What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

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tank
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What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

23 Feb 2019, 16:49

  • I cant Post
  • I cant Post quotes
  • I got quoted in a post but it is gone.
  • ...
I am going to offer the only definitive answers that there are. We recently underwent a spam attack. The spammer scanned the members list and got every known username and quoted them. this quote had the following negative effects.
  • Triggered a notification email to every registered member
  • Reduced server performance because of mass emails being sent
The content was amongst other things headless corps and other vulgar pictures. Our moderators did everything they could to remove this content as quickly as possible.

These moderators:
  • Are purely volunteers
  • Don't deserve to be subjected to this content anymore than the rest of the community
  • Were strained to capacity keeping up with this effort
As a server administrator it is exclusively my responsibility to hinder all legitimate threats to this community. I took the following actions that will continue to evolve as the threat does.
  • Prevent new and unregistered users from posting
    • quotes
    • links
    • images
    • from tor exit nodes
    • from IP that host web services
  • Blocked certain language
  • Enabled our web application firewall to identify and block known patterns of attacks across the internet.
I will not go into any detail on these patterns except the following: The nature of a scripting forum sometimes is impacted by these firewall rules. There are hundreds of specific rules.

If you find you are impacted by these constraints please do the following:
  • Remove all of the following from your post
    • Quotes
    • Links
    • Images
If you do this and still cant post please use pastebin for your post and email a link to it to support -at- ahkscript.org. I will review the content and make a decision on weather to find and relax a specific firewall rule or reject your post.

My apologies to those adversely affected but with limited time this is the best solution to the current crisis.
We are troubled on every side‚ yet not distressed; we are perplexed‚
but not in despair; Persecuted‚ but not forsaken; cast down‚ but not destroyed;
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Tigerlily
Posts: 377
Joined: 04 Oct 2018, 22:31

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

24 Feb 2019, 03:33

tank wrote:
23 Feb 2019, 16:49
Triggered a notification email to every registered member....My apologies to those adversely affected but with limited time this is the best solution to the current crisis.
Thanks for all the hard work tank - was annoying as this happened to me, but glad to know that you are just trying to protect the community here. Sorry you and all the moderators had to go through that! Thanks to all the mods who took / are taking care of these issues!

On a side note, I did not receive an email or notifications from this spam attack.
-TL
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Xtra
Posts: 2751
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

24 Feb 2019, 04:04

A big "THANK YOU" to everyone who volunteers for the AHK community.
SOTE
Posts: 1426
Joined: 15 Jun 2015, 06:21

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

24 Feb 2019, 07:15

Much respect and thanks to tank, including all the volunteers.
tank url test

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

24 Feb 2019, 11:38

'https regexr.com /490bm Broken Link for safety dsds ghdfghdft jty jty j https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/search.php?search_id=newposts sdg trjytj ytytk j khgyk y https mail.google.com /mail/u/0/#inbox' Broken Link for safety
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joedf
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

24 Feb 2019, 18:16

tank url test wrote:
24 Feb 2019, 11:38
'https regexr.com /490bm Broken Link for safety dsds ghdfghdft jty jty j https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/search.php?search_id=newposts sdg trjytj ytytk j khgyk y https mail.google.com /mail/u/0/#inbox' Broken Link for safety
Nice tank... he's gone to the dark side already. lol jk
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mslonik
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

25 Feb 2019, 15:58

Thank you!

1. For explaining, why I was banned. Anyway it's good to understand at least circumstances.
2. For you hard work to protect this forum.

Safety first.

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ShawnT
Posts: 20
Joined: 07 Mar 2017, 15:19

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

26 Feb 2019, 14:33

Is there any way to get my work computer un ip banned? Don't know what happened.
kyuuuri
Posts: 340
Joined: 09 Jan 2016, 19:20

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

26 Feb 2019, 14:47

Thanks for all the hard work, hope the person behind that stupid attack won't be around the forums again.
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tank
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

26 Feb 2019, 14:55

ShawnT wrote:
26 Feb 2019, 14:33
Is there any way to get my work computer un ip banned? Don't know what happened.
email support -at- ahkscript.org with your banned IP address
We are troubled on every side‚ yet not distressed; we are perplexed‚
but not in despair; Persecuted‚ but not forsaken; cast down‚ but not destroyed;
Telegram is the best way to reach me
https://t.me/ttnnkkrr
If you have forum suggestions please submit a
Check Out WebWriter
drozdman
Posts: 78
Joined: 05 Dec 2015, 01:07

