URL to your eFiction: http://drfa.seventh-star.net
Version of eFiction: 3.5.4
Have you bridged eFiction, if so with what?: Nope.
Version of PHP: 5.2.17
Version of MySQL: 5.0.95-community
Have you searched for your problem: Yes
If so, what terms did you try: spam
State the nature of your problem: I checked my site's News Archive and found several comments that were spam: random words, links, and images of shoes and wedding dresses. Some of them appeared to have been left by registered users, whom I promptly deleted, but some just said they were left by "-" or there was no name. I checked the member list to be sure no one somehow registered with the username of "space" or "-" and I didn't find anyone. I had to manually delete all of the messages, which took a while.
Do you have a test account for us? Yes; username: Test Account, password: t3st3r
Here are my questions:
1. Does the captcha (which I do have enabled) not work on news items?
2. If a spammer somehow gets past the captcha, or a spammer hacks a legitimate user's account, is there another way to be notified of new comments on news items so I can review them?
2a. Or is there another way to run comments through a queue for moderation or spam-checking, even if left by "registered" users?
3. Are there mods to a) mass delete news item comments or other spammy comments? I imagine PHPmyAdmin is the best way to do this now; b) verify ALL comments, no matter who they're from, and perhaps even customize the method used to be particularly strong? c) approve users before allowing them to register, or verify them some way besides emailing a randomly-generated password (that is, delete those that don't login with their randomly-generated password and change it within one week or so)? d) delete users with no activity after a given period of time anyway, to prevent their accounts from being compromised?
Thanks for any help you can provide!
Archive: Dragonfayth
eFiction: 3.5.5/6
Latest Patch(es): Yes
bridged?: No
modified?: Yes
PHP: 7.4.25
MySQL: 5.7.32-35-log
I"m having this same exact issue actually. Only now it's not just in my news section, it has also started with accounts reviewing and leaving these same "wedding dress, fake watches, etc." crap in those reviews. My admin and I have been trying to delete and block these IPs as fast as we can, but it's gotten really overwhelming lately. I've actually had to go into my database just to delete some of these (way easier than doing them manually) because they had left over a hundred reviews on just one story. It was mainly on the featured stories and I had to remove the stories from that block.
I'm still looking for a solution. It's painfully obvious that the current captcha is no longer useful, but when I tried to update the captcha it messed the whole site up. Everything else I've tried has been to no avail. Right now I have my site set to user generated password (which isn't all that helpful) and had to take some approved tags off the site. I also turned off news comments for the time being. I'm hoping this helps, but only time will tell if it does. Sorry I couldn't be of more help in answering your questions, but I'm curious about this myself and hope that someone will come along and have a better way of protecting efiction sites. We need to find better ways to protect our sites and the solutions don't seem to be easy coming.
http://www.twiwrite.net
Where Your Imagination Can Run Free
18+ TwiWrite Fan Fiction Archives.
efiction vs.3.5.2
SQL vs. 5.0.77
PHP vs. 5.2.2
Happily soaking up any and all php, tpl, and html knowledge I can.
in the news item comments section, have you noticed if it is there immediately after you submit the news item? That is what is happening with one of the sites i am looking at so i am assuming it is some kind of injectino attack somewhere in the files, trying to locate it now.
why is nothing ever easy?
url: http://www.pretendercentre.com/missingpieces/
php: 5.2.5 msql: 5.0.45-community
efic version: 3.4.3 latest patches: yes
bridges: none mods: challenges, displayword, beta-search
I checked my news comments section today, a while after I posted it, and there are no spam news items on any of the three most recent posts. I never checked for spam on the current one I posted, and there wasn't any, so whatever my problem is, it isn't some automated injection script.
Archive: Dragonfayth
eFiction: 3.5.5/6
Latest Patch(es): Yes
bridged?: No
modified?: Yes
PHP: 7.4.25
MySQL: 5.7.32-35-log
Then that is different problem to mine. Mine seemed to come immediately after i post the news item, so it is somehow automated. I think i have fixed it though.
I deleted all the spam comments from the news but even after deletion they still resided in the tables. So deleting them from the comments table completely has stopped it for now, and hopefully that will be the end of it.
why is nothing ever easy?
url: http://www.pretendercentre.com/missingpieces/
php: 5.2.5 msql: 5.0.45-community
efic version: 3.4.3 latest patches: yes
bridges: none mods: challenges, displayword, beta-search
Hi,
I have / had the same problem and I came to a ... let's call it disturbing result:
The spam entry you _think_ is posted instantly has been there for quite a long time. - How that?
