16

We seem to be under an attack from a Korean spamming group. They make a post about every 3 minutes, which gets deleted through flag as spam in less than 1 minute.

Is there a way to stop this at all? Maybe something the mods can do?

Here's such post: https://superuser.com/questions/1488744 (one of the many)

11
  • 6
    The messages are in Korean, for what it's worth. Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 11:34
  • 1
    Ah indeed. They're Korean. Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 11:36
  • 3
    That link stopped working already, but metasmoke is collecting an archive of them as they arrive. Here is a similar one: metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/201007 Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 11:39
  • @tripleee weird, I can still see it if I click the link. It'll tell me the post has been deleted, but I can still see it through the revision history. Anyway, it seems the attack has stopped now. Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 13:52
  • 1
    If you have enough rep you can see deleted posts, but most of us can't Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 14:45
  • Ah, forgot about that. :D Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 14:47
  • 1
    "Ah indeed. They're Korean" North or South? Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 14:37
  • Do they use different Korean characters @Moab? I just mistaken the language for chinese when it clearly was Korean. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 14:54
  • It was an attempt at humor, like it would make a difference anyway, I assume it is South, North would be doing something more nefarious on this site. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 14:57
  • Hahahaha @Moab you got me. :) good job. :D Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 18:34
  • Sudden influx of Korean spam Commented Sep 1, 2020 at 1:51

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

I'll try to keep an eye out. The community team is aware and I know they have a very special spanner for throwing into the works here

15

It's not just this site; MathOverflow, Stack Apps and Ask Ubuntu are under attack as well. Here is a list of those posts. SmokeDetector will cast four spam flags on all these posts (so only two by 'real' users are necessary to destroy the spam), but unfortunately it has a bit of a backlog right now so it might take a while to kick in.

♦ moderators can't do much other than flagging as spam as well; the Community Team can temporarily disable posting by unregistered accounts (though that doesn't help right now, as @Kulfy correctly notes) or try something else. Unfortunately, they have another far bigger problem at their hands at the moment, but I'll try to reach them about this.

4
  • The link is just to recent posts, maybe link to a slice from a specific time period? Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 11:44
  • I don't think disabling "anonymous" write access would be fruitful. Sites such as Ask Ubuntu require registration for posting. Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 11:54
  • Ah, you're right. The last spam wave I've seen was conducted by unregistered accounts, that's why I was suggesting that. But the Community Managers do have other tools at their disposal. Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 11:56
  • 2
    For those trying to reconstruct the event, it started with metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/200985 (currently on page 2 of the metasmoke search results for this particular reason) and ended with metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/201177 (still the first result for the search) for a total of 92 posts promoting 16 distinct domains in .net and .com with a link obfuscation using a comma and whitespace. Commented Oct 6, 2019 at 12:55

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.