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[IPS News]

We have released an update to IP.Board 2.3.x to improve the Captcha spam prevention system. IPS has received reports of boards receiving registrations by "spam bots" which register and post a high number of spam posts in the forums. These bots are automated scripts which, depending on your registration setup, can bypass the current Captcha system included in IP.Board 2.3.x series.

While annoying and troublesome, this does not present a security threat to the safety of your board's database, member information, or passwords.

Important: You must have the Advanced Captcha enabled in your Admin CP under Tools and Settings -> Security and Privacy for the system to work.


What is Captcha?

The Captcha system is the method by which the software attempts to ensure that the request to register an account is being submitted by a human and not a software program. Many web sites and software programs present the user with random characters on a unique background which can be read, and typed, by a human but not a software program or script.

Applying Captcha Improvement

The current download of IP.Board 2.3.5 has been updated to include the improved Captcha. If you download IP.Board 2.3.5 after the date of this announcement these updates will be included.

Existing Installs of IP.Board 2.3.x

The updated xmlout.php attached to this announcement will work on any 2.3.x IP.Board installation. Simply download the attached PHP file and upload it to: sources/action_public/xmlout.php

 xmlout.php   75.76K   5892 downloads

Also attached to this announcement are new background images and fonts used for generating the Captcha images. Simply download captcha.zip and fonts.zip attached to this announcement and upload the background images to style_captcha/captcha_backgrounds and the fonts to style_captcha/captcha_fonts in your board install while deleting all current fonts and images in those directories.

 captcha.zip   41.86K   5004 downloads  fonts.zip   161.74K   4884 downloads

Please contact our technical support department through the IPS client area if you have any questions or need assistance applying this update.

[IPS News]

Manual Editing Instructions

For power users who wish to manually edit the xmlout.php code:

Line 522 (approx) change

$reg_code = strtoupper( substr( $regid, 0, 6 ) );

to

$reg_code = strtoupper( substr( md5( mt_rand() ), 0, 6 ) );