Backdrop (a bit of a read)
We created a shortened url redirector (using asp.net Url Routing with a catch-all for 404 to do routing) in which bar codes are scanned from devices and then redirected to a destination site from mobile devices. We log all incoming requests for statistical analysis. Since last Monday night, there has been an influx of requests and subsequent redirects to the destination sites. Normally I would be saying "WooHoo!" but the influx appears to be too consistent and from varying IPs (but in batches) and synchronous requests for differing urls. There are only a set of valid redirect urls BUT the influx is only hitting those specified urls (i.e. does not appear to be brute force attack). The urls are publically available but could only be sourced from either internal staff or from scanning from codes in a published magazine. No codes have been given out internally.
The majority of the user agents from the requests are basically coming from, apparently, iPhones and the majority of IPs are local which adds to the mystery (will show sample logged requests and stats). To mitigate the influx, we first implemented an ip blocking rule (on a code level) to add the ip to a block list if 3 attempts came in under 90 seconds (pulled that rule out of hat :oP) and we started to catch some. If blocked, we basically terminated session. But this rule could have affected legitimate users (as it affected internal staff...working on white list but not done yet) so we decided on another tactic, interstitial.
We implemented a landing page instead of a redirect where the user needs to interact and click a button to continue. We still had ip blocking rules in place for abuses. So if legit user came through, they just need to click button to continue. If the "visitor" was on the block list, we implemented a captcha routine to see if they were legit in their intention to go on (not a great user experience admittedly).
I also implemented robots.txt with deny all. I even placed a hidden link in the landing page to see if was a crawler but so far, I haven't tracked any traffic through it.
My tech partner had thought that it could be a glitch in actual apple devices/apps/browsers that cause it to reload saved scanned urls (bar code reader apps like RedLaser, i-nigma, etc...) but it just seems odd that this continues to happen.
So even after implementing the landing page, we're still getting the traffic that is landing on the page but not continuing/clicking through. That is why I think it's an attack, not for compromising the site but possible competitor to skew site statistics? The stats are important in the business but it is legit stats that count. We don't want to mess up our clients. It could also be scapers for content but with the user agents and the my trap not working, I don't know...could it actually be humans doing the clicking/scanning...lost.
Has anyone experienced anything like this before?
Some stats over a period of approximately 2.5 days...
Count HTTP_USER_AGENT
2924 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146
506 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
424 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146
401 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A523
202 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B141
180 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B144
157 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A403
138 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A405
119 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B142
119 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
111 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A551
91 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B143
88 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405
86 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405
86 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A523
69 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B208
56 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A525
54 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B329
47 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A403
46 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B144
45 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/536.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/20.0.1092.0 Safari/536.6
43 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B145
30 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A550
27 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B141
22 Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.1.1; SGH-I747M Build/JRO03L) AppleWebKit/537.22 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/25.0.1364.169 Mobile Safari/537.22
21 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; MAM3)
17 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)
16 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B176
13 Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B176
13 Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9800; en) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+
13 Qrafter/7.0 CFNetwork/609.1.4 Darwin/13.0.0
For these stats, I took out source IPs (for courtesy)but referenced which ones were same...just a small sample out approximate 6.5K requests
Count REMOTE_ADDR HTTP_USER_AGENT
5 A.B.C.D Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
13 A.B.C.D Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A523
2 A.B.C.D Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146
6 A.B.C.D Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146
1 B.C.D.E Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
3 B.C.D.E Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B145
10 B.C.D.E Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A406
15 C.D.E.F Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
31 C.D.E.F Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A405
20 C.D.E.F Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B141
2 D.E.F.G Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
6 D.E.F.G Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A403
2 D.E.F.G Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A523
18 E.F.G.H Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A550
49 E.F.G.H Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146
15 E.F.G.H Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
13 E.F.I.J Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
11 E.F.I.J Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10A403
11 E.F.I.J Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405
3 E.F.I.J Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B206
Sample of typical sequntial flood
URL HTTP_USER_AGENT REMOTE_ADDR LogDate
http://SITEURL/UoetZx Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:45 AM
http://SITEURL/2NedO0 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:45 AM
http://SITEURL/33hCWl Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:44 AM
http://SITEURL/e11LzG Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:44 AM
http://SITEURL/bQx5Bu Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:43 AM
http://SITEURL/BtrZ3m Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:43 AM
http://SITEURL/cxfmr1 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:43 AM
http://SITEURL/KztehQ Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:42 AM
http://SITEURL/O19sq3 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:42 AM
http://SITEURL/e6Dlwb Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:42 AM
http://SITEURL/GGQ4ZO Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:41 AM
http://SITEURL/jjr_rM Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 A.B.C.D 3/21/13 1:40 AM
http://SITEURL/yIzVel Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:40 AM
http://SITEURL/D8M0_Y Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:39 AM
http://SITEURL/-GqaX9 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:38 AM
http://SITEURL/9o0Bv8 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:37 AM
http://SITEURL/65_ce8 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:35 AM
http://SITEURL/33hCWl Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:34 AM
http://SITEURL/2NedO0 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:33 AM
http://SITEURL/UoetZx Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:33 AM
http://SITEURL/fknpPf Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:31 AM
http://SITEURL/tLEI3S Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:30 AM
http://SITEURL/MgOvvm Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:29 AM
http://SITEURL/MlJVua Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:28 AM
http://SITEURL/UcRIZj Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:27 AM
http://SITEURL/xZy-KP Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:26 AM
http://SITEURL/sXswln Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:25 AM
http://SITEURL/aQJrWx Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:24 AM
http://SITEURL/_sBrUw Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:23 AM
http://SITEURL/V7H9mK Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:22 AM
http://SITEURL/lchtkL Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:21 AM
http://SITEURL/WY7g1T Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:20 AM
http://SITEURL/bQx5Bu Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:19 AM
http://SITEURL/FznevZ Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/10B146 B.C.D.E 3/21/13 1:17 AM
