Alert Status

Started by James Woodcock, November 15, 2003, 04:05:42 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

James Woodcock

My forum was being mis-used the other day by someone who got around the IP banning and registered under a different name and it gave me an idea.....

How about an alert status of which global mods, board mods and admin can see somewhere obvious on the forum which tells them of any hacking attempts, users trying to gain access wrongly, melicious posters and stability issues which affect the forum and need monitoring.  This could be set by Admin

This could get all other admin and mods checking more frequently for such problems when they occur.

So you could have a green light for everything is hunky dorey, yellow light for medium risk problems and Red Light for extreme problems which could be set by an admin with a little message when you hover over the light or something.  Maybe Red Alert could even send an email to all mods about the problem etc.

I think this would be extremely useful for the running of a forum and extra security.

What do you think?

Tony Reid

Hmm... Warning Lights :)

Not a bad idea - but would things like robots set it off?

Tony Reid

James Woodcock

No it wouldnt scan the forum looking for a status, an admin would set the level and message.

bostasp

Urm, doesn't it put things like that in the error log... like those "Hacker?" errors?

James Woodcock

Doesnt warn mods though to be on there guard.

Imagine someone trying alsorts trying to get past security and you have to keep around looking for any other posts that you want removing, well would be good if all mods were aware of the situation just by looking at an indicator.

Ben_S

post in the hidden mods board, job done ;)
Liverpool FC Forum with 14 million+ posts.

David

Something automated would be cool.
This space for rent.

James Woodcock

Posting in hidden boards is ok but its not obvious is it.  A little indication of threat level and awareness for mods would be good I think :)

Automation would be cool, but that requires a lot more pondering ;)

A simple manual method would be very useful for now for the more popular forums around :)

Tyris

I like the idea... *writes down*... on release, this one will be easy :D... as for an automated one... I'd have to figure out kinda warnings get put out etc...

Tom

I like this idea too.  :)

I'm someone who regularly searches through the error log looking for anything suspicious...

Tony Reid

*wonders if tyris is gonna do this through the template system

Yeah, I thought he meant automated when he first posted.

It would be cool if it could detect multiple failed actions by IP :)

Tony Reid

Tyris

well... its just an extra admin field or two... then choosing where to display it in the templates... if I tried to make an automated one... well... I dunno... I guess I'd have to figure out the error logging code first, then it wouldnt be too hard. coz technically all the code is already there... I'd just get it to change the status depending on -what- error it is.

Advertisement: