[TWiki-Announce] TWiki Advisory: HTML Attachment Spam on PublicTWiki Sites

[TWiki a. l. - s. u. a. r. n. \(l. volume\) <twi...@li...>]

Dear TWiki administrator:

_________________________________________________________
NOTE

This is an advisory for _public_ TWiki sites. You
can ignore this message if your TWiki site is access
restricted.

_________________________________________________________
SUMMARY

A new type of spam has emerged: HTML attachment spam [1].
This spam is nasty because it might identify your TWiki
sites as spam source. To protect your site, please update
your site with the latest BlackListPlugin [2],
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/BlackListPlugin

_________________________________________________________
DETAIL

Here is how the HTML attachment scam works: A spammer
attaches a number of HTML pages to a TWiki site. The
attachments can be served right out of the pub directory,
e.g. without activating TWiki. The HTML pages advertise
for products and services and contain links to spam
sites.

After they have planted their files on your TWiki site
they start adding links directly to these HTML files
from miscellaneous other wikis, blogs, guest books,
forums etc. And YOUR site ends up with a high Google
score when searching for various product names.

And soon YOUR IP address and domain name will be on the
common blacklists. If your TWiki is important to you
and/or your business you need to take action.

To protect your site, please update your site with the
latest BlackListPlugin [2], version 02 Jun 2006. It has
been updated to scan HTML attachments for known spam
signatures and prevents files from getting uploaded if
identified as spam. The spam signatures are
automatically updated from participating sites, such as
TWiki.org, MoinMoin, Wikipedia and more.

_________________________________________________________
TWIKI SUPPORT

The Support web at TWiki.org is available for people who
have a technical questions or questions about TWiki
deployment. This support forum is for TWiki users by
TWiki users. The TWiki community keeps an eye on
postings, but doesn't necessarily answer questions. In
practice, contributors and users are actively discussing
and helping out! Get TWiki support at:
http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Support/WebHome

If you prefer IRC you can use the #twiki channel on
feenode.net to get in touch with TWiki developers.

You can also get commercial support to install, upgrade,
configure and deploy TWiki systems:
http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/ConsultantsForHire
http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/CodersForHire

_________________________________________________________
TWIKI DEPLOYMENT AND ADVOCACY

TWiki is steadily growing in popularity. We have now 200
to 300 downloads every day. TWiki is mainly used behind
corporate firewalls, and is a mission critical system in
major corporations such as Google, Motorola, Sun
Microsystems and Yahoo! In case you installed TWiki on
your server you are encouraged to list it at
http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiInstallation

Word of mouth is a good way of spreading TWiki - your
help is greatly appreciated! More exposure means more
contributions, and a better system! To promote TWiki in
magazines and web sites use the material in
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiAdvocacy04x00x00

_________________________________________________________
** REQUEST FOR PAPER! **

If you have a successful deployment of TWiki, we would
really appreciate if you could support the TWiki project
by writing a TWiki success story. This helps in promoting
the platform, leading to more input, and a continuously
improving product! More on this at:
http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiSuccessStories

Last but not least, thanks for contributing many ideas,
code, docs, quality and more. We have a thriving
TWiki.org community!

Best regards and happy TWiki'ing,

Peter Thoeny and Kenneth Lavrsen,
on behalf of the TWiki development community


[1]: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/HtmlAttachmentSpam
[2]: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/BlackListPlugin


-- 
    * Peter Thoeny                       Peter@StructuredWikis.com
    * http://StructuredWikis.com - bringing wikis to the workplace
    * http://TWiki.org - is your team already TWiki enabled?
    * Knowledge cannot be managed, it can be discovered and shared
    * This e-mail is:   (_) private    (_) ask first    (x) public