Off-topic: The great amiga.org IP ban conspiracy...

[Karlos]

Stay on-topic folks.

I shall be moving the off-topic discussion to another thread shortly. Please stand by...

-edit-

Continue here, if you please.

[Karlos]

Well, since we're all playing Cluedo, My take:

The class C ban was already in effect for a long time. Certainly there was some mention of it when a certain member (like you can't tell who) was permanently banned some time back.

Some time later, but before the hosting upgrade (I think) a Sky ISP user on aw.net (Amigaone Productions, IIRC) reported being blocked. I wasn't able to sort it out as the built-in IP ban tools are not available to moderators and suggested he use a proxy. I can't find that thread right now, but if I do, I'll post a link.

It seems that nobody really made a big deal out of it since then. I believe the issue kicked off again due to comments made on this thread...

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=34172&forum=2

... particularly Steve's comment here:

Well, it would have to be AWN for me. I used to visit others (I still go to EAB), but A.O with it's lovely ban on my ISP has rendered my visits to the site impossible

It was my understanding that whatever restrictions had been put in place to keep the aforementioned member banned were overturned in their entirety when he was permitted to return. I'd have to do some IP address checks, but it could just be that he was using a proxy once his ban was lifted and the IP address range ban was never revoked. More likely, it was probably just forgotten about - certainly the admin seemed unaware.

I don't see any evidence to suggest that someone has broken in and added this IP ban recently.

[Karlos]

I thought this was quite valid and on topic question and the answer would probably had been interesting for wider audience than just CF.

But oh well. It's quite unlikely we get any kind of response now.

That's actually a fair point. I've moved it back to the same forum, but still want to keep the original (now sticky) thread free from trouble.

Sorry for the musical chairs...

As you were.

[Karlos]

Just a stupid question: amiga.org does have an audit log for all administrative actions?

Well, the site, like all vB installations, has two administrative tiers. The first is a control panel for moderators, which allows access to various tools pertinent to basic forum moderation. The second is a control panel for administrators only and provides control over the site, 3rd party modules. Any admin/moderator activity logging would be in there.

I don't really get involved with anything beyond basic moderation, except when there are security threats or major software bugs on the site that I've looked into. I retain an FTP account that has access the site's web root for that. Naturally all access through that will be logged by ftpd.

The last time I used it was to check for alterations made to key files that would are the usual target of any code injection attack against the forum software. Prior to that, it was disabling the experimental cache (some time ago now) and before that, that bloody eval() bug.

[Karlos]

I realise people may have strong views about the admins, moderators, other members and what not. However, direct personal attacks on any of the above won't be tolerated.

[Karlos]

Your post on the earlier issue implies a connection to SKY only, which would be misleading as to cause.

I was affected in the U.S.
Your reply followed.

#6

Actually, my site cacheing experiment caused a lot of problems when the cache got flooded with IP ban notifications caused by unwelcome bots attempting to spider the site. That was the main reason I abandoned it and haven't sought to reimplement it since.

The directory containing the cached content jumped from about 30MB to 700MB in an hour or so and every page appeared to be blocked, except to users that were logged in. I am pretty sure I apologised for that here on the site somewhere.

-edit-

Oh, and on the last post of the thread you linked too.

[Karlos]

^^
Found it. See here: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=649229&postcount=40

The ban notifications weren't genuine. Or rather they were, but they weren't for your IP. You were seeing (cached copies of) pages that were generated when an unwanted bot tried to trawl old links. As there was no way of fixing the cache to check for IP bans without accessing the database (which at the time was the cause of a lot of our performance problems), I had to do away with the idea all together.

Fortunately, the hosting got updated not long later.

The idea was ok, but implementation was another matter. I believe the front page "top 10" stats stuff is still cached though. Read the thread the post was from to find out more.

[Karlos]

I live in hope that one day this place will once again be full of Amiga related topics and not amateur dramatics...........

If you start it, they will come...

[Karlos]

The new baby is due any day now too.

I think you can kiss goodbye to any projects after s/he arrives :lol:

[Karlos]

The end.

And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you pesky kids!

[Karlos]

More deflecting...

Actually, I should just say that Piru exposed a potentially serious JS exploit in one of the site's 3rd party modules not long after we moved to vbulletin. It was all handled calmly and professionally via the bug reporting system/PM and without any alarmist scaremongering. Even as he was contacting the authors, I fixed the issue in place so that any potential XSS hole it would have opened was closed.

In doing so, he helped make the site a safer place for everyone.

[Karlos]

Franko and Magnetic have both earned a permanent ban for multiple violations of the TOS, refusing to heed multiple warnings and behave like adults.

The decision to permanently ban a member is never taken lightly, however, in this case we weren't left with much choice.

[Karlos]

Off-topic post in an off-topic thread:
Firefox updated Greasemonkey to 0.9.11. That version finally works. The only modification I had to make to Piru's script was:

Code: [Select]

- elm[i].getAttribute("style") == "width:100%; text-align:left")
+ elm[i].getAttribute("style") == "width: 100%; text-align: left;")


I would use a regular expression match rather than ==, since then you can use \s* for the whitespace above. There are probably better ways to match the containing div than this though.

[Karlos]

Wait, this ban that's affecting a good number of people is *STILL* in effect?

There should be no broad IP range bans still in effect, only specific addresses and a few subnets that have been responsible for attempted hacks / bots.

[Karlos]

Well, they're gone now.

I'm much more interested to know if any Sky customers are still having problems.