Generally, I'm wondering if there have been any changes in 2.1 (as opposed to 2.0.17 or 18) which as part of core make the forum more secure?

Specifically on my forum (currently 2.0.17) I am running these security mods:
Stop Spammer   v 2.3.9
httpBL   v 2.5.1

Stop Spammer was last updated February 25, 2021 (so recently). There's no evidence of a 2.1 version, at least as yet.

httpBL was last updated March 1 2020 (so >1 year ago). Again no indication of any 2.1 version.


Are there any recommendations as to:
1. Whether security mods are required with 2.1, and if so
2. Which security mods are recommended for 2.1?

Ta.

@Bigguy What security measures for anti-spam do you use on this forum?

All I use is what comes with SMF and we battle spam here every day. I have to look into other options I think.

You can use the csf firewall it has stopspamform as well as other lists built in. They will be blocked at the server level. You can also block countries, the price is that your ram will be used to store all the blocked ip addresses.

I always install csf on my servers. It works great.

Quote from: Neša on Jul 13, 2021, 07:27 AMhe price is that your ram will be used to store all the blocked ip addresses.

How much RAM? Surely not anything significant?

It depends what you block, if you block a few countries it can. I have three block lists on my server stopforum spam, dshield and honeypot. csf is using 30mb of ram for them, if I also block Russia and China it jumps to 100mb. This is without any temp IPs being banned and a cold start, I think that CSF and LDF will use a bit more with the other tasks they perform.

200 - 512MB might be nothing if your VPS is 8GB (mine is). If you run a small VPS with only 2GB - 4GB of RAM it might be.
If you have 2GB that would be 9% of your total RAM.

Ta. I don't really understand how RAM comes into it with server stuff.