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[Airex Iscariot]

I cannot access the wiki from my dorm room, getting a 403 error along with a specific message. I do not remember the error ID that was listed, but I assume traffic from the housing network is being directed to this error page due to the recent attempts at spamming the wiki. I only recently found out about the spamming by going to the site from the library network, which is separate from the housing network. I'll update this thread when I can with the error ID, since I can get to the forums from my dorm, just not the wiki(which makes sense since they're different sites.).

Been playing with Dorfs for years, and still always find myself looking to the wiki for reference. Or sometimes just reading it for fun and going to random pages. Don't have an account on the wiki though, so I assume it was just a general ban from the IP

Yes, I know, it's not much help if I can't provide information like the IP address or the errorID at the moment, but I'm on a different network at the moment and didn't bring the information with me.

Also, hope that spambot attack ends soon. People always try to ruin the best things. Oh well, finally made me get an account on the forums, which is a good thing.

[ext0l]

A 403 means that you're trying to access a webpage the server doesn't allow you to access the page.

To get around your school's network, you can try viewing googles cached versions of the wiki.

[Airex Iscariot]

I know what 403 means, got passed it using proxies. The issue wasn't my computer, all the connections in the dorm are banned, and upon investigating the links provided on the 403 page(The custom one that explains that your IP is blocked and gives you a link to show why), and my university is apparently infected with a rustock spambot, sending out Cialis and Viagra spam emails from the mail server.

[Uristocrat]

I know what 403 means, got passed it using proxies. The issue wasn't my computer, all the connections in the dorm are banned, and upon investigating the links provided on the 403 page(The custom one that explains that your IP is blocked and gives you a link to show why), and my university is apparently infected with a rustock spambot, sending out Cialis and Viagra spam emails from the mail server.

Interesting.  That may be the botnet behind the spam attacks on the wiki....

[Airex Iscariot]

It very well might be. For safety sake for the wiki, I don't mind the university staying banned. Now if only there was a way to mass download the wiki while at my house easily for use at college.

[Uristocrat]

It very well might be. For safety sake for the wiki, I don't mind the university staying banned. Now if only there was a way to mass download the wiki while at my house easily for use at college.

If you find out more, please let me know.  I would be interested in being able to confirm that the Rustock botnet is behind this.  There's already a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to them (their bots use wiki-like commands in their control system, etc.).

[Airex Iscariot]

I cannot confirm it, though I can provide you with a link that has evidence of the claim from third party sites. It may just be a coincidence for all I know. http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_216.30.201.152 and yes, I know that has the IP in it. For the good of the dorfs! Besides, this DormFort has reached the popcap of about 200 people anyways.

SpamHaus link on the linked site is the one claiming Rustock, here: http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi?ip=216.30.201.152

[Uristocrat]

I cannot confirm it, though I can provide you with a link that has evidence of the claim from third party sites. It may just be a coincidence for all I know. http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_216.30.201.152 and yes, I know that has the IP in it. For the good of the dorfs! Besides, this DormFort has reached the popcap of about 200 people anyways.

SpamHaus link on the linked site is the one claiming Rustock, here: http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi?ip=216.30.201.152

Hmm, then maybe you're getting banned not due to bad edits, but due to the dictionary attack also listed there?

[Airex Iscariot]

It could be any one of the irresponsible holes left in this university's internet that's the problem. As I said, I'm content with keeping the IP of my college banned. I can still read the forums after all, and that's a source of pure entertainment when I can look on the discussion forum and see both "Money Bees" and "Bacon Trees" on the same page.

[Uristocrat]

It could be any one of the irresponsible holes left in this university's internet that's the problem. As I said, I'm content with keeping the IP of my college banned. I can still read the forums after all, and that's a source of pure entertainment when I can look on the discussion forum and see both "Money Bees" and "Bacon Trees" on the same page.

I did some checking with that information.  It seems like the IP that got banned was listed as a "dictionary attacker" so it probably got the network banned for a different reason.

That said, there's more than one wiki spammer out there, judging by their MOs.  One of them edits without creating accounts and posts things like "comment7 http://gibberishandothercrap.com/"  The other is far more organized:  it registers accounts, then creates pages full of spun text that form a "community" on some spammy topic to boost the rank of certain spam search engines ("starsearchtool" and others... they seem to come up with new ones all the time).

What I wish I could get are a few IPs or other logs from the wiki so I could perform a better investigation into these people.  I have actually been able to attract some fairly high-level attention by looking into this, so the good news is that Google, at least, is working to ban these folks.  That won't stop them from spamming, but it should limit the benefit they can derive from doing this.

[Locriani]

University networks should no longer be banned.  Please let me know if the wiki is still unaccessible from a university network.

[Airex Iscariot]

Now able to access wiki. Thanks. Now I can finally look up utilities on the site.