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Fun with comment spammers..

13th February
2006
written by Steven

Ah… the sheer joy of it all.

Whilst my anti-spam measures have been working just fine, I decided i’d take it to the next level.

So I moved my real wp-comments-post.php to a new location (updating my wp theme to match) and replaced the real file with a honey pot version.

At first it just logged the spammers request to a file (see http://www.herod.net/spam), but I’ve just modified it to write back a nice surprise for the spammer

A 47MB zip file.

It seems to work just fine, I had two spams turn up in the honey pot whilst I watched, but the http logs didn’t record the hit until they had downloaded the two files, it would have at least slowed them down a little.

Hopefully I won’t run out of bandwidth (I have 1.6TB available) or have my hosting company puke at me. We’ll see how I go :)

Odd Stuff, Tech

22 Comments

  1. KIRK
    24/03/2006

    Thanks for providing the pass math plug!

  2. Michael
    01/04/2006

    Let’s beat those spammers!!! Yeah!

  3. Mario Klingemann
    04/04/2006

    Nice idea - I wonder, maybe you could save your server’s bandwith by using mod_rewrite and proxy the request to wp-comments-post.php to some huge file on archive.org?

  4. Bronnie
    06/04/2006

    Thanks for the anti-spam plugin!
    Love it :)

  5. Greenmantle
    07/04/2006

    Going straight on my blog, thank you very much!
    Love the maths idea, maybe you could try grammar and/or spelling next to annoy all those people who can’t write to save their lives? lol!

  6. Tjoeten
    10/04/2006

    Just what I needed, thanks.

  7. Sanjay M
    16/04/2006

    Thanks a ton for the plugin. At first it didnt seem to work - I couldn’t see anything at all, and then I realised that I needed to log out to see it! :P Though not that familiar with PHP it was pretty simple to get it going. I had tried all kinds of anti-spam solutions within wordpress but was getting quite bogged down… hoping the dont manage to get around this one! :)

  8. Considerable Seok2
    20/04/2006

    Thanks for a good antispam plugin DYPM.
    I’ve some problem about this DYPM. When DYPM installed, I can’t receive any trackback from other blogs. How can I use DYPM with receiving trackbacks.
    Have a good time.. :)

  9. Barbara (Xerraire)
    25/04/2006

    I have just added the plug in to my blog. I’ve been swamped for months getting THOUSANDS a day. My blog was becoming a downer instead of fun. This should help. Thank you so much!

  10. Tony
    01/05/2006

    Hey,, I like the idea to give them the huge file.

    How about use mod_rewrite and send the the huge file from some download server like redhat iso file or something.

  11. Ryan Miglavs
    02/05/2006

    Heh heh. That’s hilarious. I love it.

    Another fellow writes back to as many spammers as possible:
    http://www.spamletters.com/

    Good reads!

  12. Kim
    24/05/2006

    Hi Herod!

    Thx for a great plugin. But i tried supplying a wrong math answer, and it rightfully rejected my comment - but it still counted my attempt at the frontpage. The post displying that there is 6 comments, when there is only five? Something you know about?

    Look here: http://www.emtekaer.dk/index.php/2006/05/21/anti-spam/

    - Kim.

  13. Olaf Gerken
    24/05/2006

    Thanx for this useful plugin,… is there anywhere a list of IPs from previous spammers?

  14. Steven
    25/05/2006

    The mis-counting of comments is a known issue, someone submitted a fix I need to put into the next version.

    No, there is no way of getting a list of IP’s from previous spammers, although it could probably be done…

  15. Stephanie
    27/05/2006

    When will you fix the comment numbering error? I would not have installed the plug-in if I knew it did this - but now it’s too late and I have a number of ghost comments listed. Please tell me you’ll add this fix VERY SOON NOW, or I’ll have to find another spam blocking solution.

    Steven’s comment:

    Be polite, I’m under no obligation to assist you.

  16. Stephanie
    30/05/2006

    No, you’re not under any obligation, except that you should note such major bugs when you release a plug-in.

    I had also reviewed and promoted your plug-in at the bloggingblog.org, so if there’s no fix posted soon I’ll have to post an ammendment to that article saying that the plug-in is no good because of this bug.

    Having a developer be responsive to your concerns instead of dismissive is also a nice plus.

    Steven says:

    I sent you a beta of version 3.0 which fixes this issue three days ago, (I would like to point out - within 5 hours of your comment), I have just resent another revision to you now.

  17. John Gilmore
    03/06/2006

    Just brought up WordPress yesterday, installed DYPM today, and it seems to work when the math is correct. When the math answer is wrong, it produces a page that looks like this:

    WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'select count(*) from wp_comments where comment_post_id = 3 and comment_approved ' at line 1]
    update wp_posts set comment_count = (select count(*) from wp_comments where comment_post_id = 3 and comment_approved = ‘1′) where ID = 3
    Sorry, it seems you didn’t pass math!!

    I’m new to SQL, can someone help?

    Steven says:

    What version of MySql are you using?  I suspect the update statement using a sub-query isn’t supported in that version of MySql, if you let me know, I’ll investigate further.  I suspect you’ll be the first of many who might start to encounter this :(

  18. Benjamin Seidenberg
    05/06/2006

    I am also encountering the same problem as John. Mysql version 4.0.24-10sarge2

     Steven says:

    This has been fixed in 3.1, I no longer use a sub-query

  19. mikeypod
    08/06/2006

    THANKS!!

    I just sorted through 6000 spam comments. You are saving my life!

  20. Brian
    19/02/2007

    Is this honey pot file available to us? Or was it just your private revenge >;)

  21. Philip
    31/05/2007

    Many thanks for the plugin.

  22. Tim
    31/05/2007

    Like the idea of sending the reply, I did something equally petty once when a friend of mine was threatened on MSN, I wrote a php script that emailed him 1000 times with a warning message saying “We know who you are”.

    My finger slipped a few times when pressing the browser refresh button so his hotmail inbox would have been rather full I imagine.

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