HFS v2.x security update By DANNY

[Mars]

what I am about to say may perhaps sound hard to hear, but it is a reality

times change and people grow older, interests are no longer the same, and very often only nostalgics remain to remember the good old days. Even I have hung up my apron and now consult the forum only as a scrapbook of memories.

the desertification of the forum is mainly due to the absence of former members who no longer come, another reason is that the center of interest has migrated to HFS 3.0, which is accessible for possible exchanges on GitHub where an area is also dedicated to HFS2.x  [https://github.com/rejetto/hfs2](https://github.com/rejetto/hfs2)

the forum here is now closed to the validation of new members, this was a necessary decision because only fake profiles created by BOTs were registering, to give an estimate of the situation there is about a false inscription every 10mn on average in normal attendance at the quietest moments, if the activation of all these accounts were left free,

monitoring possible spam messages would take a lot of unnecessary time, moreover managing to identify a real future member among thousands of registrations is more than random, which is why the counter is closed.

from an external point of view, for a guest the forum can be consulted without restriction and all attachments are accessible, even those you provide; only usage feedback cannot be posted, however exchanges can be made on [https://github.com/rejecto/hfs2/discussions] (https://github.com/rejecto/hfs2/discussions)

[danny]

@Mars   Thanks for the directions to https://github.com/rejetto/hfs2/discussions/
For sure, a forum with one niche topic has a huge disproportion of bots to people; therefore, I agree that a github discussion area is more sustainable, if only because github has a great many more topics and therefore a more favorable proportion of people because of that. 

I guess there's only about 2000 HFS2X servers.  I will try to remember to put a getting started note in the zip.  According to my server's download logs, there are daily downloads of updated HFS2X, by real people, but not in large numbers. 

The uses for HFS2X are niche:  The main specialty is to catalog large numbers of files any way you want to. 

So far as I know, HFS2X is the only server using its own code as the distribution server on Windows, without a CDN buffer. 

At home, there are usually 5000 bots per day and that doesn't have much effect.  However, forum software is a much different case; and, I know that dd-wrt forum (another single-topic stand-alone forum) is also going through some difficulties with bot traffic vs proportion of real people.  I do need mention one thing about putting a wall up; because that is never actually a wall--it is a box.  Indeed, these days, it is probably necessary to relocate forums to a more conglomerate arrangement with more topics on the site also causing a more favorable proportion of real people traffic. 

I have noticed several companies hosting bots in private while advertising defense against bots in public.  So, I can't imagine the frustration of hosting a forum on the same services that power most of the bots.  I wonder if there are some screening filters available?

reminds me of:  https://cybernews.com/security/scam-bots-hitting-website-can-lead-to-financial-loss/