13 March 2015, 12:02

As you may have noticed if you're subscribed to this forum, or to the "Mobile Mahara" or especially the "Moodle Mahara Integration" forums, we got hit by a forum spambot this morning, which managed to generate around 150 emails before I cut it off.

This isn't the first time the Mahara forum has been spammed. Through the years of this project we've implemented three or four new waves of anti-spammer countermeasures. Each one works for a year or two, then the spammers find a way around it.

I think for the current spam problem, we probably need to add some combination of:

• a Bayesian filter to detect probably spam messages
• a moderation queue for iffy messages
• a throttle on message posting rates

Unfortunately at the moment everyone here at Mahara HQ is tied up trying to get the Mahara 15.04 release candidate out the door. So for the time being, I've just disabled new user self-registration. Hopefully next week when we get 15.04 out, we can take a look at implementing some of those spam countermeasures.

Cheers,

Aaron

13 March 2015, 19:30

Well, after I posted this the spammer found a registration method I had overlooked, registered a new account, and churned out another 221 emails, all to this, the "Open Discussion" forum this time.

I've shut down the registration method they used, deleted their posts, and disabled forum emails until Monday. My apologies for the inconvenience.

Cheers,

Aaron

14 March 2015, 6:36

P.S. "Getting Mahara 15.04 out" meant "finalizing the Release Candidate" to start the testing with it. :-) We are planning on releasing Mahara 15.04 around mid-April.

Cheers

Kristina