New create account anti-spam system in place

TazzyTazzy

DCCWiki gets surges of new spam accounts once they defeat the current mouse trap. I’ve implemented some additional countermeasures to help mitigate this.

1) It appears that the MediaWiki confirm account extension had a bug in the current version we use, but it was patched for a version due to release in Q1/Q2 2023. I’ve manually backported the fix as the coder for that extension refused to patch their software. This bug failed to validate the captcha - kind of a big deal.
2) Various lists from https://www.stopforumspam.com/downloads are being checked for known domains/emails/IP addresses. I realize that botnets and various bad actors can spin up virtual servers anywhere and use a new name, but it seems that many don’t. During testing, these lists would have caught about 95% of the recent surge in spam accounts.

If anyone is having trouble creating a new DCCWiki.com account, please open a ticket at the
Support Desk.

-Mitch

TazzyTazzy

Two weeks ago, the anti-spam system was tweaked a bit more. It was a bit aggressive in blocking users. This was found out after receiving a few emails and tweets. Some additional smart checks were put in place during the account request phase to lower false positive matches.