cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.

For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:

  • Open sign-ups
  • No captcha
  • No e-mail verification

I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.

If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:

  1. Close sign-ups entirely
  2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
  3. Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups

Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting spam!

Please comment below if you have any questions or anything useful to add.

  • nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    It would but it looks like when a new instance is spun up it’s just auto federated? Looking at https://sh.itjust.works/instances we see only one instance that has been blocked and that was our favorite and just admin blocking it. So someone creates and instance and can just spam a thousand other instances before everyone wises up and blocks them? I could be wrong but that’s what it looks like to me.