Theymos,what did you do?The homographs are gone like overnight!Ups they are BACK

hilariousetc

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Maybe it became redundant them doing it if there are people actively looking out for their usage. I guess it was originally done to hide copy and pasting from being discovered but now the homographs were actually being used to spot it so it would have become more of a giveaway than anything thus rendering the practice useless.

Quote from: theymos on August 05, 2018, 06:57:24 PM

Ah, it looks like the blood ritual that I performed on the last full moon dealt with them.

I didn't do anything, so I guess that it was just the same person.

You should check the ones found for alts. I'm sure there's many more we missed or got away. I'm not sure if they would have all belonged to the same person though because there was a lot found with no obvious patterns in sign-up dates etc. Maybe the way to cheat was published in some sort of bounty hunter telegram group or whatever and once people were getting caught for it that was publicised and everyone stopped. We know there are private telegram groups for bounty hunters where they share tips etc so it wouldn't surprise me. There's far too many people coming here to solely copy and paste straightaway and I get the feeling they're being told or advised to do that from somewhere. Something tells me they're all not just using their own initiative on that.

LoyceV

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Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on August 05, 2018, 05:54:00 PM

If it wasn't you, then all those accounts were controlled by one person or a group and they change the style of the bots.

I think only a very small number of people is involved in the big business of "bump bots", charging up to $1000 per thread per week. Many spambots changed to text spinners and later homograph attacks at the same time. That's quite stupid, as it made them easier to recognize. I have some hope that we made a big dent in their supply of fresh spam accounts, and that's why they keep changing their pattern.
I don't know what their latest pattern is though, but I'd like to continue hitting them.

Quote from: theymos on August 05, 2018, 06:57:24 PM

BTW, the main blocker for me taking action was that I never got around to compiling the table of homographic characters and their ASCII counterparts. If this crops up again, it'd be helpful if someone would compile a nice plaintext " -> " table.

Homograph attacks are easy to get them banned. I've reported many of those accounts, saying: "Spambot/bumpbot doing a homograph attack. Please nuke.". That worked very well!
Since there isn't any legit use for homograph attacks, changing them back into normal text turns it back into plagiarism at best. Would it be possible to use "homograph attack" as ?
Example: "very" would turn into: "vhomograph attackrhomograph attack".

Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on August 06, 2018, 01:50:45 AM

OK, we will try to assemble a table but in the meantime, can we just add them to the rules? So if we spot some just directly report them without trying to find a solid proof of plagiarisms?

There are only "unofficial rules", which can be bend by the Mods. Judging by the accounts that got nuked after reporting them, Mods already take action against it.

TheBeardedBaby

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Quote from: theymos on August 05, 2018, 06:57:24 PM

Ah, it looks like the blood ritual that I performed on the last full moon dealt with them.

I didn't do anything, so I guess that it was just the same person.

BTW, the main blocker for me taking action was that I never got around to compiling the table of homographic characters and their ASCII counterparts. If this crops up again, it'd be helpful if someone would compile a nice plaintext " -> " table.

OK, we will try to assemble a table but in the meantime, can we just add them to the rules? So if we spot some just directly report them without trying to find a solid proof of plagiarisms?

theymos

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Ah, it looks like the blood ritual that I performed on the last full moon dealt with them.

I didn't do anything, so I guess that it was just the same person.

BTW, the main blocker for me taking action was that I never got around to compiling the table of homographic characters and their ASCII counterparts. If this crops up again, it'd be helpful if someone would compile a nice plaintext " -> " table.

TheBeardedBaby

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₿uy / $ell ..oeleo ;(

Me and LoyceV were hunting for those for quite some time now.
Every day there were like at least 40-50 posts with hompgraphs, some days over 200.

The last few days/ maybe a week now/ there are none, 0, "nada".
How can they just disappear overnight??

If it wasn't you, then all those accounts were controlled by one person or a group and they change the style of the bots.

All that, just confirm that I was right about the homograph attacks and why they should be added to the rules.

Anyway, the good news is that the forum is now homogrph-free, we won this battle, and hopefully we'll win the war, but I still will be checking to be 101% sure.

No, They are back, again. I guess they had a nice summer vacation for a few weeks. See the last post.

Topic: Theymos,what did you do?The homographs are gone like overnight!Ups they are BACK (Read 274 times)