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Porn spam

Tom C

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Messages
582
Location
Norway
...and I've got one from Bullhead.
Strange, since Bullhead earlier has posted about fish.
Could spammers send PMs using other people's usernames ?
 

tjudy

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,822
Location
Stoughton, WI
Hello Everyone,

I am just back from teh ACA convention. There was not free internet access at teh hotel, so I did nto see these messages until today.

If there is someone using another person's PM I am nto sure how to battle that. What I will probably do is NOT delete the accounts (I will delete any posts that pop up in the forum), and disable the username's ability to post. If they are active users who are being victimized they will contact me. If they are spammers they proabably will not. I will also send each a PM letting them know what is going on.

Any ideas on whether there is a rogue script out there that seeks old inactive users and hijacks their accounts?

Ted
 

PsYcHoTiC_MaDmAn

New Member
5 Year Member
Messages
41
If there is someone using another person's PM I am nto sure how to battle that. What I will probably do is NOT delete the accounts (I will delete any posts that pop up in the forum), and disable the username's ability to post. If they are active users who are being victimized they will contact me. If they are spammers they proabably will not. I will also send each a PM letting them know what is going on.

Any ideas on whether there is a rogue script out there that seeks old inactive users and hijacks their accounts?

Ted

no luck with my quick scan through the vBulletin support forum.

if you disable all the user accounts that have been effected, sending an email to those accounts stating why you have done it. then tell them you will need them to change the password (and recommend that they do the same on whatever other accounts they use elsewhere)

if this is via a stolen pass then this should solve it. however, if it is down to an unknown bug in the vBulletin database that allows them to exploit a weakness this may only slow it down (I doubt its the latter, as there should have been more noise about it if this were the case)
 

tjudy

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,822
Location
Stoughton, WI
What I have doen is send PM to them. I have also deleted all their sent PM's, since I do not know the extent of the mailings. I have not gotten one.

I also changed the security questions on the Spam Guard system. Maybe that will help, but if there is a person doing it that securuty feature is useless anyway... it stops bots.

Anyone who gets a porn PM, post the sender's username here please. Even if you get a new one from the same person. That way I Can track if my efforts to stop it are effective.

Ted
 

tjudy

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,822
Location
Stoughton, WI
Norm, were you being serious that your porn PM came from Microman? I do nto doubt you, but if you are joking I need to know. Microman is very active, and I do not want to limit his account if I do not have to. If you are not joking it also means that whatever is doing this is not just targetting idle users!
 

tjudy

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,822
Location
Stoughton, WI
Thanks Norm... Actually the emails have been geting through, but have mailer deamon headings... wierd.

Microman... would you please look at your sent box to see if that post to Norm was sent on August 18? Please also look to see if there were other PM's sent out near the same time that you did nto send. I want to get an idea of how many PM this joker/bot is sending at a time.

Based upon looking at the records of the users sending the PM's, it looks like all this happened on July 18. The pattern is that a user (other than microman) who has not been active in a long time sent porn spam PM's all on August 18. I can see that by the records of the users' last actions. The odd man out in this case is microman, because that account is the only one used so far that has come from an active user.

I am going to look at the records of new registrants for AUgust 17 and 18. Maybe I can get a clue from that. I do not think that this is a bot. The anti-bot security measure has been too consistent. How a person is accessing individual PM accounts is a mystery.

Ted
 

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