Bots registering accounts

[Archangel]

I have an e-commerce website and recently I’ve noticed a lot of new accounts being registered with long random strings as account names and bogus credentials. These accounts obviously don’t order anything.

What’s their game? What are they attempting to achieve?

Any ideas welcome

[xoggoth]

It may help to find where they came from. Is your site aimed at UK users? If so, real users are more likely to be from UK and use recognisable British internet suppliers, BT, Virgin etc. I found most of the garbage visits to my site have come from Russia etc.

In PHP this is really simple, get the ip and internet supplier with:

$ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$addr = gethostbyaddr($ip);

Then use IP2C to get the country:

ip2c.org | free IP to Country server | self-updating every day

[xoggoth]

As to why, I suspect they often target small sites just for practice. I've had various pointless uncompleted purchases, emails, and even tinkerings with the database before I upped the security. No obvious gain for them.

[hairymouse]

I wonder if they aren't part of an entire profile that is then sold on the dark web. If you've got a big list of stolen credit card numbers and want to test them or use them to make purchases, you could buy a package of already established profiles that are already signed up for various e commerce sites.

That's my guess anyway.

[Hobosapien]

If various information is only provided to users rather than visitors then they may be registering dummy accounts to access that data for web scraping or other means.

They may also be part of some penetration testing to find any weaknesses they can exploit for whatever reason, such as if they think you have a list of customers and their details and maybe payment details vulnerable to such exploits.

Look at putting in additional verification steps for new accounts, such as an email link to complete registration so at least the email account must be valid, and ensure only one registration per email account, if only to slow them down and disuade any 'script kiddies' messing about either for entertainment or something more nefarious.

Also worth checking with any others in the business (if applicable) that they're not doing this to massage the user numbers for some reason, such as to hit any targets for sales and marketing.

[darrylmg]

I have an e-commerce website and recently I’ve noticed a lot of new accounts being registered with long random strings as account names and bogus credentials. These accounts obviously don’t order anything.

What’s their game? What are they attempting to achieve?

Any ideas welcome

Any pattern to the creation date/time?
E.g all created within 5 secs of each other.

Are the account names with long strings in the format of GUIDs?


If yes to all the above, then it's possible it's an automated hacking tool trying different ways of submitting the signup data to compromise the site.

See if you can stick a CAPTCHA on the front of the signup process.
Everyone loves a good CAPTCHA!

Sent from my SM-T835 using Contractor UK Forum mobile app

[Archangel]

Thanks for the help, some food for thought.

(The accounts are happening at a rate of about 1 per day, from all over the globe, the account names are like this
First name: iNvHXJCQlmncEuFf
Last name: kvpBILhXamZKrj)