mu.nu - Fighting attention deficit disorder wherever it - ooh, shiny!

March 05, 2005

Self Defence

Hi everyone.

One of our recurring problems here at MuNu is that when a lot of our blogs get hit with spam at the same time, the server chokes under the load.

I've now implemented a watchdog program. If it sees an unusual number of trackbacks coming in all at once (more than ten; I've seen as many as 150 at once during a spam flood) it will bite their legs off and piddle on the trackback script. After five minutes the trackback script will be unpiddled automatically.

(Fiddle fiddle.)

It now works for comments too. More than 20 comments arriving at once will result in a summary chomping and piddling, with automatic unpiddling after two minutes. I've made more generous allowance for comments since we get more of them and I think it's more important that comments are working than trackbacks.

This won't stop spam, but it should stop spam floods before they can cause any significant problems.

As usual, let me know if you see anything untowards happening. Particularly if it might be related to this change.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:26 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Yay!

Just one of the reasons why Pixy Misa does so totally rock.

Posted by: Jim @ at March 05, 2005 02:29 PM

2 Kewl! No more 150+ spam floods!!! Yeeeehaw!

Posted by: Tuning Spork @ at March 07, 2005 12:17 AM

3 Well, it won't work against spam trickles, but we shouldn't get hit with 150+ spams all at once.

It hasn't triggered yet, so I'm still waiting to see if it really works.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at March 07, 2005 01:14 AM

4 It only affects trackbacks coming in, right? Sometimes I send out 20+ in linkfests...

Posted by: Simon @ at March 07, 2005 11:08 AM

5 Yep, only incoming trackbacks.

Also, even if you send out 20 trackbacks, MT does them one at a time. Spammers do them all at once. So if someone really links 20 munu blogs in one go, it will still work.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at March 07, 2005 10:11 PM

6 Pixy! Always viligant! Yay!

Posted by: Tig @ at March 08, 2005 01:43 PM

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