Prototype Bot-Hunter List

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FoobyKamikaze · #76 Post by **FoobyKamikaze** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 5:59 pm

FastChapter wrote:I just learned the hard way why you shouldn't search "crushed" on Y! Images... oh god the GORE.

Anyway, HOLY CRAP IT'SA GIANT LIST.

I still wanna meet that clubbin' bot.

KitWiz4687 · #77 Post by **KitWiz4687** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:08 pm

This is bad news....after checking the number of characters that showed before they were cut off in the new ProbablyBots list, it came to a worrisome 65,000 some odd characters per post. What I gave as an example earlier was just for a moderate example but with this I can tell you that even 500 malicious spam bots doing their damnedest will bring the server down in a short time. It'd be about 281GB a day with just 500 bots. I'd better get my [censored] in gear and get the next set of features added in to catch any accounts lacking information with less than 5 posts that are older than 2 months. Those will most likely go into yet another list since accounts matching those parameters would currently get by the program unless their email failed the tests.

FoobyKamikaze · #78 Post by **FoobyKamikaze** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:11 pm

Bad news only if we just sit back and do nothing, right?

KitWiz4687 · #79 Post by **KitWiz4687** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:51 pm

Pretty much, and the amount of time needed for a person to screen every single account could be measured in days or even weeks...XD

FoobyKamikaze · #80 Post by **FoobyKamikaze** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:26 pm

Oh dear. o.o

FastChapter · #81 Post by **FastChapter** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:02 am

I still love that account named Free Porn. Really? That's what the bot chose?

Free Porn!

aj · #82 Post by aj » Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:24 am

avwolf wrote:
aj wrote:
FoobyKamikaze wrote:Meh, not good. The teacher's really bad, so at this rate it's going to turn out to be a lot of independent study. Which I'm bad at, so I'd better get my rear in gear
I think all CS teachers are that way for a reason. Of course, as students, we don't know the reason.
As for the independent study, same here.
Not true at all. It helps if your teacher spent some time in the real world before they teach though. I guess I got lucky. Most of my teachers were at least passable, and some of them were awesome.

Hopefully. Admittedly, she is the first CS teacher I've ever had, so there's a lot of room for improvement. She's fairly OK in the programming part, but her theory... isn't. So far we've had to self-learn a great deal, but that's kind of what to expect in the real world, isn't it? You don't always get someone holding your hand through everything.

And because the above post is entirely off-topic, is it just me, or does it seems like more bots are being identified? (I don't mean that it now spans three posts, I mean I don't remember needing to press page down so many times.)

FoobyKamikaze · #83 Post by **FoobyKamikaze** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:32 am

I dunno, but I don't see the point in making these lists if we're not going to be able to do anything about it.

KitWiz4687 · #84 Post by **KitWiz4687** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 4:14 am

Well maybe Tom might set something up so that he can take my 100% accurate list(UndeniablyBots) and put it into a bulk deleter....Or some kind of system where the mods can submit the names for deletion and only requires Tom to approve the deletion after it's submitted?

FastChapter · #85 Post by **FastChapter** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 4:23 am

The problem with that is Tom is very uninvolved with the forums, for the most part. He had a spurt of activity about a month ago, with his Y! Live channel, but I think his schooling and social life are keeping a lot of that off the game court right now.

Nanaki, the other forum administrator, is technically *not* the administrator. Tom let him keep his rights, but he's not expected to really do anything here other than maybe pop in and say "Hi" to us. He resigned, just that his account hasn't ever been de-modded.

KitWiz4687 · #86 Post by **KitWiz4687** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:31 am

What about a system that at least 3 mods have to approve a deletion of an account that does not have any mod or admin rights? Or something along those lines?

FoobyKamikaze · #87 Post by **FoobyKamikaze** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:32 am

That would work. If it existed. =\ Not sure if it does or not, I'm no expert on the inner workings of PHPBB.

FastChapter · #88 Post by **FastChapter** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:03 am

As far as I understand it, moderators can't ban/delete accounts. The forum administrators have to deal with that (i.e. having to refer a certain Tri-Edge to Tom).

You would have to get in contact with Tom and hold his attention for more than ten minutes if you want this to go through. I doubt he has the time to sit on the forums for hours deleting accounts, though. Heck, I don't think many of the moderators would want to be stuck doing that either.

aj · #89 Post by aj » Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:36 am

You mean the Tri-Edge thing went all the way up to Tom? That's why I haven't seen Tri-Edge around? Darn. There goes a source of humour.

Anyway, I think this is where I point out Robbie's solution from sometime back...

RobbieThe1st wrote:It is fairly easy to throw together a simple PHP script which loads the account-deletion page with the proper POST data, run that in a loop simply changing the names as needed. cURL + a copy of my firefox session cookies, or add in an extra bit to log in, and there you go - instant auto-deleter.

I could do it in a couple days... if I had ACP access.

-RobbieThe1st

Another solution would be to run a similar script directly against the database, but I don't think Tom would give out the database password to (effectively) anonymous strangers. The best bet is for him to run the scripts himself. Either of them, given the fact that he's also the only (active) one with Admin Control Panel access. (Anyone live near Cinci, Ohio? Face to face with Tom over this would probably convince him...)

We also need to find a way to stop bots from registering in the first place. No point in having to redo this again every 6 months or so.

Maybe what we can do is confirm the list of bots so whoever does the deletion would have less to do? Then again, it's really only FastChapter, Fooby and avwolf (grabbing from the last 2 pages) who are definitely fairly respected members here (and thus people are inclined to listen to you.)
If KitWiz and I did anything it would be more like "Who are you, and why are you telling us to do this, this and this?" and "How do we know we can trust you two?"

As a random side note, the admin person on the whois record for 2kinds.com is "Chris Myers".

FastChapter · #90 Post by **FastChapter** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 4:46 pm

I'm sure Tom wouldn't have a major freak-out if some forum member knocked on his front door and told him they wanted to help get rid of the bots on the forum, XD

*slams door* "THEY'RE AFTER ME!!"

Again, though, that all hinges on you being able to get in touch with Tom. I'm no longer expecting replies from the PMs I send him a month and a half ago, so whether or not you get any sort of feedback (pending he doesn't see this thread and take interest) from him is a huge coin-toss.

I'd say your best bet would be to contact Sage, who would more easily be in contact with Tom. At least that's how I perceive things to work,