Merged How to protect my forum from spam

Hi Everyone:

Yesterday morning, my website experienced a spam attack which was aimed at the outgoing email function. A script attached itself to some component or core Joomla file and began to auto generate outgoing spam emails to random addresses which are all bogus. These in turn caused bounces.

One net result is that it caused my primary email address to exceed beyond the 150 outgoing emails per hour limit. As a result, I can no longer send out emails from my account.

I'm attempting to troubleshoot this and need assistance in narrowing down the likely culprits. Kunena seems to be one of them. I'm running version 1.5.8 which, as I recall does have some security vulnerabilities. Is this true? I'm also running Wordpress MU blogging, JNews, DT Register, AEC, Community Builder and some others.

I'd appreciate some help with this. I realize that all non Kunena issues are off topic here but any suggestions would still be appreciated. I have to get to the bottom of this quickly. My main question is: will re-installing a component generally eliminate this issue? If someone has a good source for resolving Joomla spam problems, please also let me know.

Sincerely,
Howard

I am seeing something like this. If a user posts anything with a url tag in it, bang, the Block User is turned on in their Joomla account. Now if that were the case all the time, I am certain something would have gotten reported before this, and quite loudly. That means it is most likely some issue between plugins.

Anyone have a suggestion on what would conflict so badly with Kunena?

I am using a joomla + community builder + kunena combo but i am getting alot of spam posts in the kunena forum. How can i fight this? I get like 10 spam posts every day and deleting them 1 by 1 is really a pain.

Also is it possible to remove all posts from a specific user in just few clicks?

Thank you

hey i know how you felt i use to have this same issue all the time until i found this plugin on the joomla extensions site it works with jomsocial, community builder, kunena and normal joomla registration ive not seen a bot on my forum since



it works by cross refrencing the ip on registration with sites like stopforumspam.com and if the ip or email upon registration matches up it will just display registration failed or you can tell the plugin to do custom things.

this is a magnificent piece of work

Is there a plugin with captcha for community builder? FREEEEEEE!!!!! W the open source!

why would you want a captcha plugin this one is free open source and doesnt even need captcha. although can be easyly modified to add in captcha www.captcha.net/

I'm old school, we manually approve each user. Anything suspicious and we bounce them. If we get an email from the user asking why then we know they are OK. Little more work yes but keeps us clean.

"The only truly effective remedy against spam is vigilance." - sozzled, 25 May 2010

so is it not possible to bulk remove all posts from a specific user?

not on K1.5 NO but with K1.6 yes this is possible.