Reply To: Weird spam spike on one of my forums

Yeah, I’ve seen that kind of spike before. Usually it’s some bot wave hitting the same tired loophole for a few days, not necessarily your setup suddenly gonna hell. That said, WordPress forums do seem to attract this crap like moths to a porch light. I’d still check the boring stuff first — first-post restrictions, email verification, any plugin update, and whether the signup path changed without you noticing. That “looks protected but isn’t” thing is annoyingly common.