Apache log with long strings of Xs in GET request

Hi everybody,

I was looking at my apache2 log and I found GET requests as such:

Some ip - - [20/Jul/2007:09:50:48 +1000] "GET /login.htm?password=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX HTTP/1.1" 404 327

or (without a GET request)

Some ip - - [20/Jul/2007:09:50:33 +1000] "very long string of Xs" 414 375

There were several others requests with even longer strings of X. What was the person trying to achieve?

Many thanks,

Dave

They were hacking looking for buffer overflows, more that likely.

Ah thanks Neo, I shall go and research on buffer overflows.

When you see an IP address hacking like that, you might want to use ipchains (if on Linux) to block the offending IP.

Ah awesome! The webserver is running on redhat, so shouldn't be a problem. I use denyhosts to block ssh attempts but didn't know about ipchains.

Thanks again Neo!