ApacheIPMgr server overhead vs. standard .htaccess file?

[Monty]

Does the new feature use less server overhead than the normal .htaccess file when it comes to large blocks of IP's? (mqs server)

If so, is there any way to add large blocks (like all of China and Russia) of IP's to it? I see it's suggested we don't edit that file manually.

The reason I am asking is that I personally still hand approve all new vB users and lately it's been running between 80% and 90% bogus users. In fact, it's gotten bad enough that I now check off "delete all" and go through and pick out the good ones to approve. It used to be the majority of new members were good ones, which isn't the case anymore.

[Terra]

It has the same processing overhead as the .htaccess file has to be parsed with each request...

In the future, I plan on writing a custom Apache C module that would read the IP list on startup, use a radix tree for fast lookups, and maintain persistence... However, I have pretty much frozen developing any new modules for Apache 1.3 as I'm looking to port our existing modules to Apache 2.x...

[Monty]

I am trying the new tool and it is certainly very handy. One thing I noticed is that it doesn't like spaces in front of the ip's. It also looks like it's going to be easy enough to detect patterns and with that, able to have those patterns worked into ranges.

If my limited understanding of the future of this tool includes it only doing new look ups for the new/changed lists, something like rs sync does for backing up files, then that would indeed be greatness. If it would be possible to select blocks of IP's from pre determined countries, that would even make it better. In the event you need beta testers for being able to ban entire countries, count me in. I have given up on using email addresses to do that, the spammers just run from one to the next. Gmail seems over run with them at this point.

Thanks for the new tool, it rocks. :clapper:

[hobbes]

Hi Monty,

We've also noticed a huge increase in vB spam registrations the last 1-2 weeks. reCAPTCHA has been known to be broken for several months. Since adding a required, yet simple forum-related registration question we've noticed that spam registrations have dropped. Other than blocking IPs, how are you preventing those registrations?

Thx.

[Monty]

Hobbes, I moderate all new members and have set it so that users awaiting confirmation can only send one PM per 12 hours. What was happening was they would register and start with the PM spam. Other than simply looking at the user name and email, I am adding blocks of IP's from http://www.countryipblocks.net/country-blocks/select-formats/ to my new .htaccess file. That seems to have helped this morning, but the ratio of bad to good is still 80/20. It's just an overall lower number of registrations to deal with. When I delete someone that is legit and they contact me, I just add them manually, assign a password and email it back. I took a couple of days of vacation recently to attend the big boat show in Houston and was floored when I got back and found close to 100 new registrations each day, the vast majority of which were spammers. I read somewhere (cnet maybe) that email spam is way down, but forum spam is way up. I guess it's just a new game of whack the mole. I am sure I am not alone in saying that I don't need any russian, polish, korean or chinese registrations on my site. The plan today is to add a few more country blocks of IP's and see how it goes. The reason I asked my initial question was I didn't want to bog down the servers with all this. Hopefully, I can tweak my new file and even share it with others having the same issues. Once the file is made, it's easy enough to FTP it in, and let it do its magic.

[Bob]

A tool I have found to be pretty effective with helping to prevent bogus users from registering at two SMF forums I help moderate has been adding a Stop Forum Spam (http://www.stopforumspam.com/) plug in.

The available plug ins are listed here:
http://www.stopforumspam.com/contributions

-Bob

[Terra]

I am trying the new tool and it is certainly very handy. One thing I noticed is that it doesn't like spaces in front of the ip's.
I have relaxed the input scrubbing a bit to remove leading and trailing spaces...

Thank you for the heads up!

[Monty]

Bob, I am to the point with this, that I don't even want them to be able to browse the site. Bandwidth to those countries I listed is wasted and even letting them in the front door is somewhat of a security risk. As of this morning and adding a couple more country blocks to my file, along with a new question (thanks Hobbs), the problem is about 95% solved.

Terra, there's also an error generated if you try and add an IP that's already there on the list. That one took me a couple of times to figure out too. This particular tool has a lot of potential, at least for my uses. Thanks again for adding it to our tool box.

[Terra]

Terra, there's also an error generated if you try and add an IP that's already there on the list. That one took me a couple of times to figure out too.
IP: 1.1.1.1 is already in my list...

I tried to add it once again, and the following error was generated:
Oops - an error has occurred:

The IP address you submitted is already blocked: 1.1.1.1

Did you not get a similar error message stating that the IP was already blocked?

What would you recommend as being a more informative error message?

[Monty]

Terra, I just tried it again and got:

==========================
Error Oops - an error has occurred:

The IP address you submitted is already blocked: 74.118.193.100

Click Here to go back or Click Here to return to the main menu.
=================

I must not have seen it yesterday, and that message is fine as it is. My bad.

[hobbes]

Glad that adding the question helped a little Monty. I was considering making yours & Bob's suggestions, but the registration question alone dropped the number of spam registrations from hundreds per days to less than a dozen, and the moderators are happy once again. Appreciate the ideas though.