MyBB Community Forums

Recently have got some very weird users who make weird posts. Appears to be spam, as Googling the exact phrases shows the exact same message posted on multiple other forums, however most of these posts don't seem to contain any form of advertising, and the signatures don't either (no links whatsoever too) (have found one or two that do have them though).

From my search, these people appear to be targeting vBulletin and MyBB boards primarily. IPs are all from India, though different ISPs. The username is interesting as it's a first and last name written together, all lowercase and no space, sometimes with a number at the end. Email addresses appear to end in @sify.com or @gmail.com

Here's some examples:
http://endlessparadigm.com/forum/showthr...?tid=19495
http://www.tobyturner.com/forum/showthre...79&pid=525
http://forum.suprbay.org/showthread.php?tid=51186

http://endlessparadigm.com/forum/showthr...?tid=19115
http://www.hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=159495
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=105390

http://endlessparadigm.com/forum/showthr...?tid=19736
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33955107

http://endlessparadigm.com/forum/showthr...?tid=19735
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.p...ost2748275


Anyone else getting this? Also, does anyone really know much about it? Seems really weird TBH.
Thanks.

That is weird >______________>

smithgary joined here too, he may even have made that same thread

One of the funniest spam comments I saw was on Mashable, the reply was surprisingly fluent and relevant, but at the end it just said 'calcium' with a link to some weird site. I dunno why but I found that really funny, it was rather random. Someone who's sig here was just 'tea' was funny too.

I've had the same thing on my forums. The funny part is that half the time they put the word in their signature but forget to link it. When they do get it "right" I just go in and remove the signature. Most of the time the posts are semi-relevant (I've even had one start a "your favorite *" in my "favorites" subforum) so I tend to keep the posts around, especially since at the moment they're the only posts I'm getting and it's all going to be wiped soon anyway.

Yep had the same users on a few of my sites, looks like they are targetting MyBB forums.

Had one on my vBulletin a few months back, at the end of the post he spammed one site.

The topic was a really good one though, so I got rid of the link and left the topic up.

Free content.

Yeah there's been a few here that have ended up in a decent thread, it isn't all bad

Yeah, there's a few of them here in Chit-Chat.
Can't really figure out the motive behind all of it though.
Perhaps free content, but it's not exactly very intelligent, topics being quite generic and rather silly at some point.

My guess is that it's semi-automatic, which explains the behaviour patterns and same content posts. There's probably some guy at the end entering CAPTCHAs and whatnot. Just doesn't make sense why when most don't even have a link anywhere...

(2009-11-05, 02:02 PM)Yumi Wrote: [ -> ]Anyone else getting this? Also, does anyone really know much about it? Seems really weird TBH.
Thanks.

Aren't they just spamming the links in their signature?

I've also had smithgary on my forums too!

I wonder what they're up to. The links in their signatures don't seem to have any real text, just a bunch of letters, so it's not like people will click the links.

The only thing I can think is maybe they are "tagging" forums for something later on, such as a hacking campaign or spam campaign. They may be waiting for the forums to be indexed in Google, then they target the ones where the spam hasn't been removed. Maybe that's it.