Who is ServerPronto?

[rfontaine]

I came home from vacation and found this in my logs, with number of hits. What do you think might be going on here?

26-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com313
19-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com303
20-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com293
173-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com292
174-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com286
23-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com285
165-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com285
175-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com279
169-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com277
168-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com273
167-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com271
166-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com265
172-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com262
21-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com261
176-XXX-60-69.serverpronto.com253
18-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com115
113-XXX-251-64.serverpronto.com26

[edited by: Receptional at 5:36 pm (utc) on Jan. 27, 2006]
[edit reason] Made IP looking numbers vague... not sure what to do with domain yet... [/edit]

[Matt Probert]

This server operates a bot, currently called "nicebot", which appears to do nothing but launch DoS attacks against sites. We block it with the server firewall, otherwise it makes hundreds of thousands of calls to our search scripts with spurious and random strings.

We have contacted the company that owns the IP addreses, and asked them to take action. They have not done so.

Matt

[rfontaine]

How would I block everything from serverpronto in .htaccess?