A thing to consider
If you came here looking for a solution to stop the
doors.txt spam and if you don't know how to do it yourself, feel free to
contact me and maybe I'll help you ;) . Please, bear in mind that most likely it will be a
paid service. However, I can help you to get rid of any spam, not only the
doors.txt spam! All without images verification (known as
CAPTCHA) which is not 100% user friendly.
Introduction
During the last days I started receiving the doors.txt;6 spam. Basically, it is not any dangerous thing because it doesn’t contain any link or harmful text, however it is not wanted by webmasters. In my opinion it was designed to test the anti spam filters.
The Protection
If you run under PHP, you can avoid such attempts very easily. Take your text variable as $text. Then just use this code:
if ( (strlen($text)>4) && (substr_count($text," ")>3) )
{
//insert data into the database, whatever - the message doesn't contain the doors.txt;6 spam
...
}
The Result
As you can see, it is very simple restriction which tests the input for empty spaces and for it’s length. As we know, messages should contain empty spaces, otherwise they’re spam only. Who would send you a one-word message? This has no sense. In addition, check the string’s length. The length factor has no relation to our “doors.txt;6″ spam, but it prevents you from the most used spamming; submitting forms without inserting any information into them.
Extended Protection
If you need to secure your forms against
doors.txt;6 spam 100% (meant as doors.txt;
any number), implement this code into your website's core:
if ( (strlen($text)>4) && (substr_count($text," ")>3) && (strpos($text, "doors.txt") === false) )
{
//insert data into the database, whatever - the message doesn't contain the doors.txt;6 spam
...
}
Wanna spam?
Do you want to see how many vulnerable and poorly secured web forms on the web exist? Just check
this Google query! Wonderful! Of course, I don't use this to spam websites. It would be easy, but as I hate black-hat SEO, I rather waste my time differently ;) .
Modified on October 6, 2009; Originally published on September 30, 2007
