Does anyone else see this activity in their CC panel...

..a far more than average listeners from Germany, ALL using Winamp 5.5 and sometimes all showing
they have been connected to you for the same period of time???

I get hoards of German listeners with what I just described above..
Feedback/Comments???

Hi Ricky:

I'm sorry I didn't see your message...this happens constantly to me. It varies between 4 and 15 listeners. Today for example it's variable but CONSTANT. Every time I do a refresh there are more...I kick them, and mostly they don't come back just different IP's now..It's a huge headache because they're taking listener slots that I pay for. And every one of them is the same - Winamp 5.0. I seriously doubt these are real listeners. It's a real PAIN you-know-where.  And yes the IP's are all different always..

Ok, thanks

UPDATE:

Today, the 25th, the connections from "Germany" are endless....if I "kick" them (and I do) not a single one ever comes back "ON" which tells me they are all FALSE connections, taking up listener slots and bandwidth. If I "BAN" them I get my ShoutCast DNAS shutdown and my own IP banned. Another issue...

I'm appealing to ANYONE who may have experienced this pain-in-the-a**" problem as well, and how I might get this bloody problem resolved ASAP. Many thanks for all/any assistance 

Marry Christmas to all   

UPDATE:

Today, the 25th, the connections from "Germany" are endless....if I "kick" them (and I do) not a single one ever comes back "ON" which tells me they are all FALSE connections, taking up listener slots and bandwidth. If I "BAN" them I get my ShoutCast DNAS shutdown and my own IP banned. Another issue...

I'm appealing to ANYONE who may have experienced this pain-in-the-a**" problem as well, and how I might get this bloody problem resolved ASAP. Many thanks for all/any assistance 

Marry Christmas to all   

It sounds like someone is out to take down your station. It occurred to me just now that if the connections are sending malicious packets, they could fool shoutcast into banning your own IP algong with the ones you're trying to ban.

Best way to deal with this issue will be a firewall with GeoIP implementation. Easy to implement and manage.

You could also try and switch to shoutcast 2.0 or Icecast wich may not have as many vulnerabilities. But most likely they'll just find another way to attack your server.

I would recommend full hardening using bastille or similar with GeoIP and fail2ban, unfortunately this method can be a bit of a pain if you don't know what you're doing.

Hope it helps.

Germany IPs are famous for this... its because you are listed in shoutcast directory.  It USED TO BE a major issue... but since the yp.shoutcast has been completely rewritten/destroyed it isn't as much of an issue as it used to be.... do an OLD google search like 2009ish ...it was everyone's problem

Get a better hosting provider, 15 slots aren't a big issue. We see 100s of those on a 2k listeners stream regularry.
Most of the time these listeners come from the YP, based on the tags and keywords in your stream.
We host via modified Icecast-KH + some other OS tweaks and can handle that kind of "issue" quite well, with a lot of bandwidth for example