Hello!

I am running Zen Cart for my shop, and thought everything was going okay until the webhosting company contacted me today saying that the contact form isn't secure and that millions of emails have flooded the server. They want me to do something about this, naturally. I want to first of all take the form off the contact page, build a new form with CAPTCHA and try that. However, how do I take the form off the contact page? I have searched and searched here but can't find an answer...

Thank you!
Johanna

What version are you using?

Thanks for replying! I am using version 1.3.5.

Johanna

I am having the same problem. I'm using 1.3.7 and have been getting emails all day. I get one about every 3 - 5 minutes. So far I have gotten over 300.
Is there anything I can do to prevent or stop this?

Thanks,
Kelly

You may use CAPTCHA contribute to stop bot spamming.

This is a huge issue, I am getting 100's of spam delivery errors per day, so who knows how many are being sent through!

I honestly do not believe CAPTCHA is very affective anymore because a lot of the automated scripts now call for human input if needed, queueing requests to the person that is running the script, so in other words if the script encounters CAPTCHA it simply pops a window to a human controller to enter the code.

I am also using ver 1.3.7

I honestly do not believe CAPTCHA is very affective anymore because a lot of the automated scripts now call for human input if needed, queueing requests to the person that is running the script, so in other words if the script encounters CAPTCHA it simply pops a window to a human controller to enter the code.

It is possible that spammers might of had increased their bots capabilities in order to synchronize the constants of the randomization numbers. If you think that CAPTCHA is no longer useful, I do have a personalized version on my contact form right now.

If a great mount of users wishes to have this feature, it could probably be arranged. :wink2:

TheOracle:

It is possible that spammers might of had increased their bots capabilities in order to synchronize the constants of the randomization numbers. If you think that CAPTCHA is no longer useful, I do have a personalized version on my contact form right now.

If a great mount of users wishes to have this feature, it could probably be arranged. :wink2:

Does it work for you? If it does, I would be very interested, my host is threatening to close me down, I am being hit so bad!

Are you sure this is actually happening via the Contact Us and not just with your email address?

Contact Us sends to you an email ... not others ...

Have you been able to get any copies of the emails that are being sent out with complete headers to check this issue more completely?

Ok, I had the wrong end of the stick, apparently what is happening is they are using the Tell a Friend form, not contact us. As an interim measure I have restricted this option to registered members.

As an interim measure I have restricted this option to registered members.

A very good choice. Even I don't trust emails from guest. :wink2:

The spam is not coming through "tell a friend" but through Contact Us form.
We need a remedy to this immediately.
Help!!!

Did you installed one of the contributed modules called: Captcha under the downloads section of this site ?

Spam sent through Forms is better handled at the Server level. For many reasons, most CAPTCHA scripts do not work as the Bots have gotten better at reading the image -- and yes, this can be done by a script.

I have found an excellent CAPTCHA script but it is a little more involved than most, because it is much better than most. Once I have more time I will see if it can be ported as a Module.

In the meantime, the following may not make sense to you but it should to your Hoster. You can pass on the information and hopefully, they will use it. It will stop Spam sent through Forms for any type Form script in any Hosting account.

Install Mod Security if they haven't already and add this Rule

####################################

Email Injection Header fix

####################################
SecFilter "bcc:"
SecFilterSelective THE_REQUEST "bcc:|bcc%3A"
SecFilterSelective ARG_Bcc ".@"
SecFilterSelective ARGS_VALUES "\n\sbcc:.*@"

Yeah I have done that and the contact us spam still floods in every minute... why do these people bother...

any way ive taken down my contact us page for now until someone has a solution..... not really keen on the captcha mod...

WOW, we have been hit as well. We have been getting thousands of email returns from our own store, and my service provider shut us down because of a high rate of mySQL activity. I changed all of the passwords in the store, as well as the database. Not sure where this is coming from in my 1.3.7 ZenCart implementation.

I just closed off the "Tell a Freind" link such that only registered users can use it. I hope this is the end of that.:bigups:

Any other ideas?

Yep the contct form is being used to send us spam. Is the CAPTCHA any good?

installed CAPTCHA but you can fill out the form without using CAPTCHA test on my site elephat.net

I installed captcha on the log-in customer form on my page, however I tested it and it let me create an account without even filling in the letters.

Anyone know why???

Did I miss a step on installing? Actually my husband installed this mod, I think, we both do the site, but is anyone else having this issue?

Mine is definitely coming from the email function of PHPMailer, and I'm sure from the contact form since users are not logged in. This should be fixed without the need for a captcha - people should not be able to post URLs, and I don't know if this is being used to send to others as well...

Message and headers below.

Message:

From: Abercrombie
Email: [email protected]

vocbhwiqjt, Abercrombie marketing, vDMQlnc,
Abercrombie, WStCvPB,
http://www.byabercrombie.com/ Abercrombie, oJUYrpS.

Office Use Only:
From: Abercrombie
Email: [email protected]
Login Name: Not logged in
Login Email: Not logged in
IP Address: 193.34.144.193 - 67.82.164.107
Host Address: rbiXXXX.giga-dns.com
Date and Time: Fri Dec 11 2009 0:38:09 PST

Headers:

Return-Path: [email protected]
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.4 (2008-01-01) on 19224.bizshop.com
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_20,
MISSING_SUBJECT,NO_RECEIVED autolearn=no version=3.2.4
Received: from 19224.bizshop.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by 19224.bizshop.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id nBB8c9Ka032595
for [email protected]; Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:38:09 -0800
Received: (from apache@localhost)
by 19224.bizshop.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id nBB8c9k8032592;
Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:38:09 -0800
X-Authentication-Warning: 19224.bizshop.com: apache set sender to [email protected] using -f
To: [email protected]
Subject: Message from BizShop
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:38:09 -0800
From: Abercrombie [email protected]
Reply-to: Abercrombie [email protected]
Message-ID: [email protected]
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer [version 1.73] via BizShop ZenCart
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: RO
Content-Length: 560
X-UID: 174250
X-Keywords: