Close
  • Latest News
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • IT Management

    Movable Type Fixing Bug as Spam Clogs Blogs

    By
    Matthew Hicks
    -
    December 20, 2004
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Six Apart late Monday planned to release an update to its Movable Type Weblogging software to combat a recent surge of blog comment spam.

      Movable Type bloggers began informing the company early last week that comment spam had reached levels that were knocking out servers at Web hosting companies and wreaking havoc on affected bloggers.

      Comment spam, which Six Apart officials said first appeared in fall 2003, occurs when spammers attempt to dump Web site links into the comment sections of blogs.

      The spammers often use automated bots with the goal of trying to game search engines such as Google by increasing their link popularity, said Anil Dash, vice president of Six Aparts professional network.

      Comment spam came to a head for Six Apart because of a bug in Movable Type 3.1, which led spam comments to still cause a load on Web servers and databases even when the comments were blocked from appearing on blogs, Dash said.

      Since Version 3.0, released earlier this year, Movable Type had included additional tools for moderating comments and authenticating comments using its TypeKey service.

      But the bug came to light following an upswing in comment spam and the ferocity of the attacks over the past few weeks, he said. The blogs targeted most often were the ones with high rankings on Google.

      /zimages/2/28571.gifIn his weblog, Sean Gallagher discusses measures bloggers are taking in the fight against comment spam, and blames Googles PageRank system for encouraging spammers.

      “Spammers have massively increased the volume of attacks, the number of comments in an attack and the frequency of the comments,” Dash said. “In combination with that, there was a bug in Movable Type.”

      Six Apart rushed to offer details about the bug and fix it last week, sending out a test version to developers by the end of the week.

      Movable Type 3.14, which includes a patch, was expected to be available by the end of Monday as a free download for users of Movable Type 3.0 or later, Dash said. The company is advising users of pre-3.0 releases to upgrade.

      Web-hosting companies reported servers becoming unresponsive under the load of the comment-spam traffic, leading some to cut off all comments on Movable Type blogs.

      One such company was TextDrive Inc., of La Jolla, Calif. The company hosts blogs across multiple platforms, from Movable Type to the open-source Word Press blog tool.

      The volume of comment spam to Movable Type blogs clogged one of its servers, leading it to shut down comments across Movable Type blogs for about four days, said TextDrive president Jason Hoffman. TextDrive posted a notice on its user forums about the issue and also worked with Six Apart to resolve it.

      “What was happening was that [spam] got to a certain point that the Movable Type comment script itself would never let go of the database and would look like it was constantly rebuilding,” he said.

      About 10 percent of 2,000-some Movable Type blogs hosted by TextDrive were hit with the comment-spam rush, Hoffman said.

      Next Page: Creating a blacklist of sites.

      Blacklist


      TextDrive took other steps besides blocking comments. Hoffman had noticed that the bulk of comment spam was coming from .info domains, so TextDrive for a short time blocked all referrals to .info. Later, it created its own blacklist of .info sites to ban from sending comments to blogs.

      Before discovering the code bug, Six Apart officials initially thought the rash of comment spam was hitting users of older versions of Movable Type. While that turned out not to be the case, Hoffman said he noticed a pattern among those Movable Type blogs hit at TextDrive.

      The blogs tended to use templates where the link for commenting was easy to find from the front page, a typical design for blogs built on earlier Movable Type versions. By making the comment-script link so visible, the blogs also made it simpler for automated bots to deluge the blogs with comments.

      Hoffman said the blog industry needs to focus on solving comment spam broadly by focusing not only on the blog tools but also on the measures hosting companies can take. Still, bloggers themselves must play an active role.

      “I dont think that link spam or comment spam necessarily kills blogs or kills content producers, but I think that the idea of having a site that you dont necessarily have to curate is gone,” Hoffman said.

      “If you produce content and produce comments, then you have to read comments and moderate comments. You have to treat a Weblog like youd treat a good garden.”

      Six Apart also has begun talking with others in the industry about common solutions, Dash said. The company runs TypePad, a popular hosted blog service. Six Apart actively blocks comment spam in the service and has gleaned trends and developed blacklists that Dash expects will be incorporated in future Movable Type releases.

      /zimages/2/28571.gifRead more here about Six Aparts recent growth.

      While comment spam shares characteristics with the scourge of unsolicited e-mail in users in-boxes, it typically serves a different purpose, Dash said.

      “One of the fundamental differences with comment spam is that spammers are not doing it to advertise their services on a site, but theyre doing it to increase their page rank on Google,” Dash said.

      While search engines could do more to advance their algorithms to not consider links from blog-comment spam, Dash said such steps alone wont solve the problem.

      “The reality is, even if they do tweak the search engines to not favor comments and to properly understand when a comment is spam or not, the spammer behavior is not going to change that quickly,” he said. “This is going to be an ongoing issue.”

      /zimages/2/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms for more on IM and other collaboration technologies.

      Matthew Hicks
      As an online reporter for eWEEK.com, Matt Hicks covers the fast-changing developments in Internet technologies. His coverage includes the growing field of Web conferencing software and services. With eight years as a business and technology journalist, Matt has gained insight into the market strategies of IT vendors as well as the needs of enterprise IT managers. He joined Ziff Davis in 1999 as a staff writer for the former Strategies section of eWEEK, where he wrote in-depth features about corporate strategies for e-business and enterprise software. In 2002, he moved to the News department at the magazine as a senior writer specializing in coverage of database software and enterprise networking. Later that year Matt started a yearlong fellowship in Washington, DC, after being awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship for Journalist. As a fellow, he spent nine months working on policy issues, including technology policy, in for a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He rejoined Ziff Davis in August 2003 as a reporter dedicated to online coverage for eWEEK.com. Along with Web conferencing, he follows search engines, Web browsers, speech technology and the Internet domain-naming system.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Big Data and Analytics

      Alteryx’s Suresh Vittal on the Democratization of...

      James Maguire - May 31, 2022 0
      I spoke with Suresh Vittal, Chief Product Officer at Alteryx, about the industry mega-shift toward making data analytics tools accessible to a company’s complete...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      Visa’s Michael Jabbara on Cybersecurity and Digital...

      James Maguire - May 17, 2022 0
      I spoke with Michael Jabbara, VP and Global Head of Fraud Services at Visa, about the cybersecurity technology used to ensure the safe transfer...
      Read more
      Cloud

      IGEL CEO Jed Ayres on Edge and...

      James Maguire - June 14, 2022 0
      I spoke with Jed Ayres, CEO of IGEL, about the endpoint sector, and an open source OS for the cloud; we also spoke about...
      Read more
      Applications

      Cisco’s Thimaya Subaiya on Customer Experience in...

      James Maguire - May 10, 2022 0
      I spoke with Thimaya Subaiya, SVP and GM of Global Customer Experience at Cisco, about the factors that create good customer experience – and...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      GoodData CEO Roman Stanek on Business Intelligence...

      James Maguire - May 4, 2022 0
      I spoke with Roman Stanek, CEO of GoodData, about business intelligence, data as a service, and the frustration that many executives have with data...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2022 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×