Hello. I have been a registered user on deviantART for close to 5 years. Lately I've noticed a proliferation of bots, which randomly fave tons of pictures, then when people comment on their page, it automatically sends out spam. Does anyone know what this is and/or how it works? Thanks.

Well, it could be from a "professional" post spammer like XRumer, or a dozen other possibles. I can almost guarantee that your server logs will contain signatures from attempts from that one at least. There are hundreds of bot source codes available with an easy search, a veritable script kiddie playground, so you might start satisfying your curiosity by analyzing some of those.

For a general introduction for the various ways a website can be attacked, I'd recommend Detecting Malice by RSnake. Various types of spam and more are discussed in there. A E-version is also available via an easy search.

http://www.detectmalice.com/

Thanks for your reply. This is quite helpful. I've never heard of XRumer, but it looks like the kind of tool that could be used for such purposes. That book looks really good. I've obtained a ebook version of it, and I've begun to read it. I think it will help. Thanks again.