Fail2Ban?

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 09:41:35PM -0600, Karl Pearson wrote:
> I've installed fail2ban and it's working nicely. I lengthened out the 
> ban-time because I run a very busy server. As part of that, I removed root 
> ssh access, because it's just about time.
> 
> On a side note, before I get to my question, I wrote before because 
> ForwardX11 wasn't working. I solved it by removing and re-installing 
> openssh-server and openssh-clients. Well, it quit working again after the 
> next reboot, which is coming more often than I'd like because of it being 
> new. In any case, after disabling root login, it hasn't failed yet.
> 
> My question is: Do you know a good method of denying access to non-captcha 
> forms using fail2ban. If you've used it, and have it working, I'd like to 
> know. I've checked online and found easy ways to prevent login-enabled 
> form access, but these are public forms and don't require a login.

I don't know if this fits your problem or not, but it has pretty much
eliminated my form-spam problem without resorting to CAPTCHA.  The
technique was described in SysAdmin April 2007, page 30.  Add a
TEXTAREA field to your form, labeled "comments" or something common,
perhaps ahead of any other TEXTAREA field.  Make it invisible by
adding 'style="display: none"' to its tag.  For real humans, the field
is not there, but form bots will see it and poke their spam into it.
So then if your form processor sees that the invisible field is filled
in, it can ignore it, blacklist the IP, or anything else you care to
devise.

> Thanks,
> 
> ---
>       _/  _/      _/      _/_/_/       ____________   __o
>      _/ _/       _/      _/    _/     ____________  _-\\<._
>     _/_/        _/      _/_/_/                     (_)/ (_)
>    _/ _/       _/      _/           ......................
>   _/   _/ arl _/_/_/  _/ earson    KarlP at ourldsfamily.com
> ---
> http://consulting.ourldsfamily.com
> ---
> "To mess up your Linux PC, you have to really work at it;
>  to mess up a microsoft PC you just have to work on it."
> ---

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
bob at bobcatos.com             http://www.bobcatos.com
[S]o Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people;
and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring
salvation to those who are waiting for him.  Hebrews 9:28 (NIV)