Black List Plugin

Description

This is a simple utility to keep black sheep away from a public TWiki site. The site can be protected against excessive page access (e.g. by bad robots), suspicious activities of users, such as multiple registrations or rapid topic updates indicating Wiki:WikiSpam, or saving text with wiki-spam.

The Plugin monitors activities by IP address and uses three IP address lists to protect the TWiki site:

• WHITELIST: Manually maintained list of users who should never get on the BANLIST
• BLACKLIST: Manually maintained list of malicious users
• BANLIST: Automatically updated list of users with suspicious activities

On topic save, text is compared to a known list of spam patterns. If wiki-spam is identified, topic save is cancelled, an error message is shown, and the IP address is put on the BANLIST. Two wiki-spam lists are used:

• Local SPAMLIST: Manually maintained list of spam patterns
• Public wiki-spam list: Big list of wiki-spam patterns, retrieved from external web site

Users on the BLACKLIST and BANLIST will have every page access delayed by one minute and will get an error message.

The registration form can also be protected from improper use.

To fight Wiki-spam, the Plugin can also add a rel="nofollow" parameter to external URLs. Search engines will not follow links that have this parameter, taking away the incentive to add spam to TWiki.

Plugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables. To reference a plugin setting write %<plugin>_<setting>%, i.e. %INTERWIKIPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION%

General settings

• One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Utility to keep malicious users away from a public TWiki site

• Debug plugin: (See output in data/debug.txt)
  • Set DEBUG = 0

• Log access of blacklist and spam list activities: (0 or 1)
  • Set LOGACCESS = 1

• Access restriction:
  • Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup
  • Set ALLOWTOPICRENAME = TWikiAdminGroup

WHITELIST, BLACKLIST and BANLIST settings

• WHITELIST: Comma delimited list of IP addresses; possible to use partial addresses ending in a dot
  • Set WHITELIST = 127.0.0.1, 134.129.

• BLACKLIST: Comma delimited list of IP addresses; possible to use partial addresses ending in a dot
  • Set BLACKLIST = 203.88.152., 203.88.155., 219.65.75.

• BANLIST configuration, comma delimited list of:
  1. Points for registration
  2. Points for each save and upload
  3. Points for view and other actions
  4. Points for view raw
  5. Threshold to add to BANLIST
  6. Measured over time (in seconds)
  • Set BANLISTCONFIG = 20, 5, 1, 20, 120, 300
  • Your current score: 1 for IP address 38.107.191.90

• Message for users on BLACKLIST and BANLIST:
  • Set BLACKLISTMESSAGE = Your IP address 38.107.191.90 is black listed at the TWiki web site due to excessive access or suspicious activities. Please contact site administrator anne.denton@ndsuNOSPAM.edu if you got on the list by mistake.

Wiki-spam filtering settings

• Filter wiki-spam on topic save and HTML file uploads based on SPAMLIST: (0 or 1)
  • Set FILTERWIKISPAM = 1

• Comma separated list of Web.Topics to exclude from wiki-spam filtering on topic save:
  • Set SPAMEXCLUDETOPICS =