Easy (sadly): The spambot, assuming that's how it happened, somehow managed to post news comments without the proper permission, that's why for me they all showed up as "uid" = 0 in the database. Now it jost throws in a number of comments for news ids that don't exist yet, by the time you create said newsid the spam-comment automatically becomes part of it.
Then that is different problem to mine. Mine seemed to come immediately after i post the news item, so it is somehow automated. I think i have fixed it though.
I deleted all the spam comments from the news but even after deletion they still resided in the tables. So deleting them from the comments table completely has stopped it for now, and hopefully that will be the end of it.
Exactly, it doesn't happen anymore because you deleted all the "future" spam.
I posted a news entry this morning and had a comment from late august this year appear right next to it:
(click to see full size version)
Now how can this be fixed for the future?
My Hub TrekNation | World of X | Arda Fanfiction
I had the exact same thing, with those damn shoes, and even if you delete they come back. In the end the only way i coudl get rid of them and stop was to delete every single one of the comments from the tables and then it was fine. i am assuming something in the first one was the cause, and we haven't had any trouble since. no idea though how to prevent it happening again, aside from turning news comments off
why is nothing ever easy?
url: http://www.pretendercentre.com/missingpieces/
php: 5.2.5 msql: 5.0.45-community
efic version: 3.4.3 latest patches: yes
bridges: none mods: challenges, displayword, beta-search
... no idea though how to prevent it happening again, aside from turning news comments off
And that's not what we want, is it?
Question to the coding department: Any idea how these comments might have gotten injected - and since it happened to multiple people we might assume it was within the php code.
Time: August 2012 for me, that would imply latest version (3.5.3 installed).
My Hub TrekNation | World of X | Arda Fanfiction
I did as some other folks here did, which was going straight into my comments table and deleting the offending comments. I'm hoping that deleting them from there won't break anything on the front-end. One unusual thing I noticed is that the cid for each spam comment was significantly higher in number than the cids for genuine comments. Is there a reason that might happen, and could there be a potential fix in that tidbit of information?
Archive: Dragonfayth
eFiction: 3.5.5/6
Latest Patch(es): Yes
bridged?: No
modified?: Yes
PHP: 7.4.25
MySQL: 5.7.32-35-log
I was getting that on reviews on my website instead of in news. I "locked" the user when it popped up as another user posting the same crap. So for now I've turned off reviews which is fine because I haven't posted anything new on my website for a while.
******************************************
Mucking around in eFiction since circa 2001 (ver. 1.0)
Now running v.3
Deleting them from the tables didn't stop the spam from coming back, only now they're from a new member, whom I've since locked. I've noticed that all of the comments were around 11/24-11/30 of this year, even if the news articles themselves were from years ago.
Archive: Dragonfayth
eFiction: 3.5.5/6
Latest Patch(es): Yes
bridged?: No
modified?: Yes
PHP: 7.4.25
MySQL: 5.7.32-35-log
Dreamhost had a rash of hacks that affected any script running php. Wordpress and efiction were compromised for me earlier in the year. I sincerely doubt efiction as released is 'safe'. I know WP went through a few upgrades since then.
Also captchas are great, but there are scripts that put out requests to countries like India to manually fill them in and kick back an answer to the bot script.
I am rebuilding efiction! Join us on irc! #efiction at
I was having issues like others posted about where I was getting instant spam comments as soon as a new news item was posted. Per artphilia's comment, I went and checked the comments table in the database and sure enough there were a bunch of spam comments just waiting to get posted to news items. From there, I think I figured out how they got the comments into the database even though the news item wasn't there yet. If you click to leave a comment on a news item that already exists, you get taken to a page like this yoursite.com/news.php?action=newsstory&nid=54. If you go to the address bar and change the 54 to a 55, it brings up a blank space where the news item should go and a box for comments. If a comment is left, it just sits in the database until a new news item is posted. Then, as soon as news item 55 appears, the comment shows up.
I have this same problem, but with the added bonus that when I delete the offending comments, instead of just saying 0 comments, it goes to "-3 comments" or "-1 comment." How do I get it to just say 0 comments? And while we're at it, what does it mean to check for them in the comment tables? I'm such a noob. 🙁
Site: http://quoth-the-warbler.org/index.php
EDIT: For now I just turned off comments because I'm so frustrated.
Your hosting most likely gives you a way to view and edit your MySQL tables. For instance, many use PHPMyAdmin. You'll have to consult your host to figure out what they use.
