automatic logfile spam generator

how to stop automated robot queries with false headers

[cayleyv]

Danger! I just found this product that claims to automatically fill users logfiles with false hits - the author states this is to confuse sysadmins and hope for traffic from public stats trackers. Does anyone know how to block this sort of thing?

(url removed)

[edited by: volatilegx at 8:44 pm (utc) on Sep. 10, 2004]
[edit reason] removed URL [/edit]

[volatilegx]

While we shouldn't mention any particular products that do this sort of thing, a generic discussion of how to prevent logspam generation is a valid topic.

Any ideas?

[wilderness]

Any ideas?

1) Don't put pages on the internet ;)

2) Deny access to all bots ;)

3)Don't view your logs;
a) Is that possible for log-addicted webmasters? ;)

[jdMorgan]

Most of the logfile spammers won't respond to 403-Forbidden status, so for the ones that hit several times every day, I rewrite their requests to a zero-byte page just to conserve bandwidth. If you have server config privileges, you can set your server to not log those requests, but it's usually not worth the bother -- I just ignore them.

Jim

[drbrain]

Make sure your log directory is robots-protected (if visible at all).

[volatilegx]

> Make sure your log directory is robots-protected (if visible at all).

Yes! If everybody did that, log spammers would be a thing of the past.