uruloki’s lair

Via the PuppyBlender, who found it on Slashdot, we find out that MT users are facing an even worse flood of spammage:

Comment spam attacks on Movable Type weblogs are straining servers at web hosting companies, leading some providers to disable comments on the popular blogging tool. The issues are caused by bugs in MT, forcing publisher Six Apart to recommend configuration changes while it prepares fixes.

Looking at it kind of like the Windows of the blogosphere can go a long way to explaining the high rates of attack, as said here:

But I don’t think you can lay all of this on Six Apart. First of all, how can you damn them for the fact their software has become so popular? It is, in effect, the “Outlook� of blogging tools, and it is therefore targeted by Black Hats, just as Outlook is. For the same reason. Simple predominance. It’s hard to blame Six Apart for that.

Some of the blame can also be laid at Google’s door, as they (being the owners of Blogger.com) have little to no interest in helping their primary competitor. (I left Blogger before they got bought by Google, I think.) Fortunately for those on HostingMatters, the network goddesses aren’t killing mt-comments.cgi just yet:

What can you do about it? We highly recommend the use of MT-Blacklist, which can be found at http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/ – this script can be updated with the domains of any spammers that slip through the first line of default defense built into the script. It’s quite easy to install and use, and helps give immediate relief to those who are under bombardment. It will also despam comments automatically, saving you the chore of manually deleting the numerous comments a single spambot can insert into a blog.

… although YMMV with MT-Blacklist.

Tags: Spam, Web site //