Bad Behavior Blackhole

I’ve released the first version of the Bad Behavior Blackhole Plugin for WordPress.

Whenever someone posts a comment to your blog, or an incoming trackback or ping is received, it will be screened against the Bad Behavior Blackhole. If the originating IP address is found, the comment, trackback or ping will be marked as spam or placed in the moderation queue, depending on your preferences. You can also add additional realtime blackhole lists to the plugin, and a few examples are provided to get you started.

The Bad Behavior Blackhole Plugin for WordPress is meant to operate in conjunction with Bad Behavior itself. In a future release of Bad Behavior, the Bad Behavior Blackhole Plugin will be included in the package.

In the past few days I’ve tested some more proxy server lists and added a few more, as well as adding the first few comment/trackback spammers (not using open proxies). I’ve also got the listing, removal and testing interfaces up and running.

The testing backend which actually does the work isn’t in place yet, though. I’m still working on that.

In other news, I’m experimenting with running Bad Behavior Blackhole on a virtual dedicated server. This lets me run the web site, the database and the custom DNS server, something which would be impossible on a typical shared hosting account. It’s costing me about $13 a month, which is an incredible bargain for a virtual dedicated server, but still $13 out of my pocket. (And if you’re looking for hosting, compare these guys and these guys. They’re both really good.)

If you are interested in seeing this project and Bad Behavior continue to develop, please consider a donation of $5 or more to offset the costs involved in these projects. Thank you for your support.

The to-do list currently looks like:

• Implement the automated testing process.
• Design and deploy the distributed frontend which will detect comment/trackback spam and open proxies from the vantage point of installed blogs and feed the data back to Bad Behavior Blackhole for inclusion in the database.
• Work on Bad Behavior some more…

I’ve completed loading the first set of live data. I obtained a list of 900 suspected open HTTP proxy servers and sent a request through each of them. If the request succeeded, the IP address was added to Bad Behavior Blackhole.

Out of the 900 addresses, approximately 500 responded as an open proxy and fetched the request, which automatically adds the IP to Bad Behavior Blackhole.

This means Bad Behavior Blackhole is now up and running! You can begin live testing by adding dnsbl.ioerror.us as a realtime blackhole list to your favorite software.

Soon I will have an interface up with which anyone can submit IP addresses for automated testing. I’ll also have a nice removal interface up shortly.

Update: I loaded some more data and the database now contains 1,200 open proxy servers.

Bad Behavior is, of course, the anti-spam software which sparked this project you see before you.

The Bad Behavior Blackhole, when complete, will allow copies of Bad Behavior to collaborate and catch spammers who currently evade Bad Behavior’s checks. It will also export a DNS-based RBL which anyone will be able to query, even if they don’t use Bad Behavior. For instance, Bad Behavior’s RBL could be added into Spam Karma 2.

The current progress of the project is:

• DNS server is complete and in place. It reads from a special database in realtime and entries have a TTL of 60 seconds. The RBL address is dnsbl.ioerror.us.
• Web site is mostly complete. You’re looking at it.
• Much code remains to be written on the backend to support adding and removing data from the database.

As the project progresses from concept to implementation, I will continue to post here.