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

26 Feb 2019, 21:11

Who is doing it and for what purpose? That's an attack that has no value for scammers. Who has interest in disrupting this forum?
What is the source of the attack? Obviously, IP's are spoofed or it's 'man in the middle' attack (or DNS hack), but it can be easily detected by NSA. If spammers are doing it for long time, they cannot escape getting caught. Even TOR does not give anonymity, since it's a US military network (and if you control all the routers, there is no way to escape detection). There is no anonymity for this kind of hackers. Why do they still exist and thrive?
That's certainly not coming from any state enemy of USA.
Why the US gov isn't doing anything to stop it? Why NSA (Pentagon), which monitors everything, doesn't do anything about it? I don't want to assume they are doing it or some allies (UAE, Israel), but that's really weird. What's the benefit of the Big Brother system in such a case?
NSA controls all the internet traffic (routers), spends huge amount of money on spying, recording virtually everything. But hackers like that have no problems. No convictions. No real FBI cases. Like they don't care, or the perpetrators are protected.
I would officially demand action from FBI and other agencies.
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joedf
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

27 Feb 2019, 00:24

You mean report it as a cyber crime ?
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Arkan
Posts: 22
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

27 Feb 2019, 09:44

Thanks, now I understand why so many people are blocking.
drozdman
Posts: 78
Joined: 05 Dec 2015, 01:07

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

27 Feb 2019, 12:20

joedf wrote:
27 Feb 2019, 00:24
You mean report it as a cyber crime ?
Yes. Otherwise, how do you expect they will do something about it? I'm surprised people don't report such attacks and demand action.
It's difficult in USA, because NSA is a military agency. NSA is the agency which oversees the flow of information in USA (that's weird for a democracy). But still the complain may be made through the FBI. They work together. And there will be a record of this.
SOTE
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

10 Mar 2019, 11:08

drozdman wrote:
26 Feb 2019, 21:11
Who is doing it and for what purpose? That's an attack that has no value for scammers. Who has interest in disrupting this forum?
The obvious place to start is competing automation languages. There are several out there. You can possibly have a demented person or a group of them from different languages that think they can diminish competition by attacking and disrupting other languages and websites.

The next group are spammers trying to spread advertisements and malware. To include steal contact information, etc... These activities can range from dumb pranksters to definitely hard core criminal activity. Such types often don't care what type of havoc and destruction they inflict on the Internet, because their goal is monetary gain through illegal activity or getting off on being disruptive.
kyuuuri
Posts: 340
Joined: 09 Jan 2016, 19:20

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

10 Mar 2019, 23:36

Today 1 minute before this post there was a new member (yes a yellow one) spamming quotes, this bot made around 5 posts and got banned. Was it automatically? If it was then good job! if it wasn't then good job anyways, it was fast.
smithclarkson001

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

25 Mar 2019, 15:40

I'll just say off the bat, Discord bans users for breaking the rules, not accounts. The difference being that just because someone creates a new account to join a server doesn't mean that discord will ban their new account unless that new account broke the rules. So this mostly becomes a server issue.

You can only do so much to identify one account that may belong to the same user on a different account, such as the username, connected accounts, things they say, etc.

You can raise the server moderation level to require 10 min in server, or even double table flip to require phone verification which basically puts ban evasion to a stop as most people don't have more than 1, 2 phones tops if they include a work phone.

Then it just comes down to your own moderation abilities, using a bot (or spreadsheet) with notes capabilities and just remove people who break your rules.

Edit: I was incorrect, discord may take action on an account for ban evasion.
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tank
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Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

01 Apr 2019, 20:35

I dont know wtf you are talking about. But nothing going on here has anything to do with discord. You are so offtopic....
We are troubled on every side‚ yet not distressed; we are perplexed‚
but not in despair; Persecuted‚ but not forsaken; cast down‚ but not destroyed;
Telegram is the best way to reach me
https://t.me/ttnnkkrr
If you have forum suggestions please submit a
Check Out WebWriter
Travisbklein2
Posts: 2
Joined: 11 Jul 2019, 17:00

Re: What is with the IP bans and other aggressive security?

12 Jul 2019, 11:44

Please unblock my account travisbklein

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