Thu Jul 17, 2014 1:29 am
Forum Issues - July 17th, 2014 - Forum Spam
So I think we've all known for a while that the open forum for new recruits was trouble. Plenty of spam would pepper in from time to time, but otherwise I didn't really think it much of an issue.
Of course, the other day, here I am watching some movies off of Delorean (the server running these forums), and my stream grinds to a halt. Sure enough, I have a load average of over 70 (basically translates to about 1,750% CPU load), and the webserver and database server are chugging like crazy. Long story short, I had about 700,000 posts in that forum in short time.
Turns out all of the posts were coming from desktops in China, no doubt taken over by hackers somewhere in the world (probably here in the US, honestly). After banning major subnets of China, I decided it was time to put a stop to this crap.
Good thing I know my SQL, and I was able to clean up the damage with two simple SQL queries. We lost a few legitimate posts from that forum in the process, but I think it was for the best. Also, now, the Recruitment Desk requires a user account to post in there. Sorry for any guests, but this is the way it has to be...basically as long as China exists.
Anyway, sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused, but the situation should be permanently resolved for the future. Thanks!
Of course, the other day, here I am watching some movies off of Delorean (the server running these forums), and my stream grinds to a halt. Sure enough, I have a load average of over 70 (basically translates to about 1,750% CPU load), and the webserver and database server are chugging like crazy. Long story short, I had about 700,000 posts in that forum in short time.
Turns out all of the posts were coming from desktops in China, no doubt taken over by hackers somewhere in the world (probably here in the US, honestly). After banning major subnets of China, I decided it was time to put a stop to this crap.
Good thing I know my SQL, and I was able to clean up the damage with two simple SQL queries. We lost a few legitimate posts from that forum in the process, but I think it was for the best. Also, now, the Recruitment Desk requires a user account to post in there. Sorry for any guests, but this is the way it has to be...basically as long as China exists.
Anyway, sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused, but the situation should be permanently resolved for the future. Thanks!
