[Pmwiki-users] Wiki-Spammers 2 - motives

Thomas -Balu- Walter list+pmwiki-users
Tue Jan 11 20:49:41 CST 2005


On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 03:19:06PM -0700, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> The question that often perplexes me when looking at logs like
> this is:  Is this a human or a bot doing the work?  If it's a bot,
> why is the bot so ... "restrained"?  Is it that the bot is programmed
> to avoid various actions that would indicate it's a bot, such as
> making too many postings in a short period of time, or posting to
> large numbers of pages in a single session?  
> 
> Most attacks I've seen limit the attacks to only a dozen or so 
> pages on a site, and I've never quite figured out why this is the case
> if it's a bot.  Perhaps it's just a case of the parasite being 
> careful not to kill the host organism?

The pages bob attacks are just some of the default pages that are on all
PmWikis. It probably does it again and again to make it more difficult
to undo the changes in the page history - or it simply is well coded and
checks wether the change was successfull (which was not, since I locked
the pages).

Changing the Main/SideBar is somewhat effective. This usually changes
most pages in the Wiki.

And finding them is as easy as
http://www.google.com/search?q=Main%2FSideBar

     Balu



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