Here are the latest .htaccess incantations to prevent this week’s infestation of crazy referrer spam bots. And yes, that sentence sounds as strange to me as it does to you.

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*.(get|dive|move|go|hey|drop|switch|come|18|lol|how).to" badbot <br />SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*.(altair|again|ammo).at" badbot <br />SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*/(seeya).at " badbot <br />SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*.(pagina.de|lotme.com|supernetmall.biz|0up.org)" badbot <br />SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*(adipex|phentermine|hydrocodone|tramadol|carisoprodol|cialis).*" badbot</p> <p> order deny,allow <br /> deny from env=badbot

Thanks to LGF reader kifaya for regular expression refinements.

The first line blocks all the bad bots currently abusing accounts at the .to domain. Notice that whoever’s behind this bunch is having fun with the phrase “… to”.

The second line blocks some of the creeps at the .at domain. Notice that this group seems to be working their way through the alphabet.

The third line blocks a persistent pr0n spammer, of an especially vile persuasion.

The fourth line blocks individual domains I noticed with a quick run through our server logs today. This list will probably continue expanding, because this bizarre form of internet noise (can anyone really be making money at referrer spam?) is only getting worse.

The fifth line blocks a list of pharmaceutical names (if they appear within the name of a referring page).

UPDATE at 10/13/05 6:16:45 pm:

Note that spaces have been added to some of the regex strings, to avoid messing up our layout with long ‘words.’