[IMC-Tech] Dadaimc sites being exploited

Thu Nov 23 06:16:58 PST 2006

Hi folks:

This may be a well understood issue here, but just in case it's not...

The Indy CMS "DadaIMC" has a feature which allows users to email copies 
of stories to other readers.

Spammers have produced a "bot" which exploits this feature to use the 
site as a spam distribution service by adding spam content to the text 
block of the email that is sent.

If I had not installed countermeasures the server I run, Illich, which 
hosts 7 Dada sites would have been responsible for the distribution of 
over 100,000 spam emails during the last 36 hours.

I can't find a switch in the user interface to switch this feature off, 
nor am I aware of a patch to insure that the email to be sent is not 
spam, so the only thing I was able to come up with was to disable the 
code as follows:

In the current version of Dada, 99.3X, the email function is done by a 
file called "emailto.php" which will be found in the document root 
directory of the site. Replacing that file with something like this 
(with same name and permissions) will disable the feature without 
breaking the software or flooding the error log file:

----------File follows-----------
<html>
<head>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body>
Due to abuse by spammers this feature is not available at this time.
</body>
</html>
-----------------------------------

I'd really be interested in any better solution to this issue...

-- 
Peace: John Milton

email: john at johnmilton.ca
Skype name (VoIP): john.e.milton
mobile phone (Canada): 905-537-8472
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