Subj : Bot attacks
To   : Cozmo
From : AKAcastor
Date : Wed Apr 24 2024 05:23 pm

 C> I've been getting hit by bots on Lunatics. Never seen it 
 C> this bad and it's getting a bit ridiculous. I've 
 C> blacklisted some countries but I'm still getting hit 
 C> pretty hard. 
 C> What are sysops using to combat this? What are my 
 C> options besides changing my port. (i'not using port 23). 
 C> What mods or programs are you all using?

A lot of boards seem to use a system that requires users to press Escape twice after connecting, before passing them to the BBS.  From what I gather it works quite well.

I saw Phenom Productions mentioned, I haven't used their mods but there's some neat stuff there for sure.  ThreatSentry is always eye catching, with the geo-location on the world map.  BotCheck seems to be in use on loads of boards.
https://www.phenomprod.com/Mods

On my own board, I implemented some simple bot detection into a 'telnet ringdown' server I use.  It watches for automated login attempts, based on a list of keywords, and temporarily bans IPs.  It's worked pretty well at greatly reducing the number of bots that reach the login sequence of the BBS, while being invisible to callers.
https://github.com/akacastor/ringdown


Chris/akacastor

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