We are getting absolutely FLOODED with new join requests from bots the past 2 days. There’s no real way to mitigate this with lemmy’s settings, so my only option is to turn off new applications until it stops.
I’ll check every so often to see if the bots have stopped, but until then, we are an island with no new people joining.
~w0odl
The same was happening on mastodon.radio.
I wonder if you can apply a fail2ban rule and block them before they hit the server again within a defined ruleset.
Essentially fail2ban matches against a log file, like a webserver log, then depending on the rules you set, creates an action like an IP firewall rule or something else, with the option of releasing the action after a period.
You can match on pretty much any aspect of the log, too fast, same action more than once, invalid URL, etc.
I know nothing about this instance. Is there a reason it’s getting targeted in particular, or are all Lemmy instances having the same issue?
probably because we have signups as open (but with email verification). I imagine the bot searches instances with open signups and tries to create accounts. It’s public information that it’s open so easy to script.
Each account bot kept trying with:
Hi! I’m a developer interested in decentralized platforms. I’d love to join to follow tech discussions. Thanks!
Around 60 over the past 2 days.
opening applications back up
