Blog@Case is a powerful weblog ("blog" for short) hosting system for use by members of the Case community. It's easy to setup, easy to use, and fully integrated with Case's technical architecture. Just log in to get started!
Blog@Case is based upon the Movable Type publishing platform. As such, it includes all of the powerful features native to that software. Additionally, it has access to all of the wealth of plugins that extend and enhance the Movable Type platform such as comment spam counter-measures (yes, spam, which you would commonly find in your email, has made its way to weblogs). Blog@Case includes powerful techniques to curb comment spam. It has a host of other powerful features.
You may have noticed that the trackback functionality of the blog system has been disabled for some time now. We have been engaged in an epic struggle with spammers, and while most of the spammy trackbacks were caught by the system, the sheer number of machines attempting to spam us caused an effective Denial of Service, and we were forced to disable trackbacks to keep the blog system operational.
Well, we're happy to announce we've turned the tide on the spammers and are now blocking those computers that attempt to repeatedly hit the system with trackback or comment spam. This should also reduce the amount of time you need to go in and spend effort marking icky comments and trackback as spam.
The new system has been running in a logging mode to gather metrics on what would be acceptable use versus spammer characteristics. The heuristics used are fairly draconian. A computer is permanently banned from reaching the blog system if they:
If a computer does get blocked, they are given a message telling them so and asking them to email blog-admin@case.edu to get their computer unblocked.
As of right now, the new banning system has been running for under 24 hours and over 1000 IPs have been banned.
We're winning the war! Go off and trackback to your heart's content!
We had another spammer target the system; this time targeting comments. We've blocked the spammer and cleaned his comments from the database. If you receive email notifications of new comments on your weblog, you may have received a lot of emails over last night and this morning. The offending comments have been deleted.
Trackback is temporarily disabled. A spammer has targetted us with a distributed attack. (We're currently having a little fun with him at his expense.) Trackback should be turned back on shortly.