MyBB Community Forums

Hey Team

My forum recently was attacked and bots were registering and posting 

I had to purge and delete accounts to make my site secure

The bots are now getting more clever and even answering some questions even though I made my own security questions

Some even verfied them self's as well to post these bots will not stop there is over 70  + 

Lurking on forum hungry and trying every move to enter again

How can I get rid of these bots for good 

Here is screen shots of stats 





Any good plugins to tips to make these bots leave?

Thomas

Hi 

here is the status of my website on registration page  via security questions

so much traffic from bots

I use IP bans where applicable. Captchas have limited effect as some of those spam bots are either really smart, or they have human helpers in the registration phase.

And otherwise, I just put all new members on moderation in general. They can post but their posts won't be visible and their post count stays 0 until a moderator makes one of their posts visible. The group promotion system in ACP then pushes new members with >0 posts into the unmoderated group. This also extends to private messages, new members can't send them (to prevent PM spam), their account needs to be 1 day old and have 1 visible forum post first.

So bots still come and spam, and you still have to ban them, but members don't see any of it. The only way for spammers to pass is if moderators allow them to pass or if they start spamming only after making a proper post first, unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that either...

---

If you want to set this up, roughly like this:

In admin/index.php?module=user-groups -> Add New User Group

Title [Regular Members]
Copy permissions from... [Registered]
[Save User Group]

(Make a new group with same permissions as the Registered group)

In admin/index.php?module=user-group_promotions -> Add New Promotion

Title [Registered to Regular]
Promotion Requirements [Post Count], [Time Registered]
Post Count [1] [Greater or Equal]
Time Registered [1] [Days]
New User Group [Regular Members]

This will promote all registered with post>0 to regular ( make sure in admin/index.php?module=tools-tasks the promotion system is enabled and running ). Note that promotions only apply to people who actually come visit your forum, so users will still be in the old group until their next visit. If it bothers you, you can promote all users manually once, when setting it up.

With the new group and promotion set up, restrict the Registered group:

In admin/index.php?module=user-groups -> [Registered] (gid=2)

Forums and Posts
Moderation Options
[X] Moderate new posts
[X] Moderate new threads
[X] Moderate new attachments
[X] Moderate post after edit

User and Permissions
[-] Can send private messages

---

So in a way, my captcha is "write one good non-spam post first".

However, this system might turn away new members since they have to wait first for however long it takes moderators to take a look in their moderation queue. So more important than the technical implementation is the way you communicate this to your visitors.

The default message new members will see is "Please note that new threads in this forum must be approved by a moderator before becoming visible.", you can change it to something nicer in your language file.