Author Archives: Steve

Reporting Akismet identified spam using fail2ban

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Steve

I use fail2ban to protect my server. I additionally report the IP addresses  to AbuseIPDB  But Forum spam is a big problem as anyone with a blog will know I have Akismet configured, which pretty much stops it all from … Continue reading →

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All Change!!

Posted on March 17, 2024 by Steve

Finally took the big leap and moved the site off WordPress and onto Classic Press. There are several reasons for this with the primary ones being WordPress’s bloated code base and its jetpack plugin trying to basically make everyone else’s … Continue reading →

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Too much furniture

Posted on April 7, 2019 by Steve

So all the furniture arrived. The New England dresser has replaced the sideboard. We have a dry-sink unit to replace the butcher block – when we can work out where to put that. The “new” dining table is still propped … Continue reading →

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Spring Cleaning

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Steve

We’ve got some furniture arriving from the USA in a week or so and so we’ve been working on making space in the house for it and also making sure that there is space to bring it into the house … Continue reading →

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My Poor Neglected Blog

Posted on January 26, 2019 by Steve

Was it really in 2017 that I last posted on here? I guess it must have been. Since then I’ve been boating several times with two week long holidays to Llangollen and a round trip round the West Midlands and … Continue reading →

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State Sponsored hacking?

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Steve

So yesterday my site got hit by a large number(140) of Chinese IP addresses  all trying to login to my site. Fail2 ban blocked them and sent me lots of emails: Then this morning another pile of Chinese IP addresses … Continue reading →

Posted in Sad Spammers | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

More Botnet stats

Posted on August 5, 2017 by Steve

So I upgraded Fail2ban and so had to restart it. As it stores it’s bans in a database it can restore them at start up. And what a depressingly long list it is for the botnet: 2017-08-05 14:58:20,149[dovecot-disconnect] Ban 1.163.34.115 … Continue reading →

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Botnet stopped…

Posted on June 23, 2017 by Steve

Either its been taken off line or I’ve blocked all its IPs. No more new additions for over 24 hours:   Status for the jail: dovecot-disconnect |- filter | |- File list: /var/log/mail.log | |- Currently failed: 0 | `- … Continue reading →

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Botnet still chugging along

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Steve

Its still going: Jun 12 18:41:25 Debussy dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected (auth failed, 1 attempts in 9 secs): user=<colin@some.domain.here>, method=PLAIN, rip=36.7.79.21, Jun 12 18:42:01 Debussy dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected (auth failed, 1 attempts in 8 secs): user=<colin>, method=PLAIN, rip=113.240.237.10, Jun 12 19:11:58 … Continue reading →

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Spammers really don’t get it do they?

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Steve

Going through the spam comments on one of the sites I found the following: Yes that’s right… 3 comments on the SAME post from the SAME IP address… how could that not be spam?  

Posted in Sad Spammers | Tagged , | 2 Comments