Gavin Andresen - 2010-08-04 20:40:55

I just shut down freebitcoins.appspot.com; it looks like somebody in Spain is being a jerk and getting a new IP address, bitcoin address, and solving the captcha.  Over and over and over again:

Those IP addresses all map to Telefonica de Espana.  If it was you:  give them back, please: 15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC

Now that 5 bitcoins is worth a fair bit, I'm thinking I need more cheating countermeasures.  I can think of four things to try:

1. Rate limit based on the first byte of the IP address (79. or 81. in this case).
2. Rate limit based on the USER-AGENT string ("Opera/9.8..." in this case).
3. Rate limit based on last two domains of reverse DNS lookup of the IP address (rima-tde.net in this case).
4. Make the standard amount given away 0.5 Bitcoins (Bitcoins have gone up 10 times in value since I started the Faucet).

If you get rate limited, you'll get a message that asks you to try again tomorrow.

BitcoinFX: thanks again for the donation to the faucet; I'm going to drain the Faucet below 500 coins temporarily, and will refill it with your donation after the new cheating countermeasures are in place.