Fake users registration attack

Hello everybody,

Since yesterday I have been under a spam attack. I disabled "Allow new users to register" option from Settings > Advanced Settings admin panel and I still have got attacks because new fake users have been registered.

Additionaly I have this plugins installed and enabled: uservalidationbyemail, recaptcha, iptracker, spam_login_filter, spam_throttle, honeypot and akismet.  

What can I do? Thank you very much.

  • Well the attackers have gotten meaner. Now we're getting anywhere from 1 to 8 attacks per minute. No registrations just blocked attacks. Isn't anyone else getting this? Are we the only one?

  • What do you consider an 'attack' that's happening 1-8 times per minute?

  • You should also consider the solution I shared with you days ago. We no longer have to worry about fake spammers now. We removed the registration page and we use a drop down registration form.

    That's one way to do it, another way is to change the registration address (to a custom one). Automated bots are specifically targeting the registration page. We changed that page for another to see how many hits could get. Over 32,000 just in January.

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • could you send me your site names? i used to get a lot of spam its very small now my traffic is medium i am 260.000 alexa rank world wide which is quite high but nothing to special check szsocial.com even sign up and see how i deal with spam, i use just about every plugin available it may not be liked by hmm all users lol but it is necessery my traffic comes from search engines mostly so spam protection is a must and users dont mind once i explain why it is so spam tight security. the main thing that detered spammers is setting auto suspend users for a certain amount of time when they join from any actions annoying but really works well in detering spammers because they know the site is dedicated to spam free social networking, though of course i still get spammers lol just not as many as before just 1 or 2 or 5 a day sometimes 3 or 4 days no spammers at all sometimes 5 or 6 in 1 day

  • This comment was removed by a moderator because it contained advertising.

  • @Matt Becker-- We are getting 1-8 potential registrations per minute. As I explained, they are all blocked and we are getting no actual registrations because we require a profile image. I think getting 1-8 potential registrations per minute would be considered an attack.

    @rjcalifornia -- we are not elgg developers so do not understand how to implement the options you mention.

    @ Michele -- Your stats are similar to ours = A LOT. And, we have 3 sites, so we are getting 3 times A LOT = a REALLY LOT.

    I wouldn't care about all this since we are not getting any actual fake registrations, but by getting poked so often it's starting to get bothersome.

  • @Ron Wallace

    The Required avatar is a good measure, and you should keep that, in addition to spam login filter. My solution is kinda extreme, because I was tired of the getting hit by spammers.

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • Hi guys

    When I register elgg community, then it shows " access denied due to spam issues( ip blacklisted). please contact the site administrator "  so I have to login by twitter.

    Can anybody help me ?

  • @rjcalifornia  We too are tired of getting hit by spammers, which can't be good for our server, especially at the high number of hits we are getting, and I would very much like to implement your solution, it's just we are not a developer and do not understand how to do it. That said, we use Ismayil's hype framework for our sites, so that may leave us out of other solutions other than having him change the way the registration is done, and I've asked him about it, but no solution as of now. I think that if he could accomplsh such a task it would make his framework more valuable and others too may consider it. We like it a lot. Thank you.

  • @ ron Wallace..... what do you think about this ideas ..check this discussion ...... http://community.elgg.org/discussion/view/1584512/new-anti-spam-technique