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Re: Hundreds of requests for robots.txt from Firefox 1.5.01

  • Subject: Re: Hundreds of requests for robots.txt from Firefox 1.5.01
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:19:11 +0000
  • Newsgroups: alt.www.webmaster
  • Organization: schestowitz.com / MCC / Manchester University
  • References: <46jf3oFb40caU1@individual.net> <Xns977860CF14265allisthemooseisloose@216.168.3.64> <46jg3pFbhgqmU1@individual.net> <Xns977862C9048CBallisthemooseisloose@216.168.3.64> <du23c1$18p8$1@godfrey.mcc.ac.uk> <46jhp9Fbf9vvU1@individual.net>
  • Reply-to: newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • User-agent: KNode/0.7.2
__/ [ Brian Wakem ] on Tuesday 28 February 2006 18:06 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> 
>> __/ [ Allis ] on Tuesday 28 February 2006 17:42 \__
>> 
>>> Knowing the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show, Brian
>>> Wakem has proclaimed :
>>> 
>>>> Allis wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Knowing the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show,
>>>>> Brian Wakem has proclaimed :
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Have been getting lots of requests for robots.txt these last few
>>>>>> days.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Big batches of them (100 at a time) from multiple IPs, all from
>>>>>> Firefox 1.5.0.1
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Example:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 62.252.224.18 - - [28/Feb/2006:17:06:52 +0000] "GET /robots.txt
>>>>>> HTTP/1.1" 404 285 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1;
>>>>>> en-GB; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1"
>>>>>> "host:213.228.193.51"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> and so on for another 90 or so lines.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Anyone else seen this?  A bug in FF 1.5.0.1?
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=62.252.224.18&cache=off
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> As I said ...from multiple IPs.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Read that ;)
>>> Thought I'd send the info in case the IP's are owned by the same
>>> block/co.
>>> 
>>> My mistake.
>>> Not the first, won't be the last.
>> 
>> The sarcastic answer: somebody is preparing for an 'ethical' DDOS attack.
>> 
>> The more plausible answer: someone is surveying sites to studying if they
>> serve different robots directives to differnet addresses. I can recall
>> Web-wide waves that 'tickled' sites for 404's responses.
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> 
>> Roy
>> 
> 
> 
> I doubt it, they are coming in huge blocks.  Here's a sample from the last
> few hours - http://213.228.193.51/misc/robots

Everything but the IP is consistent. Could it be Firefox with some morbid
plug-in? Maybe operated over an odd network setting like VPN with
alternating address? The locations vary to wildly though. These seem to come
from various ISP's across the UK. Maybe someone is trying to mess up with
your mind... *smile* I'm clueless.

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      |    "Life is too short to proofread"
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