Mods for a safe forum

[Viper18]

I'm just trying to get an idea here on what mods I would need, but what mods do you think is necessary to keep a website safe?

 

[Benjay]

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=393503

That's mainly phpBB2, but you can see if there are 3.0.x releases. There Anti Spam.

 

[Viper18]

Thank you so much Ben 🙂 let's see what others have to say now 🙂

 

[AnAccount]

Anti-Spam ACP is a really good one. It stops people from registering with names that are likely to be in the stopforumspam database.

 

[Acorn]

Also disable uploading of attachments and avatars. Disable HTML and "dohtml" tags. All of these are hackers' loopholes. Make sure your forum's server has a firewall.

While a lot of this stuff may constrict some of the fun stuff on a forum it's all a matter of whether you think it is worth the risk.

I'd rather go tell people they have to host their images on Tinypic or Photobucket, than sit there and watch my server crash.

 

[JayJACKEL!]

If you want some private information, give me a PM.

I'm part of a hacking forum (I'm a coder so it's a good way to release educational products) and I know a lot of forum loopholes.

Either that, or wait for my next blog post (next friday). That'll be on forum security.

Also, if you're wondering why I ask for private talk on this, is just incase people see the names of certain techniques and then exploit them.

 

[Acorn]

Actually is it okay if I PM you too, Jay? I'm always looking how to make my forum safer.

 

[AnAccount]

Also disable uploading of attachments and avatars. Disable HTML and "dohtml" tags. All of these are hackers' loopholes. Make sure your forum's server has a firewall.

While a lot of this stuff may constrict some of the fun stuff on a forum it's all a matter of whether you think it is worth the risk.

I'd rather go tell people they have to host their images on Tinypic or Photobucket, than sit there and watch my server crash.

We have some signature measurements on our forum, and while we have had some people complain the house down about them, others don't seem to mind. I don't remember the post amount (which is probably a good thing) we have it set so that you can't have any signatures till x amount of posts. Because in actuality, which would you rather have? A rule where you have to make so many posts before adding a sig, or a practical free for all where people can post links that will harm your computer? Making only so many posts is a small price to pay compared to what we could have been doing, as I'm sure there are a lot of other forums out there that are stricter in this respect than we are.