Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot • Hacker News Board

Re: Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot

#211

Post by lelanthran » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 6:54 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #43

drewnick wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how many webmaster and business owners' egos are stroked by all the traffic they are getting, when in actuality they are often just serving thousands of bots.

I was insulted recently reading about the apparently thousands of hits per second the rest of you guys are getting. Even the bots are shunning me!

> I was insulted recently reading about the apparently thousands of hits per second the rest of you guys are getting. Even the bots are shunning me!

You're running the wrong stack - I, myself, find that simply having a static file website is enough to cut down on the traffic.

You need to run something other than static file serving to get bot attention.

Re: Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot

#212

Post by b112 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 6:56 AM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #193

econ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans never visit but I have some websites with ancient cms's. When I got bored playing with them I download the html, change the extensions to php and replace the site with a static copy. People then tirelessly try to hack it since they have laundry lists of known vulnerabilities. (Now that I think about it I regret not making the admin area public for added nostalgia.)

Not that I follow my own advice, but a popped server can still be a liability for you. If you don't need it online I would take it down. Don't want to suddenly realise you've been an email spam node for several months.

Re-read the post. He converted the sites to static html.

Re: Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot

#213

Post by tomveber » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 7:02 AM UTC

Worth saying out loud: user-agent is not identity. Verify AI crawlers by reverse DNS or the provider's published IP ranges - the ones worth letting in all publish them.

Re: Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot

#214

Post by GoblinSlayer » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 7:18 AM UTC

Frieren wrote: post #210

yabones wrote: post #6

Every server with port 80/443 open has thousands of hits a day from random boxes looking for wordpress login pages. The only new thing is that they're pretending to be a different type of annoying bot. There's a new layer of sophistication and subterfuge, but it's the same junk traffic we've always dealt with.

Numbers say that the number of attacks are increasing: https://radar.cloudflare.com/security/application-layer?date...

Where do you think all the AI investment goes? They expand AI data centers.