Spam bots

[Aussiekraut]

Hello @Coopers

I'm sure you are aware of the spam mess in the forum and you are probably flat out dealing with the fallout of this. The last thing we want is to be pushy but any chance we'll get our forum back soon? We all miss each other, our hijacked threads and our general banter. 

Best of luck dealing with the bots. I know you have a geo blocker of sorts in place for the recipe section. Maybe that'd help with the bots too? Not that I'm trying to tell you how to do your job. You know best.

Cheers on behalf of all of us.

[Oldbloke]

2 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

Hello @Coopers

I'm sure you are aware of the spam mess in the forum and you are probably flat out dealing with the fallout of this. The last thing we want is to be pushy but any chance we'll get our forum back soon? We all miss each other, our hijacked threads and our general banter. 

Best of luck dealing with the bots. I know you have a geo blocker of sorts in place for the recipe section. Maybe that'd help with the bots too? Not that I'm trying to tell you how to do your job. You know best.

Cheers on behalf of all of us.

Yes, l've been patient. But coopers do seem a bit slow dealing with this. Perhaps it's complex.

[Aussiekraut]

Just now, Oldbloke said:

Yes, l've been patient. But coopers do seem a bit slow dealing with this. Perhaps it's complex.

It is. The forum is open, so every Tom, Dick and Harry can create an account and post rubbish. Keeping those spam bots out is hard, especially if you want the forum to be as easily accessible as possible. 2-factor authentication before every post is possible but also pretty annoying and the only other way I can think of is to geo-block, meaning to restrict access to certain countries and block the rest. However, that may keep people like Squinto, Blacksands or other overseas users out too.  Finding the right balance is difficult and the bots may be spread out over the entire world. There isn't a script kiddie sitting there doing this. This rubbish likely comes from infected computers, which, unbeknownst to their owners, are used as spam distributors. It's mainly people who click on everything that doesn't run away but that makes it any better. Maybe we need to limit access to Australia and advise overseas users to use a VPN. 

[Classic Brewing Co]

Let's hope it can be back to normal soon. I hope anyone doesn't click on any of the links.

[ozdevil]

30 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

Hello @Coopers

I'm sure you are aware of the spam mess in the forum and you are probably flat out dealing with the fallout of this. The last thing we want is to be pushy but any chance we'll get our forum back soon? We all miss each other, our hijacked threads and our general banter. 

Best of luck dealing with the bots. I know you have a geo blocker of sorts in place for the recipe section. Maybe that'd help with the bots too? Not that I'm trying to tell you how to do your job. You know best.

Cheers on behalf of all of us.

geoblocker that could interfere with everyone even the regular good guys here.  

eg you decided to do a tour of a monk brewery in belgium while on holiday and bring pics onto the forum of your trip  while in belgium   your post may  be blocked due to geoblocker

[Pale Man]

Its really ruined the forum hasn't it. I wonder if Coopers even know at this stage?

[kmar92]

Probably be good if some of our members started reporting the spambot posts, just to ensure that Coopers are aware. I have been doing so for 3 days. As far as I have seen there are no phishing type links in the spambot posts, they are just general rubbish posts. Maybe if anyone was crazy enough to call the phone numbers that they are propagating they would have a problem!

The other thing is that these spambot posts grow exponentially if the Forum admins do not start shutting down the accounts that they are creating. If you analyse the spambot posts and the authors you will see that new accounts are being created continuously by the bots so eventually the sheer growth of the bot accounts and the posts that they are making will overwhelm the server, so really in effect this attack by the spambots is a DDOS attack.

There are a number of ways to help mitigate the chance of spambot attacks, but very hard to stop them completely without having so many restrictions on posting that a Forum becomes virtually unusable.

 

[Aussiekraut]

56 minutes ago, ozdevil said:

geoblocker that could interfere with everyone even the regular good guys here.  

eg you decided to do a tour of a monk brewery in belgium while on holiday and bring pics onto the forum of your trip  while in belgium   your post may  be blocked due to geoblocker

Yes, I know. But that's what they invented VPNs for  When I look at what some geo-blockers report, a lot of activity comes from "expected" countries but of course not all of them. But locking out the usual suspects would already help. 

 

[Aussiekraut]

4 minutes ago, kmar92 said:

Probably be good if some of our members started reporting the spambot posts, just to ensure that Coopers are aware. I have been doing so for 3 days. As far as I have seen there are no phishing type links in the spambot posts, they are just general rubbish posts. Maybe if anyone was crazy enough to call the phone numbers that they are propagating they would have a problem!

The other thing is that these spambot posts grow exponentially if the Forum admins do not start shutting down the accounts that they are creating. If you analyse the spambot posts and the authors you will see that new accounts are being created continuously by the bots so eventually the sheer growth of the bot accounts and the posts that they are making will overwhelm the server, so really in effect this attack by the spambots is a DDOS attack.

There are a number of ways to help mitigate the chance of spambot attacks, but very hard to stop them completely without having so many restrictions on posting that a Forum becomes virtually unusable.

 

Checking the IP addresses and locking the entire range out might also help. It is not an easy task to find the right balance but at this point, the forum is fairly ruined and I really don't want Coopers to shut it down as a consequence.

[kmar92]

I would be surprised if the Forum admins were not aware of the problems, but I have just emailed Frank and the customer service section of Coopers with details just in case.

