Here’s a new type of spam or spoof that’s come up from leaving Youtube comments. They want you to use the Telegram app to contact them to get a prize or something else. It all looks very suspicious. The IP is indeed from Google, and it looks pretty legit, but don’t contact them.
Youtube spoof using the Telegram app, after you leave a Youtube comment. Photo 1.
Youtube spoof using the Telegram app, after you leave a Youtube comment. Photo 2.
Youtube spoof using the Telegram app, after you leave a Youtube comment. Photo 3.
Akismet, by default, deletes spam after 15 days. This may be fine most people, but I use my spam to control and deny new bots from my site. I cannot use this input when Akismet simply deletes it after the default 15 days. I often times am busier than that.
Here’s a 2016 post on how to extend this 15 day time limit.
You can change the number of days Akismet should keep spam comments in your database. Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.
Recently I have been observing a different WordPress spam technique that uses WP trackbacks. This technique has some interesting characteristics that are unlike other types of spam, so my usual clues as to origin and banning method did not work. Fortunately this technique also has some unique characteristics that can be used to ban them. Fortunately.
WordPress Trackbacks
When one WP site links to another WP site, the WP sites communicate with each other using a method called trackbacks. The first site sends a trackback request to the second site. The second site posts the trackback as a special comment, which invites the user to click through to the first site. These trackbacks are automated, making it convenient for both sites.
It is always warming to see the two Chinas, the PRC and Taiwan, getting along. Today they ganged up and tried to break into my site.
60.217.64.210 s China Unicom Shandong, level 10 risk, malware Spam Zero-Day
60.248.0.230 s Hinet Chunghwa Tel Taiwan, known for bots and infected zombie computers
183.167.228.134 s Chinanet Anhui, level 10 risk, malware Spam Zero-Day
218.21.43.238 s Dou shi-BAR Yin chuan Ningxia, level 10 risk, malware Spam Zero-Day
The last one, from Ningxia, looks surprisingly small as compared to the usually huge number of IP addresses for Chinanet or China Unicom, but they are part of Chinanet Ningxia, which is large.
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot is a persistent referrer spammer. They use a huge amount of Ip addresses that do not repeat the third octet. It has similar strategies to kosmetik-freaks.blogspot, in fact sharing identical IP ranges. They are sister referrer spammers. Both are not banned by the HTTP_REFERER in htaccess. If you kill one you kill the other, a nice double prize. As with the sister, this spammer runs out of Indonesia.
These are the referrers:
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.ca
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.co.id
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.com
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.in
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.my
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.sg
There are some scrapers and there are others that are ridiculous. I just got scraped hard by 209.133.216.182, 209-133-216-182.static.hvvc.us, with 105 server entries and 7 unique user agent names. Excessive, to say the least.
Here are the UA’s used:
Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; en) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.346 Mobile Safari/534.11+
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; heritrix/3.3.0-SNAPSHOT-20160721-2308 +http://www.exif-search.com)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.2) Gecko/20110201
Opera/12.02 (Android 4.1; Linux; Opera Mobi/ADR-1111101157; U; en-US) Presto/2.9.201 Version/12.02
UniversalFeedParser/3.3 +http://feedparser.org/
Windows-Media-Player/11.0.5721.5145
This kosmetik-freaks.blogspot is a referrer spammer that has been harassing me for quite a long time. I have tried to ban them with an HTTP_REFERER ban but this does not work. My ISP, Site5, will not help me. They are predominantly out of Indonesia. They are pret103.47.135.43
103.47.135.50
103.47.135.7
103.47.135.72
too sophisticated to evade my detection for so long.
The sister referrer spammer is tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot, which uses the identical method and largely shares the same IP ranges. When you kill one you kill the other. Almost all these UAs are mobile devices, leading me to believe these are mobile customers that have downloaded the same spam app.
kwpublisher.com is a long-time referrer spammer that I would like to remove. I have tried to ban them with an HTTP_REFERER ban but this does not work. My ISP, Site5, will not help me. This guy seems to have a similar method to kosmetik-freaks.blogspot. They seem to be out of Pakistan mostly, but have gone to Indonesia and China. I am now tracking them closely.
Conclusion: Tracked down the code hotlinking to my site. Complained to their domain names provider. Them they disappeared. Goodbye.
39.42.52.98 x 4 39.32.0.0 – 39.63.255.255 Pakistan Tel
Does your raw access log display a host name of “0”, or zero? Very odd, is it not? I have been struggling with this for a couple of months, and my ISP Site5 had no answers. It turns out that one of my spammers, NFORCE_ENTERTAINMENT, puts an unprintable character into their host table, so that when my ISP looks them up, they display the unprintable character in my log as “0”.
Trying to control your site’s spam can be challenging. If you try to ban an IP that is simply 0, or a host name of “0” you will fail, because there is no zero in their host name, but an unprintable character. Ban these guys instead.
no-ptr.as20860.net is a dual Ip spammer with a twist. The originating IP hostname lookup returns three IPs! You’ll need to ban all three, but there’s a lot more. They use IOMart, GB as their ISP.
It seems like this hostname also morphs to numerous IP addresses, making them difficult to track down.
Method:
no-ptr.as20860.net not only uses the dual ip spammer strategy, but also changes its host name through many ip addresses, making it double difficult to ban.
