Many new users trying to access node/add

Posted by MidGe2012 on March 14, 2013 at 9:09am

I setup a brand new site which still has very few visitors, of course. Yet I get about a dozen new registration per day and most of these, if not all, seem to register and then attempt to post using the node/add, according to the "Track Page Visits", rather than posting a comment as I would expect.

I cannot reproduce it when I register as a new user an attempt to simply post a comment.

Is this a symptom of people trying to hack into the system, or something else?

My system is fairly basic and uses the Mollom module to control spam. Registered users can only post comments as extra privileges.

Anyone able to shed any light on this?

Can I give any other info to help solve this?

Thanks

Comments

Yup. Bots. A common complaint.

Posted by dwillcox on March 14, 2013 at 7:30pm

Yes, those are bots, generally bots trying to do SEO by creating content or comments pointing at their own websites. (Which may have malware, or phishing, or who knows what other kind of junk.)

You may notice that most of those requests come from from IPs in China or the former USSR republics. Not all, but many of them.

Your solution depends on whether you really want to have users registering on your site.

First off, at the very least, install reCaptcha or one of the other Captcha variants. That will cut down the traffic some.

Second (or maybe first, actually), set the admin option so that new users require administrative approval before they can do anything. Unless, of course, you want and are willing to deal with lots of user registrations.

You might check this spam prevention wiki page with a list of spam modules.

Thank you

Posted by MidGe2012 on March 15, 2013 at 8:54am

Thank you very much for your excellent answer. With the reference it filled all the gaps in my understanding in that area.

Yes, I will add a captcha for new registration and see how it goes.

Thanks again

Yes I see this also

Posted by crazybite on April 5, 2013 at 3:52pm

A lot of new users do not use the site but go to node/add and try to use it. According to the log they failed because they have not got the proper rights to add nodes.

However, there is much activity by these users on a regular basis.

Currently I do a manual block IP if I see users trying to node/add. And I have written some php to delete users that register, but do not use the site as it is intended after 24 hours.

Is there anything else we could try to cut down on traffic? (e.g. block the entire china IP block? (But maybe thats too insane..))