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Francesco Potortì
Francesco Potortì
  • 111
  • 4

The problem

I have had a problem with a spammer registratingregistering fake users to send spam around.

The method used is to set the user name to something like "Yesterday I published this awesome video http://something.com/spammer/videohttp://something.wow/spammer/video which you should come and see!" and the mail address to the spammer's target. One new registration every 5 minutes.

Attempted solutions

First, I tried to enable captcha. No way. Then invisible captcha. Again, no way. Don't ask me why, I have no idea, but the spamming did not stop.

Last, I tried to put a length limit on the username (10 characters would do). After reading the official info on server-side form validation I found that it is not perfectly in sync with the code, so I tried to read the code and I ended up with adding a maxlength="10" attribute to the username field in the registration.xml file. No way. When filling out the form, the browser in fact stops you from adding the eleventh character, but spamming continued. I suppose the spammer used a lower-level method to post the form, so the max length couldwas not be forcedenforced.

Questions

  1. Why captcha does not work?
  2. Why the maxlength attribute does not force server-side validation?
  3. Why obvious checks like max user name lenght and sane characters are not the default in Joomla 3.9?
  4. Is it possible to add validation yourself and, do you have a working example?

The problem

I have had a problem with a spammer registrating fake users to spam.

The method used is to set the user name to something like "Yesterday I published this awesome video http://something.com/spammer/video which you should come and see!" and the mail address to the spammer's target. One new registration every 5 minutes.

Attempted solutions

First, I tried to enable captcha. No way. Then invisible captcha. Again, no way. Don't ask me why, I have no idea.

Last, I tried to put a length limit on the username (10 characters would do). After reading the official info on server-side form validation I found that it is not perfectly in sync with the code, so I tried to read the code and I ended up with adding a maxlength="10" attribute to the username field in the registration.xml file. No way. When filling out the form, the browser in fact stops you from adding the eleventh character, but spamming continued. I suppose the spammer used a lower-level method to post the form, so the max length could not be forced.

Questions

  1. Why captcha does not work?
  2. Why the maxlength attribute does not force server-side validation?
  3. Why obvious checks like max user name lenght and sane characters are not the default in Joomla 3.9?
  4. Is it possible to add validation yourself and, do you have a working example?

The problem

I have had a problem with a spammer registering fake users to send spam around.

The method used is to set the user name to something like "Yesterday I published this awesome video http://something.wow/spammer/video which you should come and see!" and the mail address to the spammer's target. One new registration every 5 minutes.

Attempted solutions

First, I tried to enable captcha. No way. Then invisible captcha. Again, no way. Don't ask me why, I have no idea, but the spamming did not stop.

Last, I tried to put a length limit on the username (10 characters would do). After reading the official info on server-side form validation I found that it is not perfectly in sync with the code, so I tried to read the code and I ended up with adding a maxlength="10" attribute to the username field in the registration.xml file. No way. When filling out the form, the browser in fact stops you from adding the eleventh character, but spamming continued. I suppose the spammer used a lower-level method to post the form, so the max length was not enforced.

Questions

  1. Why captcha does not work?
  2. Why the maxlength attribute does not force server-side validation?
  3. Why obvious checks like max user name lenght and sane characters are not the default in Joomla 3.9?
  4. Is it possible to add validation yourself and, do you have a working example?
Source Link
Francesco Potortì
Francesco Potortì
  • 111
  • 4

How to validate a user name in Joomla registration forms so that it is not used for spamming?

The problem

I have had a problem with a spammer registrating fake users to spam.

The method used is to set the user name to something like "Yesterday I published this awesome video http://something.com/spammer/video which you should come and see!" and the mail address to the spammer's target. One new registration every 5 minutes.

Attempted solutions

First, I tried to enable captcha. No way. Then invisible captcha. Again, no way. Don't ask me why, I have no idea.

Last, I tried to put a length limit on the username (10 characters would do). After reading the official info on server-side form validation I found that it is not perfectly in sync with the code, so I tried to read the code and I ended up with adding a maxlength="10" attribute to the username field in the registration.xml file. No way. When filling out the form, the browser in fact stops you from adding the eleventh character, but spamming continued. I suppose the spammer used a lower-level method to post the form, so the max length could not be forced.

Questions

  1. Why captcha does not work?
  2. Why the maxlength attribute does not force server-side validation?
  3. Why obvious checks like max user name lenght and sane characters are not the default in Joomla 3.9?
  4. Is it possible to add validation yourself and, do you have a working example?