THE THREAD

[Onime No Kyo]

ORIGINAL: rogueusmc

ORIGINAL: Onime No Kyo

ORIGINAL: bobogoboom

I think this means i will be running on a treadmill if i want to run today.

I swear to thread I clicked on that "click to interact" button.

I do that all the time on AAR screenies...[:D]

Dont get me started. Once actually started to get mad cause the game wasnt working. [:D]

[bobogoboom]

Yeah you are realy insane if you read a triple

[Mike Solli]

Geez, finally caught up.  Now I'm going to check and see if anyone ran the threadwar turn.  If not, I'm going to (and will fall behind here again). [:D]

[rogueusmc]

Well, guys....I'm actually gonna go play WitP for a while...novel concept ain't it?

[bobogoboom]

I have a turn in my inbox as soon as work is over

[Onime No Kyo]

Zoing!

[Doggie]

As a network admin i would recomend you do that. I had mail gateways that keep getting taken down a number of years ago till i started setting max number of connections and other such fun stuff. Reboot fixes it for a day till they decide to come back.

This kind of stuff has been a continuous pain. We moved to a new PHBB server when the old board kept crashing because of stuff like this. We experienced "Ground Hog Day" for a while when searchbots crashed the place and when the server reset, it rolled back to the same backup "save point" and everything past that point was lost. It was the morning of June 23, 2006, every day for several days.

I got the IP address of the 'bot, but I don't think banning it will do any good. It's not registering and posting; it's just searching. It does try to post as I can look at users online feature and see IP #xxxxxxx " listed fifty times viewing every sub forum and "posting a message", but it can't because it's not a registered user.

From the error message it looks like a DB parameter threshold has been reached for a particular user. Clearling the attribute for the indicated user might be one step in the fix process, but obviously the root cause seems to be the bot attack.

[&:] Huh?

That's the same kind of geek speak I see on the PHBB help forums. I've been looking at those and it says I have to enter a specifically worded query into some search function in the admin data base and then frazzle the gimbits and mizzen the mainmasts until framises and whosits coincide with the paramaters of the whosit.

I'm old school. I'd prefer to track down who ever let this search bot lose and snatch him up by the stacking swivel.

[bobogoboom]

ORIGINAL: Doggie
I'm old school. I'd prefer to track down who ever let this search bot lose and snatch him up by the stacking swivel.

Then unfortunatley you will keep getting taken down.

They were probobly trolling for email addresses to use in spam.

[Doggie]

According to the geeks at PHBB, it's supposed to reset every hour or so.  Obviously, that aint happening.  We got a geek who does this sort of stuff for us, but it always picks times when he's out of town or something to crash.[8|]

[jwilkerson]

I'm old school. I'd prefer to track down who ever let this search bot lose and snatch him up by the stacking swivel.

Well this might prevent another attack from the same source - but won't prevent the attack by the source after that. In hanging out with my "Anti-Hacker" squad at my day job .. there are apparently patterns of attack which can be prevented with specific code ... obviously this attacker was an anonymous (unregistered) attacker so it was just comming at the read only side .. but attacks can gain access to the DB through the data entry fields even on unregistered accounts ... and those are the types of attacks that can be blocked with the proper code .. but phpBB is not the most secure (may one of the least secure) BB platforms hence either more code is needed to prevent these attacks on your phpBB or you need a higher class of BB software. If you're getting hit once a year and you are down for a few days and that is "acceptable" then perhaps no action required. The level of protection that is appropriate is a business decision not a technical one. The tech side just implements. But each business needs to decide what level of protection they need/can afford. I struggle making my execs see that - they just want me to fix the d%^&d IT problem !!!! hence I get my educational opportunities ...
So anyway, things can be better - but it will take some kind of resources to get to the next level if that is where you need to go.

frazzle the gimbits and mizzen the mainmasts

[:D][:D][:D]

[Onime No Kyo]

Zoing!

[Onime No Kyo]

And presto. A new page.

[Onime No Kyo]

Maybe I can follow Robert into immortality

[Onime No Kyo]

It shouldnt be that hard, right?

[Mike Solli]

Wrong. [:D]

[Onime No Kyo]

All I have to do is blather on for a page.

[Onime No Kyo]

And avoid the evil quirrels. [8|][:@]

[Onime No Kyo]

Wernt you off doing something Mike?

[Doggie]

We use PHBB 'cause it's cheap.  We aint got no sponsors except for the guys that donate a few bucks to pay the site costs.  It doesn't happen on the same date every year, it's just the last time was about a year ago.  Since the old site is no longer up since we moved to another "improved" version of PHBB that's hosted by a different server, problems have been less frequent.
 
What I don't quite understand is why people who do this sort of crap can't be shut down.  It's obviously a malicious web crawler, and the IP address is logged.  I've googled the IP of one particularly frequent web crawler and got hundreds of pages of results.

[Mike Solli]

Yeah, sorry Onime.  I'm off to run the threadwar turn.  Spam away....