Geeklog Forums

There is a better CAPTCHA for Geeklog than the one for download on this site. It's written by the Media Gallery folks. It seems that even that one can be bypassed by the bots though, after using the "Geeklog CAPTCHA Hack" I have noticed that users are still able to be created by spammers, without even submitting a "Real name" field which I have required in the custom user registration function. this thread on the MG forums has some details on the CAPTCHA and some users reporting that spammers still get through...

thelusiv,

Actually the CAPTCHA hack available here at geeklog.net is different from the one I have over at www.mediagallery.org. If you have been using one of them you might try the other and see if you have any better luck.

The one here uses Javascript, where the one at mediagallery.org just creates the random CAPTCHA graphic and places it into the custom registration form, then validates the results. The biggest difference besides the javascript is that the one here uses static images and I don't.

I would try which ever one you haven't used and see if the results change. This is still all new and I'm sure as we learn more about how the spambots work we can design better ways to block them.

Thanks!
Mark

mevans, I've just implemented your CAPTCHA in the last few minutes and already have blocked two spammers.

Have you considered this for comments too?

Thanks,

Byte

I'm glad it is working for you, I just put out another beta a little while ago, v0.3 which now supports ImageMagick. I had some folks who were having a hard time getting the GD libs to work under OS X, so now there is a choice, GD or ImageMagick for CAPTCHA.

Once I'm satisfied this works as it should, I'll be happy to look into adding support for comments. But, right now I'm not aware of any hooks into the comment engine, it may have to be a hack, which I would prefer not to do. Anway, I'll start poking around the code and see what I can turn up, who knows....

Thanks!
Mark

Its working good!

Tue Aug 22 21:21:44 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.192.2
Wed Aug 23 00:25:42 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 70.87.100.194
Wed Aug 23 04:04:54 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 209.8.40.21
Wed Aug 23 04:56:07 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 209.8.40.23
Wed Aug 23 06:08:42 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 205.252.23.2
Wed Aug 23 06:20:41 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 205.252.23.8
Wed Aug 23 07:35:54 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 209.8.22.199
Wed Aug 23 07:52:57 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.192.6
Wed Aug 23 08:07:35 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.192.5
Wed Aug 23 09:46:19 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.205.179
Wed Aug 23 11:34:34 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.192.7
Wed Aug 23 12:21:03 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.192.13
Wed Aug 23 12:53:31 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 206.161.205.180
Wed Aug 23 13:23:29 2006 - CAPTCHA: Detected an attempt to bypass normal registration - IP Address: 209.8.40.30

I got all the way to this point, but there is no "custom_usercheck" function in my lib_custom file. There's a "custom_usercreate" function, but placing the code in there has had no effect...

I'm still using Geeklog 1.3, could that be why?

JG

Simple and brilliant. Thanks.

Over the summer I have converted my student society's website over to Geeklog (kudos, Dirk!) and I have been getting a lot of comment spam.

Catch is, registration is disabled because only student society members can get accounts.. but I want all students to be able to comment on news postings, so anonymous comments are enabled. I hope this is the fix I have been waiting for. Thanks again!

Just installed CAPTCHA v0.4 For Geeklog from here...

Installed nicely and worked. So will see whether spammers have any luck bypassing it

How do you ban the entire range?

I use CHX-i I cant recomend it unless your a strong admin thats exactly what your doing.

Thats fine for those that host on there own machine(s) that don't have a decent firewall. What about those that are hosted someplace that don't have that access? The next best thing you can do otherwise is to have spam-x, bad behavior and ban plugins installed.

resynch your phpbbbridge database - I had the same error and that cleared it right up.

to resynch you have to go to the phpbbridge install page:

i.e. http://www.yourdomanin.com/admin/plugins/phpbbbridge/install.php

and click on the re-synch button

at least that's what worked for me (I was getting your same error)
good luck

I have the same problem where lots of bots registering themself but lucky me, they didn't post comment or whatever. I have about 50 bots registering a day.

I tried to install mevan's captcha hack with no luck. My registration page keep on showing broken image. (FYI: my php4 compiled with gd2)

So i take a look at geeklog.net's registration page & they added new field (confirmation email) & immediately i did some fix/hack on my users/registrationform.thtml & users.php to include new field. This fix/hack works. After 24 hours, there are only 1 bot can bypass this fix/hack - email from users@mail.ru

Question for geeklog.net's maintainer (sorry if the Qs sounds stupid):
1. does this fix/hack works well for your site?
2. bots still can bypass this fix/hack? if there are, how many of them?

I know i should'nt modifying geeklog's core file but i have to. I'm using latest stable GL (1.4.0sr5-1). My site at http://www.chatzradio.net

(Sorry with my bad english)

bieffe,

There are two methods to implement the gl-captcha, one will randomly generate the image using either GD or ImageMagick. For sites that have a difficult time getting the on-the-fly generation, there is also an option to use static images, this should work on all sites.

From the README:

9. Configure gl-captcha for your environment by editing the
public_html/captcha/captcha.php file.

$gfxDriver - specifies which graphics driver to use:
0 - GD Libs
1 - ImageMagick
2 - No Graphics driver, use Static Images

So in the case where you are seeing broken images, try setting the $gfxDriver to 2 and use the static images.

Thanks!
Mark