Finally just removed my SMF since some hack/prick wont leave it alone

[PineWine]

Its sort of hard to imagine that someone would get much thrill out of busting up my site and messing with it, but pricks will be pricks.

I finally took it down after they made it perfectly clear they weren't going to stay off the site no matter what I did to keep them off.

[IchBin™]

Not sure why you posted in the Site comments... Anyway, just because you remove SMF doesn't mean it keeps them off your server. Perhaps you could elaborate about the problem in a support topic or chit chat.

[dWhite]

I agree with IchBin.

What exactly are these people doing to you that forced you to do this?

[PineWine]

They were logging in and making up 15-25 IDs a day and spamming the site.

Nothing I did blocked them, no matter what.  I tried blocking their IP, their sites names, nothing blocked them, they just weaseled around it over and over.  They wanted to prove to me that I was not able to keep them off.  They proved it alright.

[ascaland]

Then they are probably using proxies to get through. There is a mod for blocking most/all online proxies.

[Bigguy]

Forum Firewall mod, Badbehavior mod and stop forum spam mod are the ones I use and they very seldom get in. Have you tried these mods.

[busterone]

I can second that. ForumFirewall, bad behavior, Stop Spammer, and httpBL have worked wonders to keeping the nasty ones out for me. There is not a single mod that will do it all, but where one isn't as effective, the others step up. With them all working together, I get no spam, no misconfigured bots, and a lot of attempted hack and harvesters never get past the front door. 

[PineWine]

will those mods work with 113?  Or do I need to install 2.x?

I am not hip to installing targ.z downloads

[Bigguy]

I would go with the latest version of SMF which is 2.0 RC5 and then install those mods. Things would be much different for you.

[Ashley S]

I would also say it's not a real person actually hacking your community.
It can be Bots you have added to your forum, That's if you have any added or did.

[Danny S.]

Have you tried creating a security question upon registration?

Do you currently have email activation for new members?

[dWhite]

I would also say it's not a real person actually hacking your community.
It can be Bots you have added to your forum, That's if you have any added or did.

@OP: If the usernames are something gibberish like "xcsdcDJdfs", or don't make any sense at all, it's most like bots as Ashley stated. Posting bots usually register with non-sense gibberish usernames.

[Danny S.]

Alot of the SPAM I've seen recently will be a name followed by numbers like this:

johndoe25
asmith337

[Ashley S]

Random names like that are bots. Posting pornographic websites etc on your Forum Community.
Every forum software has this problem with these bots it ain't just SMF.

[dWhite]

And most of the pornographic stuff is usually Russian domain (denoted with the *.ru extension).

[rystan]

I've done what I can to block all of china, russia, romainia, czech ISPs/IPs at my firewall with blackhole,whole adress blocks and reverse dns checks to ensure proper behavior before my server will even send them a page.

[Bolt™]

I use Forum FireWall and Bad Behavior mod which have helped to keep my forum safe as well as problem/spam/hacker free so you should use them.

[PineWine]

I switched to 2.0 RC5 and added the recommended mods.  Now the bots sit at the front door pounding trying to get in and just keep trying.  Is there any way to throw them off and keep them off?

[Arantor]

No, there isn't. They will keep attacking regardless. I see attack attempts for software I don't even have installed, like phpMyAdmin and phpBB on my sites.

[busterone]

. . . and Joomla, WP, and even had one that was attempting to get into Front Page stuff, of which my server don't support.