestion for bulk-delete of bober's Topics

Well you didn't reply my PM!

Anyway I thought each page of the moderator control panel can display 50 posts in a forum but perhaps it's configured differently here. But you do need to carefully check the subjects etc before you click the boxes (which is why "select all" is not an option). At least it should be much easier than deleting one by one. :idea:

by **ronk** » Mon May 18, 2009 2:32 pm

Pat wrote:but --
the most i can delete at once would be the 20 shown on one page
i must click the check-box for each Topic i wish to delete
the Moderator Control Panel neglects to show the username --
very dangerous as i might accidentally delete non-spam
(and once deleted, it is entirely gone)

I doubt if there are any legitimate topics with the word ... Buy ... or Prescription ... or Delivery, and you can let the Google toolbar highlight those keywords.

by **ttt** » Mon May 18, 2009 3:08 pm

Pat wrote:
tarek wrote:What have we done to prevent future attacks ???

probably nothing -- the spammers have already registered a spare username (Uchkudukus), and can resume the flood at any time

The best way, follow this suggestions:

ronk wrote:
gsf wrote:I think an effective tightening would be to limit #messages per minute, hour and day

I agree. With a 20 message per day limit, e.g., I doubt that any forum member would be inconvenienced.

ttt

by **gsf** » Mon May 18, 2009 3:23 pm

ronk wrote:
Pat wrote:but --
the most i can delete at once would be the 20 shown on one page
i must click the check-box for each Topic i wish to delete
the Moderator Control Panel neglects to show the username --
very dangerous as i might accidentally delete non-spam
(and once deleted, it is entirely gone)

I doubt if there are any legitimate topics with the word ... Buy ... or Prescription ... or Delivery, and you can let the Google toolbar highlight those keywords.

I have some scripts that scrape the entire forum and produce flat file db's with topic by poster
the idea is to collate all the topic numbers by poster (e.g., bober today)
and use a script that calls wget(1) with multiple topic deletes mention by udosuk and Pat
if I don't get the mojo I can pass on some monster urls
to a moderator that will delete all of the topics in bulk
20 or 50 at a click -- the moderator would just cut/paste those url into a browser

Pat and I are trying to set up that channel