This might spark outrage but can we note ips to accounts so if they mass register, other servers get notified through federation and deactivate those (new) accounts or block registration at all?
The idea would be:
- I register an acocunt, my ip gets noted, I assume they federate immediately?
- i register another account on the same ip since no relog/isp change happened, my ip came through federation, i dont get blocked since this could have been a mistake
- i register another account, gets blocked for mass registration
The obvious way around this would be changing your ip constantly but its at least uncomfortable for an attacker.
Now comes the kicker:
- I start spamming, get banned
- I spam with another account, same ip, same ban reason on another server, ip ban gets triggered since they’re close in time
- ip ban shuts me down for 12 hrs? i will change the ip anyway but it slows down the attack again and makes automation hard.
Feel free to poke holes in this. i‘m trying to find solutions, not be right. But please be gentle, I‘m trying to help.
I agree, its not great in those cases. My idea wasnt a permanent ban of the ip since I know how this works. I‘m an admin.
I‘m analyzing the patterns and they’re not really flooding the system, they’re single accounts, posting once from different instances.
To combat this, we need to see what action we want to prevent. Ideally, the computer of the person posting this would explode. That not being possible, we‘re kind of limited.
In the case of the recent attacks it has first been a text, which probably got banned by an automod, then they resorted to pictures. We have software that can detect csam and delete it. I dont know if this would work with a picture like the spam pic they sent around. Maybe.