Hacked computers spamming apache server log

If you find the following in the error.log of an apache webserver:

… [error] [client XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): …

You can be sure that in most cases it is a computer, largely even running a webserver and many other services, with no firewall, lacking security precautions, xampp and phpmyadmin open to everybody, empty passwords, etc. sometimes they have all of these features at once. I have not checked for viruses but I expect most of them to even be infected or at least hacked and working for someone else than they ought to.

It is most likely that they send the request to your web server without the owner knowing about this. But one thing is for certain:

  1. It causes traffic
  2. Costs energy
  3. Spams your logs
  4. Etc. etc.

And all this because the computer administrator/owner has not made an effort to secure the computer at a minimum.
Go to your apache log directory an check if the same is happening to you using the following commands:

less error.log | grep RFC2616 | awk ‚{print $8}‘ | sort | uniq
less error.log | grep RFC2616 | awk ‚{printf(„%s %s %s\n“, $3, $4, $8)}‘

Further reading:

mod_mime_magic: invalid type 0 in mconvert().

If the error „mod_mime_magic: invalid type 0 in mconvert()“ appears in your HTTP-Server e.g. apache log, it’s most probably a faulty mime-magic configuration. Do the following:

tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

Go to another console

sudo apache2ctl restart

Look at the errors uncomment the lines causing the Problems in

/usr/share/file/magic.mime

with your favorite editor. Repeat »apache2ctl restart« and watch the log again until tail does not show any more errors of this kind.

Astrologie ist Unsinn

Je mehr ich in scienceblogs.de lese, desto besser gefällt mir die Sache. Besonders der Beitrag in Astrodicticum Simplex mit dem Titel „Astrologie ist Unsinn“ hat mir sehr zugesagt.

In absteigender Reihenfolge der Stärke der Kräfte gibt es vier Grundkräfte: Starke Kernkraft, Elektromagnetische Kraft, Schwache Kernkraft und Gravitationskraft. Wem die physikalischen Grundlagen nicht bekannt sind, der möge den CRE-Podcast Mikrokosmos, Makrokosmos herunterladen und hören. Mir erschließt es sich nicht,  dass ein Tonnenschwerer Asynchron-Motor, welcher neben dem Menschen tatsächlich hier auf der Erde steht und mit Helium oder Wasserstoff zum Supraleiter gemacht wird (außerdem im Gigawatt-Bereich Strom erzeugt), weniger Einfluss hat als Pluto der nicht einmal ein wirklicher Planet ist.

Selbst das Glas Wasser neben Dir oder in Deiner Hand hat mehr Einfluss auf Dich als ein weit entfernter Himmelskörper.

TYPO3 4.3 deprecated methods

Upgrading to TYPO3 4.3 causes typo3 to write every call to a deprecated method to a file called deprecation_XXXXXXXXXX.log in the typo3conf folder. This kind of sucks and the file gets quite long. I found that main cause for this annoying behaviour are two function calls from extensions: »makeInstanceClassName« and »GPvar«. Either you upgrade all your extensions hoping the upgrade fixes the Problem or just perform the following in your ext folder. Make sure you backup all your extensions before you just copy paste!

grep -rl makeInstanceClassName * | grep ‚\.php$‘ | grep -v ‚/\.svn/‘ | xargs sed -i -e „s/makeInstanceClassName/makeInstance/g“
grep -rl GPvar * | grep ‚\.php$‘ | grep -v ‚/\.svn/‘ | xargs sed -i -e „s/GPvar/_GP/g“

If you want to make sure not to break anything just dry run the following two lines and read the output before you perform the two lines mentioned above:

grep -r makeInstanceClassName * | grep ‚\.php$‘ | grep -v ‚/\.svn/‘
grep -r GPvar * | grep ‚\.php$‘ | grep -v ‚/\.svn/‘