Spam in Cplusplus?

[Cheraphy]

Just sent a PM to twicker explaining the situation and suggesting he should do something to curb the issue.

Edit: Side note, the sleeping medication I'm on causes weird and vivid dreams. For me they tend to relate to whatever I was thinking about/watching/doing/reading before I fall asleep. I recall last night had some portion that involved the spam on this forum.

[giblit]

I feel like I have deleted 20 posts today. They keep coming in masses of 2-3 at a time.

[firedraco]

I feel like I have deleted 20 posts today. They keep coming in masses of 2-3 at a time.

No kidding...I felt like there was a lot more than usual today/yesterday.

[Z e r e o]

Personally I don't feel twicker needs to do anything really. Currently it only takes little more then a few minutes (If that) to have one of our members take care of deleting the spam so it isn't effecting the forum at all really, and it only takes us a few seconds out of our day to clean up a spam post.

So all in all I feel this self policing model that we are currently using works quite well to combat it and since it isn't greatly effecting the forum there is no need for any changes.

[ResidentBiscuit]

Adding Captcha would take a whole 3 minutes and would eliminate this problem.

[Disch]

Don't the boards already have a captcha for registering?

[LB]

The current captcha is useless because OCR programs can easily read it.

[TheHardew]

Maybe some modern captcha for new users, e.g. up to half a month and 25 posts? We could use something like that: http://www.ajaxshake.com/en/JS/232771/drag-and-drop-javascript-captcha-ajax-fancy-captcha.html

[Disch]

Captcha for registration should be enough. I see no need to put it on individual posts. The spam posts are all coming from newly created dummy accounts.

[TheHardew]

Anyway, drag and drop captcha would be hard to solve through program, wouldn't it?

[ResidentBiscuit]

I meant https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/index.html

[TheHardew]

As LB said text captcha is easy to solve using OCR software. Here is example of Google's reCaptcha: http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo It's just click check-box and write numbers. It won't protect us.

[Cheraphy]

I got a response from twicker. He said he appreciates how well we've been keeping up with reporting the spam, that there appears to be some level of human interaction and that makes it harder to tackle, but he is working on a solution.

[Computergeek01]

I could have told you that it was a person posting the spam, the frequency alone demotes the probability of it being a continuous hosted script.

I find it interesting that we "notice" an uptick in the number of these posts when an outside party might expect forum moderation to be at a minimum. For example: the post that started this thread was on Christmas, then another noticeable increase on Super Bowl Sunday, but not on other weekend days. I almost wonder if this is due to an expected drop in moderation or something like Google Analytics.

[LB]

TheHardew wrote:

It's just click check-box and write numbers. It won't protect us.

That checkbox isn't just a checkbox. It's a complicated script that examines the way you move your mouse to decide whether you're human or a robot.
http://wptavern.com/googles-new-recaptcha-api-replaces-distorted-text-with-a-checkbox plus numerous other articles

[TheHardew]

You can make simple program using setcursorpos() and loops that opens browser and moves mouse so it look as actual person did it.

[Disch]

there appears to be some level of human interaction

That's crazy. Who is wasting their time manually working to spam a forum when we are clearly removing the posts before they get any traffic?

[Computergeek01]

@ Disch: Then explain the (in)frequency. At the very least there is some monkey out there baby sitting the scripts.

[Disch]

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying it's crazy. Whoever is doing it isn't getting any return on their investment, so why are they wasting their time?

[TheHardew]

This simple code opens default browser with Google's reCaptcha demo and clicks check-box. Demo doesn't realize it's not a human. You just have to provide text data and hit enter. Then it's done. Since people have text-captcha-solving scripts already it's no big deal to edit it.
You've got to have 1920x1080 resolution, google chrome as default browser and bookmarks bar disabled, otherwise it won't work.

#include <Windows.h>

int main() {
	ShellExecute(nullptr, TEXT("open"),
TEXT("http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo"), TEXT("--new-window --start
maximized"), nullptr, SW_MAXIMIZE);
	Sleep(4000); // wait a while, so that browser can open url;
	SetCursorPos(70, 520);
	mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTDOWN, 0, 0, 0, 0);
	mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTUP, 0, 0, 0, 0);
	return 0;
}

EDIT:
Video shows how easy it is to pass reCaptcha: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4jJofEOOjG4WVZJdFJPVGJQRms/view?usp=sharing