From ddd55037d4662ec7f0d9e4f5643069d2592db6e2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jon Dowland Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:44:52 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] some thoughts in the wake of a spam attack --- doc/plugins/comments/discussion.mdwn | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+) diff --git a/doc/plugins/comments/discussion.mdwn b/doc/plugins/comments/discussion.mdwn index 3d7452b9a..396d1f6d4 100644 --- a/doc/plugins/comments/discussion.mdwn +++ b/doc/plugins/comments/discussion.mdwn @@ -161,3 +161,30 @@ Raw HTML was not initially allowed by default (this was configurable). >>> all directives will contine to be inexpensive and safe enough that it's >>> sensible to allow users to (ab)use them on open wikis. >>> --[[Joey]] + +---- + +I have a test ikiwiki setup somewhere to investigate adopting the comments +plugin. It is setup with no auth enabled and I got hammered with a spam attack +over the last weekend (predictably). What surprised me was the scale of the +attack: ikiwiki eventually triggered OOM and brought the box down. When I got +it back up, I checked out a copy of the underlying git repository, and it +measured 280M in size after being packed. Of that, about 300K was data prior +to the spam attack, so the rest was entirely spam text, compressed via git's +efficient delta compression. + +I had two thoughts about possible improvements to the comments plugin in the +wake of this: + + * comment pagination - there is a hard-to-define upper limit on the number + of comments that can be appended to a wiki page whilst the page remains + legible. It would be useful if comments could be paginated into sub-pages. + + * crude flood control - asides from spam attacks (and I am aware of + [[plugins/blogspam]]), people can crap flood or just aggressively flame + repeatedly. An interesting prevention measure might be to not let an IP + post more than 3 sequential comments to a page, or to the site, without + at least one other comment being interleaved. I say 3 rather than 2 since + correction follow-ups are common. + +-- [[Jon]] -- 2.26.2