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Spam... really getting out of hand...


kickarse

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Ok so IRC has been taken over by the community and is prospering. The forums are going to the shitter with spam bots. I've made a least 4 threads on how to fix the forums or new software but with no movement on anyones part.

Its kind of funny how hak5 is getting owned by spammers. You would think we'd be more secure than that.

And don't give us the line that theres not enough time to install /etc.

It takes all of 10 minutes to get captcha up and running.

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Ok so IRC has been taken over by the community and is prospering. The forums are going to the shitter with spam bots. I've made a least 4 threads on how to fix the forums or new software but with no movement on anyones part.

Exactly! At least if by "with no movement" you mean "with some movement" and by "anyones" you mean "VaKo's".

http://www.hak5.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5908

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Problem #1: An un-modified copy of phpBB is useless.

Problem #2: The more modifications you add to phpBB, the harder it gets to upgrade, secure and maintain that install.

We've tried mods before, but they get broken by updates and other mods. So for instance, the upgrade from version 2.21 to version 2.22 broke all the anti-spam mods, meaning a reinstall of the mods is required.

Solution: Dump PHPbb. Move to Simple Machines Forum.

It basically gives us a butt load of anti-spam features. You can see the test version at http://section1.hak5irc.org/forums/. So, we're not ignoring the problem, we know spam is an issue, and given what phpBB offers, the only thing left to do is to move away from it.

A lot of people have complained about the move away from phpBB, arguments like "its easy to hack SMF*" or "but phpbb3 is much better". Its not, i've tested phpbb3, and its more of the same. Dependant on addons of dubious quality for pretty much any feature and the permissions & user management are a nightmare to admin. The phpBB dev team annoy the hell out of me also, if your software is designed to need addons, at least include some form of package management in the base install!

(* if you know of a security problem with SMF, please give me the details, not just "OMG HAXOR N00B PWN JOO!!!1111!!!!!7")

So yes, spam is a problem. But adding more and more 3rd party mods to a phpBB install is only asking for trouble. Ditching phpBB might work, and SMF will cover us nicely until IPB or vbulletin become viable options.

Searching vulnerabilities for phpbb - Results found : 115

vs

Searching vulnerabilities for Simple Machines Forum - Results found : 3

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I am with VaKo on this after spending sometime myself with PHPBB I never want to touch that shit again, the SMF project is nice and i think hak5 will do well with it.

PHPbb is not shit, its just designed for smaller community's, with a different style of admining. It has different goals from what we need, and what I want in the backend. If your happy maintaining the entire install by hand, then use it. If you know you don't exactly have all the time in the world to look after one forum, its not viable.

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Oh my god, y'all need to stop complaining about all the spam... "omg omg omg i saww some spaammmmmm!!!!!!1111 this placw is t3h sux0rz!!!!!!!!111" yes there is spam ignore it, it's not that hard, there's what 2 3 a day that you see?! IGNORE IT AND STOP COMPLAINING, IT IS BEING DEALT WITH.

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Nah, I did get lax over the last month. Mainly due to being busy, which is why I want a admin system that pretty much automates the manual spam counter measures we had. Ie the new forums allow people to report posts to the mod team, allows the mod team to ban users, gives me much more detailed stats on each user and has a captcha that actually works (hopefully). So, if there is spam, there is a system in place to deal with it quickly and efficiently with a few mouse clicks.

We just need to see how well my ideas work in the real world.

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Sounds good Vako. It's just without updates with the community we have to kinda wonder what's going on.... After checking the forum it seems I'm the only one left out of the loop, always...

If help is needed let us know. We'll all be more than happy to help. I for one have setup many a forum software, SMF included.

Also, SMF seems to be a lot faster.

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