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Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#461

Post by fragmede »

anigbrowl wrote: post #445
fragmede wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or the bot is taking advantage of holes in the existing spam filter that haven't been exploited before

Obviously you can't filter for every possibility in advance, but with a hands-on moderator and some regex it should be super-easy to throttle this. And as more than one person has pointed out, just shutting down new account creation/posting for 24 hours would be equally effective. I'm perplexed at how a mature site full owned and catering to network technologists is vulnerable to such a laughably crude attack.

but then you've shut down account creation for 24 hours. The site operators get to choose how they want to play it, but it seems they don't want to do that just yet.

You're right that it's laughably crude though. Says a lot about things that this hasn't happened until now.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#462

Post by krapp »

joeyhage wrote: post #310
skilled wrote: post #5

Interesting that this wasn’t baked in as a preventative method for repeat usernames. Which is also ironic because why would this guy reuse the same username for his little spam campaign when it can be nuked in one line of code… Amateur stuff. Never seen it happen before though!

I’m also surprised that slurs/slang/foul language in usernames is allowed unless the server is overwhelmed and things are slipping past the validation.

I think the "validation" is the mods happening to notice (usually because people who create such accounts get flagged, and dang gets notified of flags) and politely telling the person such usernames aren't allowed.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#464

Post by esafak »

johnasmith wrote: post #459
esafak wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founders are "John Smith" and "Jane Doe", and they're incorporated in Malta. Anyone who does business with this outfit has it coming.

Not all John Smiths are bad, promise.

I'm partial to the John Smith in The Man in the High Castle. I'm sure you are fine too but this spammer is besmirching your family's good name.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#465

Post by mtmail »

Bilal_io wrote: post #400

Are you lonely and want to do something? Flag those spam comments. Yeah, I was surprised by the amount, it feels like an attack rather than spam. I hope this didn't interrupt Dang from something more important.

I flagged several hundred and can't find anything more to flag right now. Massive.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#466

Post by mtmail »

A_Duck wrote: post #336
geerlingguy wrote: post #4

It sure looks like it; every front page post has a dozen or so comments from unique bot accounts. Hopefully we don't see a 'Show HN: I created a spam bot service to advertise on every HN post' soon.

Already was : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39981911 Claimed at the time to be working on HN support

I remember that website. I reported it to the moderators the same day and all related accounts got suspended.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#468

Post by fragmede »

nojvek wrote: post #422

IMO there is likely huge demand for bots that are witty and can write occasional put a useful comment with a link every now and then. It’s going to be interesting how spam evolves. At-least spammers who aren’t lazy. Already many of the recruiting emails I get sound a lot human. They are bots though since they send at 9am everyday

Gmail's got a send at 9am feature for humans to use tho

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#469

Post by fragmede »

Bilal_io wrote: post #400

Are you lonely and want to do something? Flag those spam comments. Yeah, I was surprised by the amount, it feels like an attack rather than spam. I hope this didn't interrupt Dang from something more important.

Hopefully after this is all over, Dan can tell us if I'm wrong, but I don't know that flagging is actually useful, since it's all so obvious. it causes additional db hits to load the page and then flag it, when a search on the back end will easily find them without us doing anything.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#470

Post by fragmede »

anigbrowl wrote: post #418
consp wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or click the timestamp.

All these approaches increase server load. You're likely not the only one doing so, so the server has to respond to a read and flag request for every person. I'm not sure how many flags it takes to kill a post, something like 6 iirc. When you multiply that by the number of spam posts it adds up to a lot. I'm honestly perplexed that HN doesn't have any kind of string filtering facility considering its centrality in th…

it's never needed it before, and it's not being run by a huge team. it's hard to make time to prepare for a thing that hasn't happened before when you're busy dealing with everything else.
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