Wednesday, October 18, 2006
A spam bot can really get around
In the past few days, a spam bot with the name "nanbe1st" has been posting the following message on vBulletin, phpBB, and Invision Power Board bulletin boards (and possibly others):
Post title: "Hello, sort anoob here" (sic)
Post content:
"hello ladies and gents!I've been kind of lurking around.I love this site! thanks for having me :-)"
Last I checked on Google, there were 477,000 hits for the string "sort anoob here" and 144,000 hits for the string "nanbe1st." All the words in the string in the correct order, excluding the punctuation, appear 535 times.
The spam does not always have a link directly in it. When the boards allow public display of a link to a URL in the member profile -- an area of the boards that's not immediately obvious to look at -- the profile (sometimes, but not always) links to the usual pharmacy spam. Because of that, people just assume it's a real newbie, and, it seems to get welcome replies on a lot of forums.
So, what's this thing doing? Trying, with limited success, to increase the Google ranking of a website by planting links? When it does link, it seems to link to the same place. Testing various board software from some vulnerability? It isn't anywhere near the first spam-bot to have figured out how to bypass most boards' weak CAPTCHAs or email verification schemes.
If nothing else, it's an equal opportunity spammer. It got seems to "love" gays, Trekkies (topic itself was trashed already), freelance workers and Nazis.
Technorati tags: forum, spam
Post title: "Hello, sort anoob here" (sic)
Post content:
"hello ladies and gents!I've been kind of lurking around.I love this site! thanks for having me :-)"
Last I checked on Google, there were 477,000 hits for the string "sort anoob here" and 144,000 hits for the string "nanbe1st." All the words in the string in the correct order, excluding the punctuation, appear 535 times.
The spam does not always have a link directly in it. When the boards allow public display of a link to a URL in the member profile -- an area of the boards that's not immediately obvious to look at -- the profile (sometimes, but not always) links to the usual pharmacy spam. Because of that, people just assume it's a real newbie, and, it seems to get welcome replies on a lot of forums.
So, what's this thing doing? Trying, with limited success, to increase the Google ranking of a website by planting links? When it does link, it seems to link to the same place. Testing various board software from some vulnerability? It isn't anywhere near the first spam-bot to have figured out how to bypass most boards' weak CAPTCHAs or email verification schemes.
If nothing else, it's an equal opportunity spammer. It got seems to "love" gays, Trekkies (topic itself was trashed already), freelance workers and Nazis.
Technorati tags: forum, spam
Friday, October 13, 2006
Simchat Torah songs...
Presented as a public service to those who don't want to sing "David melech yisrael..." fifty times over in the course of 14 hakafot.
It's not pointed, and may have some typos. Most of it is intentionally in ktiv male, with the exception of common words. And, yes, one of them is a joke.
[Update: I took the joke out, so I could distribute it, and decided that I liked the formatting better in the later version. What it said:
יחי אדונינו מורינו ורבינו מלך המשיח לעולם ועד
And the commentary:"Helps clear a room quickly."]
Download: OpenDocument source. PDF.
Chag Sameach!
Technorati tags: Simchat+Torah
It's not pointed, and may have some typos. Most of it is intentionally in ktiv male, with the exception of common words. And, yes, one of them is a joke.
[Update: I took the joke out, so I could distribute it, and decided that I liked the formatting better in the later version. What it said:
יחי אדונינו מורינו ורבינו מלך המשיח לעולם ועד
And the commentary:"Helps clear a room quickly."]
Download: OpenDocument source. PDF.
Chag Sameach!
Technorati tags: Simchat+Torah
