The first thing I did to try and lessen the SPAM activity was change the verification method to reCAPTCHA. Unfortunately reCAPTCHA has been cracked. And on that note, I've reverted back to a question/answer type of human verification system for new member registration.

There are indeed a couple of security holes in the version of vBulletin that we are currently using.

When I attempted to update the software a few days ago, things did not go as planned (to say the least). The update broke the navigation links throughout the community pages. We had to do a full restore. We still believe upgrading the software is a good start to eventually alleviating the problem--that's why we're going to try it again once we have feel we are more prepared for the problems that that may arise.

My hat goes off to the forum moderators--they've been doing a more than admirable job of keeping the forums clean against a constant flow of attacks.

-Sean