Arachnaphobic ? ?

[[Unknown]]

Do this....

index.php:

Find:
yymain();

Add before:
if ($REMOTE_ADDR == '127.0.0.1')
  die('Sorry, you are not allowed to access this forum.  If you are an actual person, please contact the forum\'s administrator.');

-[Unknown]

[Fizzy]

David.

I'm with host-plus.co.uk

I spoke to them earlier but they don't seem too keyed up on using MySQL.
They told me to set up a link to a bogus site to make the error appear on their logs. Not sure what good that would do.


Unknown

Thanks for that.
I'll add it and cross my fingers.

I really appreciate all the great advice and support from you all. It's one of the things that makes Yabbse great.

[Fizzy]

Sorry,
I made this change

Code Select Expand


set_error_handler("yabb_error_handler");
if ($REMOTE_ADDR == '127.0.0.1')
 die('Sorry, you are not allowed to access this forum.  If you are an actual person, please contact the forum\'s administrator.');
yymain();

function  yymain()


But that didn't work either.

Bearing in mind all of the measures I have taken I'm beginning to honestly think that i'm being hacked but I can't find out the IP number of the person doing it.
I can't find any trace of a spider using an IP mask of 127.0.0.1

I am now really desperate for help.

[[Unknown]]

I guess you could check the box in Forum Preferences and Settings....

"Disalow guests from doing anything but login and register."  (or similar...)

-[Unknown]

[Fizzy]

Yes, I tried that, but the main menu links still remain at the top of the screen and it just keeps on  hitting them which creates yet more error messages.

Is there a way to get the "Sorry you're banned" message to divert the spider/hacker to another blank page without any links back into the forum again?

[Fizzy]

OK, some good news.

I've found the problem.
I re-enabled IP log and sure enough theres the little swine !

127.0.0.1  (24)
67.4.70.67  (10)

Browsers
Total Browsers: 2

Mozilla/4.0 - MSIE 6.0  (27)
LinksManager.com - http://linksmanager.com/linkchecker.html)  (24)

So it's damned Linksmanager IN the forum and bouncing around forever and a day.
Any suggestions how I could kill it ?

[Angel Skin]

Have you emailed linksmanager about it?

[Fizzy]

Hi Angel Skin,

Yes I did, but they still haven't responded.

In the end I started trying different variations and managed to find the solution.

I added the following to my robot.txt file

User-agent: LinksManager
Disallow: /

After 101 different tries this seems to have done the trick.

Thanks to everybody for trying to help.
I really do appreciate it.

[Angel Skin]

Well done   remind me to avoid linksmanager!

[Fizzy]

Quick update ....

That didn't work either.
Eventually I had sent messages to Linksmanager using their comments webpage - they ignored them.

I tried emailing to webmaster@, abuse@ and admin@ - no good, no such addresses.

So, I managed to track down their parent company - CNVI.com
I sent a blunt email to them telling them about the abuse from their spider. They didn't think it could possibly be their fault.

I sent the error logs complete with the IP log showing them it was Linksmanager, also from my host logs it showed that Linksmanager was spidering the whole forum at 14,781% more than Googlebot was.

Their claims were that "spider only hits 250 pages max per website" and "it ignore forums" and the nest of all "reads and obeys robots.txt" were all total crap.
I shoved the logs infront of them and pointed out that Linksmanager was using IP 127.0.0.1 to disguise its actions.

Finally the spider was called off and my own site has been added to the ignore list.

All this came about because I agreed to incoming links from other sites that use Linksmanager.com to manage their links. It has been a lesson well learnt by me.

Previously I was able to get Googlebot etc to scroll through the boards without causing mayhem unlike Linksmanager did. Now I feel it's best to keep the front pages crisp but lock the S/E's and Spiders out of the forum completely.

Food for thought

Thanks again to all of you who helped me try to get the better of this swine of a spider. Obviously it's designed to cloak itself as localhost and to roam wherever it chooses, despite the claims of the manufacturers at CNVI.com

[groundup]

So do you use linksmanager? Also, there is a mod out there that if the guest doesn't have access to post, they will not see the links to the post page. Same with the memberlist and private messaging. There are a couple of more things too. In the future, that should help.

[Fizzy]

Hi there Groundup,

Nope, never used Linksmanager in my life and certainly don't have any plans to either  

Thanks for the heads-up about the other mod.

I'll have a good look around and see if I can track it down.
I mean, I wouldn't mind an odd trawl now and then, but honestly, I think Linksmanager has a bit if a cheek.

[groundup]

Why were they crawling your site?

[Fizzy]

I had exchanged reciprocal links with some sites that do use Linksmanager.
Instead of their spider hitting just the front html link-pages it got into the forum and it must have been like Link-Christmas for it