[ChairmanDrew]

1 hour ago, Aussiekraut said:

Maybe we need to limit access to Australasia

Fixed it for you

[ozdevil]

24 minutes ago, kmar92 said:

Probably be good if some of our members started reporting the spambot posts, just to ensure that Coopers are aware. I have been doing so for 3 days. As far as I have seen there are no phishing type links in the spambot posts, they are just general rubbish posts. Maybe if anyone was crazy enough to call the phone numbers that they are propagating they would have a problem!

The other thing is that these spambot posts grow exponentially if the Forum admins do not start shutting down the accounts that they are creating. If you analyse the spambot posts and the authors you will see that new accounts are being created continuously by the bots so eventually the sheer growth of the bot accounts and the posts that they are making will overwhelm the server, so really in effect this attack by the spambots is a DDOS attack.

There are a number of ways to help mitigate the chance of spambot attacks, but very hard to stop them completely without having so many restrictions on posting that a Forum becomes virtually unusable.

 

i spent all friday afternoon from 12pm till 4pm reporting these muppets  and tagging coopers dyi beer in them.  

however your trooper at 3 days of full on reporting the @kmar92   thats effort and dedication there.   well done with the persistance

even though my bad post friday evening i did think today  coopers would look at removing these posts

hopefully by the end of the week we are back undersome  normal posting and coopers are on top of it

 

[Oldbloke]

I'm a member of other forums for perhaps 6 years. First time i recall seeing this sort of sh1t. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Oldbloke

[ozdevil]

24 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

Checking the IP addresses and locking the entire range out might also help. It is not an easy task to find the right balance but at this point, the forum is fairly ruined and I really don't want Coopers to shut it down as a consequence.

well  if they went under a vpn   they could have  connected to quite few vpns  , in which would make it hard to pin point the main ip address to block or restrict

i often connect to multiple vpn servers  to protect myself .  but eventually it all still can come undone

[Aussiekraut]

10 hours ago, ozdevil said:

well  if they went under a vpn   they could have  connected to quite few vpns  , in which would make it hard to pin point the main ip address to block or restrict

i often connect to multiple vpn servers  to protect myself .  but eventually it all still can come undone

Usually, these guys aren't that sophisticated. They just dump heaps of rubbish and if an account gets closed, they just open a new one. They don't want to spend money on their campaigns. Like if we charged 1c per email, spam would quickly become less lucrative. as all of a sudden a million address campaign would cost 10 grand. 

[Classic Brewing Co]

@Coopers DIY Beer Team is online now so maybe soon we will find out what's happening.

Onya Frank.

[jennyss]

Yaaay! back with a bot free Coopers Community! Thank you Coopers staff.

Frank, or other Coopers staff; will you let us know if there is any way in every day use of this site that we can stop this happening? What caused this outbreak please?

I think we would all  hate to see any restrictions on who can post from where. 

[Classic Brewing Co]

26 minutes ago, jennyss said:

Yaaay! back with a bot free Coopers Community! Thank you Coopers staff.

Frank, or other Coopers staff; will you let us know if there is any way in every day use of this site that we can stop this happening? What caused this outbreak please?

I think we would all  hate to see any restrictions on who can post from where. 

I totally agree Jenny, we like a multicultural society.

[Coopers DIY Beer Team]

Hey guys,

Thanks for bringing the spam bots incident to our attention here and via email. We’re really sorry that this impacted your community chats over the weekend. We’ve now restricted those spam bot accounts and removed all of the posts.  Of course, we don’t want this to occur again, so we’re implementing a range of settings and tools to prevent spam accounts. These settings and tools are sophisticated and should not have any impact on current forum users or genuine international brewers. 

Cheers,

Coopers DIY Beer Team

[Classic Brewing Co]

9 minutes ago, Coopers DIY Beer Team said:

Hey guys,

Thanks for bringing the spam bots incident to our attention here and via email. We’re really sorry that this impacted your community chats over the weekend. We’ve now restricted those spam bot accounts and removed all of the posts.  Of course, we don’t want this to occur again, so we’re implementing a range of settings and tools to prevent spam accounts. These settings and tools are sophisticated and should not have any impact on current forum users or genuine international brewers. 

Cheers,

Coopers DIY Beer Team

Onya Frank.

[Aussiekraut]

36 minutes ago, Coopers DIY Beer Team said:

Hey guys,

Thanks for bringing the spam bots incident to our attention here and via email. We’re really sorry that this impacted your community chats over the weekend. We’ve now restricted those spam bot accounts and removed all of the posts.  Of course, we don’t want this to occur again, so we’re implementing a range of settings and tools to prevent spam accounts. These settings and tools are sophisticated and should not have any impact on current forum users or genuine international brewers. 

Cheers,

Coopers DIY Beer Team

Thanks fellas. 

[Oldbloke]

52 minutes ago, Coopers DIY Beer Team said:

Hey guys,

Thanks for bringing the spam bots incident to our attention here and via email. We’re really sorry that this impacted your community chats over the weekend. We’ve now restricted those spam bot accounts and removed all of the posts.  Of course, we don’t want this to occur again, so we’re implementing a range of settings and tools to prevent spam accounts. These settings and tools are sophisticated and should not have any impact on current forum users or genuine international brewers. 

Cheers,

Coopers DIY Beer Team

Good onya 

[kmar92]

Yes, many thanks to @Coopers DIY Beer Team for sorting the problems with the spambots.

[Kegory]

After reporting a dozen or so of the spam posts on the train on the way home from the WWC game on Friday I did a dummy account creation. The account creation is "protected by Captcha."

I'd be asking for my money back if Captcha costs anything. It didn't provide any protection.

[Oldbloke]

@Coopers DIY Beer Team

 

They have returned