I occasionally get spam user registrations. What they have in common (except that the user details follow a similar pattern with the full name for both given and family name and the domain of the e-mail address resolves to the same IP, 93.104.213.198) is that the trace in the weblog have an identical pattern, like
#Fields: date time cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port c-ip cs-version cs(User-Agent) cs(Cookie) cs(Referer) sc-status sc-substatus sc-bytes cs-bytes time-taken
2011-04-30 05:39:23 GET /user/register - 80 24.56.121.196 HTTP/1.0 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.1;+en-US;+rv:1.9.2.13)+Gecko/20101203+Firefox/3.6.13 - - 200 0 12491 331 3042
2011-04-30 05:40:25 GET /image_captcha/1662/1304141962 - 80 193.37.152.250 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.1;+en-US;+rv:1.9.2.13)+Gecko/20101203+Firefox/3.6.13 SESScd035fb4a30028ff09f3d6dfbcd6aee3=hij50a1pgobs9vi0kkn2vpd471 http://grapestat.se/user/register 200 0 5884 381 499
2011-04-30 05:41:06 POST /user/register - 80 24.56.121.196 HTTP/1.0 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.1;+en-US;+rv:1.9.2.13)+Gecko/20101203+Firefox/3.6.13 SESScd035fb4a30028ff09f3d6dfbcd6aee3=hij50a1pgobs9vi0kkn2vpd471 http://grapestat.se/user/register 302 0 535 889 2090
2011-04-30 05:41:27 GET / - 80 24.56.121.196 HTTP/1.0 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.1;+en-US;+rv:1.9.2.13)+Gecko/20101203+Firefox/3.6.13 SESScd035fb4a30028ff09f3d6dfbcd6aee3=hij50a1pgobs9vi0kkn2vpd471 http://grapestat.se/user/register 200 0 22265 458 1263
One IP (in this case 24.56.121.196) gets the registration form, another IP (193.37.152.250, this appears to always be the same) gets the image CAPTCHA and sends a session cookie. The first IP then submits the form with the *same* session cookie and is not blocked by CAPTCHA.
I can only speculate on what is going on behind the scene but this does not look like normal user behavior to me. Checking that it is the same IP-number that responds to and requests the challenge should prevent this.
Comments
Comment #1
soxofaan commentedThat's a interesting observation. Do you get then a lot of spam content passing through?
The IP-check could be added to the CAPTCHA validation.
But unfortunately I don't have time to work on this in the near future.
Comment #2
elachlan commentedI do not suggest implementing this feature as it will cause problems with bonded or bridged connection or more complex network setups where multiple connections are involved, although administrators are usually expected to keep sessions within a single IP.
Spambot had issues with this IP address.
http://drupal.org/node/1072730
Comment #3
elachlan commented