Is this real google bot or attack? How do I deal with it?

Question

So basically my site was unaccessible and I went to logs folder to see what's wrong and noticed a lot of weird requests from various IPs:

155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
209.141.45.189 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
209.141.45.189 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:45 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6189 "-" "Google Bot"
185.220.100.252 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:56 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6344 "-" "Google Bot"
209.141.45.189 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:56 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6344 "-" "Google Bot"
162.247.74.206 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:56 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6344 "-" "Google Bot"
155.4.117.13 - - [30/Mar/2020:20:23:56 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6344 "-" "Google Bot"

I wonder if it's some kind of attack.

Did some whois lookup, for example this ip 185.220.100.252 is from Germany, "tor-exit-1.zbau.f3netze.de"

How can I protect server from such attacks?

They do like thousand of requests per minute and I can't access my own site.

Error.log says: AH00161: server reached MaxRequestWorkers setting, consider raising the MaxRequestWorkers setting

(I'm not a webmaster, I host a small site for my needs and have no idea how to react.)

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 30 '20 at 18:12

This is exactly the scenario that fail2ban was invented to cover. I suggest you look into that here: https://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Likely the "badbots" jail would take care of this immediately, and if not it wouldn't be difficult to code a custom jail/filter set to take care of it.

For now, seeing how they IP's seem to be limited, I suggest banning those IP's via iptables:

iptables -I INPUT -s 185.220.100.252 -j DROP

This is what fail2ban does of course (adds IP's to iptables), but fail2ban does it automatically. It would have protected you from this attack without your even noticing.

Just installed it, thanks. I will read about configuration of this service. — me_yy, Mar 30 '20 at 22:01

Is this real google bot or attack? How do I deal with it?

1 Answers1