Re: Strange access.log entry... (Apache Users)

I think I can shed a little light on this. I believe it has something to do with exploits / vulnerabilities. I'm not sure what the hex values are, but I'm guessing that's part of the exploit. I've tried searching for it but couldn't find anything. Maybe the query is confusing the search engines?

Anyway, the ip address....if you research that IP address, you see that it resolves to: researchscan1.eecs.berkeley.edu

If you go there, you see the message:

Hello,

This is a research scanning machine from the University of California at Berkeley. This machine regularly conducts scans of the entire Internet so you may have been scanned as part of an ongoing research project.

If you have been or are currently being scanned and would like to opt out, please email cesr-scanning@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with the IP ranges you would like to exclude in CIDR format and we will respond immediately.

If you search google for the IP address, you see a lot of people saying this IP address tried hacking into their site or scanned it or something along those lines. If I were to take a guess, just a guess, I'd guess that maybe they're conducting a large scan of the internet, trying to find servers that are exploitable for research purposes. You might be able to find more information or someone more knowledgeable might be able to provide better advice on what to do.

I've also googled cesr and found this:

Center for Evidence-based Security Research (CESR)

The Center for Evidence-based Security Research is an ongoing collaboration with researchers at the University of California, San Diego, seeking to understand modern Internet threats and develop effective countermeasures using analysis rooted in empirical observation.

I found that here:

https://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/Areas/Centers/

To me, it seems like it's a valid research and they're not actually trying to do bad stuff, they're just looking for exploitable servers and making a list of the issues they found. I'd be more interested in knowing if they actually got in. If they found something, it's just a matter of time before someone who really wants to do bad stuff finds the same exploit and takes advantage of it.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Ken

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Red-Tail Books <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Saw this in my access.log this morning...

169.229.3.91 - - [08/Jul/2016:05:44:24 -0700] "^\x05A\xea\xa1\xfa\xbe\x15" 200 11434 "-" "-"
Can someone more knowledgeable explain what the "request" was and why it was successful? And what 11k of data did apache serve?

Thanks
dave