The FloodBot Gazette

[Jussi Schultink]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Lorenzo J. Lucchini <ljlbox at tiscali.it> wrote:
> Recently I've been making some modifications to the floodbots, mostly in
> response to the spam #ubuntu (and much of freenode) has been getting lately.
> I'll share the more important changes.
>
> The most prominent new feature is that when someone joins #ubuntu-unregged
> (which is happening more and more as #ubuntu is set +r quite often), they are
> asked a human-answerable question, which is hopefully very easy for any
> English-speaking human to answer, but not for a bot.
> If the user answers the question correctly, they are /invited to #ubuntu,
> which lets them join without going through the whole registration process,
> which has proven too complicated for many (though the bots' messages still
> encourage registration).
>
> Secondly, whenever a user joins #ubuntu, a passive open proxy check is
> performed; if the user's host is recognized as an open proxy, the following
> happens:
> - they are ban-forwarded to #ubuntu-proxy-users
> - they are kicked with a message stating that open proxies are not allowed
> - they receive a private message explaining that if they don't believe to be
> using an open proxy, they should join #ubuntu-ops to have their issue sorted
> I recommend that operators suggest registering and obtaining an unaffiliated
> cloak from freenode to people whose host is mistakenly detected as an open
> proxy (although I would still appreciate being informed about such
> incidents).
>
> Lastly, a subtle change has been introduced into the mute-triggering
> anti-flood code, such that spammers should be detected more easily and muted
> sooner (although, unfortunately, the bots and freenode servers have intrinsic
> lag that prevents them from being able to mute after just one line, if
> spammers send messages quickly).
> I'll leave the details of this to your imagination, although ops are always
> free to join #ubuntu-ops-monitor (ask for a +I line if you can't access it)
> and inquire further.
> Since every change to the flood code increases the likelihood of
> mis-triggering over benign messages, please let me know if you see this
> happening.

Thanks LjL for this, its nice for updates to come on what is happening
with the floodbots.

Cheers!

Jussi

>
>
> by LjL
> ljl at ubuntu.com
>
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