Attack of the bots
That problem with the bot attacks got significantly worse today, and I’ve been working on trying to protect against it. I already had a plug-in that’s supposed to protect against them, but it’s obviously no longer very effective. So I did a bunch of research, decided on a different plugin, managed to get into the files of the blog – not an easy task when under attack – and installed the new one.
It’s improved the situation for now, so I’m hopeful. We’ll see if the improvement continues.
Apologies for any delays you may have experienced. Bots get smarter and smarter as time goes on, but perhaps plugin developers can stay ahead of them.
What are the bots trying to do, if you don’t mind my asking?
mkent:
To get information. My site has very little information of the type they want, but they don’t know that.
I help monitor a mailing list, and have the impression that AI is getting involved in the spambot business. The typical attempt is something that reads somewhat on topic, but a bit vague on the details. It reads like a politician speaks. Then there will be a link to some company or other at the bottom. Because I don’t want to discourage folks who are just ignorant, it is getting harder to just reject the posts without thinking much about it. I worry about the future 🙂
Can’t remember when I first came here, but wasn’t too long ago—maybe 6+ months (?). Anyway, as a newbie still – seems like a lot of new commenters are showing up…maybe they’re older users just checking in (?). Russia is desperately looking to turn American public opinion against Ukraine, so maybe some of it is Russian Troll Factories.
Seemed to have gotten better for a little while, and then I’ve had some minor slow downs yesterday or day before. Brief issues today and were quickly over…
Chuck:
These are not the sort of bots that place spam in the comments. These try to burrow into the inner workings of the site and steal things or deposit malware.