On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Kevin Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Peter Saint-Andre <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 6/22/12 2:25 PM, Ed - 0x1b, Inc. wrote: >>> It seems that many of those who run multi-user chat services have >>>>>>>>>>> experienced chatroom flooders. What best practices do people have >>>>>>>>>>> for >>>>>>>>>>> fighting this? It seems the best we can do in real time is change >>>>>>>>>>> the >>>>>>>>>>> room to moderated so that new flooders can't send messages, but >>>>>>>>>>> that's >>>>>>>>>>> not a very good solution and we should be able to come up with >>>>>>>>>>> something better. I've been thinking about ways to use entity >>>>>>>>>>> reputation (XEP-0275), but other suggestions are welcome. :) >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Peter >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> How about tar-pitting the flooders - like OpenBSD's spamd? (and not >>>>>>>>>> the spam filter spamd) >>>>>>>>>> It has a good feature set. I like that it works out at the firewall. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Tarpitting sounds good, the problem I can see that in heated >>>>>>>>> discussion this could also trigger. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Another Problem I see with tarpitting is when the flooder joins with >>>>>>>>> 10 or more bots tarpitting would not be very effective. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> And that's what happens. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Does spamd work by blocking IP addresses? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> One challenge we have is that we can't block a flooder's JID based on IP >>>>>>> address. All we can do is report the flooder to its "home" server and >>>>>>> ask that server to disable the account or block future registrations >>>>>>> from that IP address. For this we need an incident handling protocol >>>>>>> <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0268.html> and we need it to be widely >>>>>>> implemented and deployed. >>>>>> >>>>>> Just chipping in here, speaking from many years experience in the >>>>>> anti-spam industry, it's perfectly acceptable to block the IP address in >>>>>> the even if it impacts other users. The general thought process is that >>>>>> the domain or IP range 'owner' is the responsible party because often >>>>>> it's not actually a 'user' but a trojan or bot causing the problem so >>>>>> they need to clean up their network. >>>>> >>>>> We do this all the time on the IRC servers I help run for communities. >>>>> A flooder is taken thru 3 levels of blockage and a lot manage to get >>>>> thru 3 levels in under 5 minutes :) >>>>> >>>>> 1st violation - kicked from the server with a warning message >>>>> 2nd violation - kicked from the server and an entry is added to the >>>>> ban list - this keeps them from reconnecting for N days/hours >>>>> 3rd violation - all of the above and their IP address is added to the >>>>> ban list for good. The message the get when refused connection >>>>> includes a link on how/why >>>>> >>>>> requires custom changes to get the different pieces interacting but >>>>> it's the only way to deal with it IMO >>>> >>>> XMPP isn't IRC. At jabber.org, we don't know the IP address of a user >>>> from example.com and even if we did the blockage would need to happen at >>>> example.com, not jabber.org. >>>> >>>> Distributed technologies are great, except when they're not. >>>> >>>> Peter >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Peter Saint-Andre >>> >>> I think the idea would be to report the flooder's JID to their home >>> server, who could confirm & sign the IP and add it to a public IP list >>> that are then tar-pitted from becoming clients at all XMPP servers - >>> example.com, jabber.org etc - get that Distributed mojo workin' again >>> :) >>> >>> a peer that doesn't help with your flooding, isn't all that great a >>> peer. Still a XMPP server should be able to tar-pit a JID's messages - >>> at least send them to the end of very long slow line. >>> >>> http://www.openbsd.org/spamd/ shows a couple public lists of IP >>> addresses that can then be feed into your PF firewalls - XMPP could >>> piggyback/mirror in the tar-pit function if it can translate a JID >>> into a IP. >> >> Yes, that can be done by the "home" server (the domain part of the >> flooder's JID), as long as we have a reporting mechanism, which is XEP-0268. >> >> So at this point we just have some work to do. ;-) > > At which point the recipient of the complaint has his/her work cut out > trying to validate the claims and...urgh. Can't everyone just play > nicely so we don't need to care about managing bad actors? :( > > /K
XEP-Ponies ;)
