IP banning

[theunusedperson]

What is the point in "IP banning" people from websites? IP adresses can be changed multiple times in one day. So banning an IP adress is pretty much useless unless the person has a static IP.

[waggles v2]

And static IP's come with Broadband, and only like 5 people on this site have dial-up.

[Mr. Anderson]

And static IP's come with Broadband, and only like 5 people on this site have dial-up.

QFT.

That is all.

[ehntoo]

And static IP's come with Broadband, and only like 5 people on this site have dial-up.

95% of Broadband connections use a dynamic IP as arranged through DHCP.

The only way you can get a Static IP is by paying for it.

It helps. You can ban entire ranges of IPs, and most people don't actually know how to change an IP. It's a good preventative measure.

[waggles v2]

But here in Australia, we ONLY have staticsfor broadband. And I believe it is the same for America as well, according to Mr Anderson.

[Mr. Anderson]

So I thought...
I think I had one...

[Vagrant]

We don't just have to ban one IP at a time. We can ban multiple numbers with a wildcard. Most dynamic IP's don't vary as much as you might think.

And us admins <3 static IP's, because that solves all our problems.

[Jared]

Ya I only notice every once and a while that all of the numbers change but sometimes only a few change.
I agree in this new brave world of dynamic ips. Ip banning is pretty much a laughable ban at best. Because at flick of a switch we can get ourselves a whole different ip lol! But don't tell that to anybody it'll be our little secret. Anyways the point is so the mods can at least feel as if they have got rid of the person, only to find a few minutes later they are back for round two, three,four,five,six,thousand,billion,etc haha!

[Mara]

So what's your point? They didn't upgrade their forums?

Hell, if the /install folder is still present, or the install.php file is still present in forums, you can root it.

They allow HTML? Easy to abuse. Even the lightest amount of HTML is incredibly easy to abuse, and can usually be exploited to upscale the amount of HTML you can use.

And spamming it? Well, that's not really a noteworthy feat.

So what's your point? What do you advise? Sure people can renew their IP's, but there are some pretty comprehensive IP lists for people to block people from using web-proxies (tens of thousands of IPs).

There's even those insidious 'bans' (that once you give the forum hack an IP, it will feed pages to that IP much slower, randomly direct them to Google, give 404's on random, etc).

[Tanktunker]

letmego.in
hidemysites.com
etc.

[Mara]

letmego.in
hidemysites.com
etc.


Check here (http://webproxy.emptv.com/).

That's 5 seconds of googling. I also saw a torrent of many text files of similar lists.

[Mike Holiday]

It is possible to change ones IP at will, but that doesn't really mean much.

After an IP ban, what's the point of coming back to waste keystrokes and clicks?

[WaterZoma]

Look at Narutoboy and his friends, assuming he wasn't acting as them, they wasted their time trying to rebel in these forums.

[Mike Holiday]

There was only narutoboy...It's safe to assume he has no friends.

He is also a special case. Only 1 in 1000 idiots don't get the hint after the first time.

[Tanktunker]

Check here (http://webproxy.emptv.com/).

That's 5 seconds of googling. I also saw a torrent of many text files of similar lists.
Yeah, that was my point.
You don't even need to change your IP, or get a proxy program, you can just use a cgi proxy.

[Mara]

No, Tank, that's a list of IP's in those proxies.

Chejrw takes that list, and plugs it in the ban. Anyone who uses those proxies can't log in now (or at least make new accounts).

[Tanktunker]

Neither of the sites I listed exist in their database.
:(

[Mara]

As I said, that was a quick google.

It's just how hard the offenders will work, compared to how hard the admins will work.

[Logic]

There's other ways of banning that are equally effective depending on how you set up the system. An example would be a JavaScript that I wrote for a forum one time that embedded a cookie in your browser for banning. If it was detected by another piece of code, it would take whatever action I chose. It's independent of your IP and username but people can always turn off cookies.

There's a way to exploit every banning feature and get around it but there's different ways to issue bans to counter them as well. Like Mara, said it's the willingness of the coders versus the offenders.

[Tanktunker]

Or you can track down the offender and kill him.
Only exploit in that system is being bulletproof.

[Aaedien]

Or you can track down the offender and kill him.
Only exploit in that system is being bulletproof.

I'm gonna stab him to death. With a pencil. An unsharpened one.

Eat that, bulletproofness. Pencils aren't bullets. Nyah.

They can be used as bullets though. Hm.

*not funny post, lol.

[lazyguy]

Pencils have lead in them...

[Aaedien]

Pencils have lead in them...

This is true.

I think.

But you draw with graphite.

Which may or may not include lead.

I dunno.

[Karl]

Pencils have lead in them...
Wrong. Pencil "lead" is graphite mixed with some clay. There's no Pb in there anywhere.

[ehntoo]

But here in Australia, we ONLY have staticsfor broadband. And I believe it is the same for America as well, according to Mr Anderson.

Australia uses an entirely different distribution method for broadband. Telstra, your main ISP, uses a proprietary system which does, in fact, assign static IPs. I think Telstra's name for it is BigPond.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigPond

In the US, most IPs are dynamic. Many ISPs offer a static IP/symmetrical bandwidth package, but it costs a lot more.