Strange urls causing 404 server overload

  • Hi, my site is generating strange urls from actual posts but with long, query-like strings attached that lead nowhere and are giving me thousands of 404 errors and overloading my server. I just moved to Media Temple 5 days ago, and have used almost 20% of my monthly CPU. It looks like it’ll start costing me a fortune if I don’t find the root of the problem.

    I installed the 404 notifier plugin last night and have received over 600 404 notifications in my email inbox within 8-9 hours. They look like this:

    404 Report – a file not found error was registered on your site.

    404 URL: https:// pecuniarities. com/101-ways-to-save-money-in-your-everyday-life/function%20()%20%7B%20%20%20%20var%20c%20=%20%5B%5D;%20%20%20%20this.each(function%20(a)%20{var%20b%20=%20Object.toJSON(a);if%20(b%20!==%20undefined)%20{c.push(b);}});%20%20%20%20return

    Referred by: https://pecuniarities.com/101-ways-to-save-money-in-your-everyday-life/1123

    User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3

    ) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

    [I added the extra spaces before pecuniarities and .com to prevent it from linking and getting indexed by search engines.]

    It looks like my site may have been hacked, but I’ve searched my database (looked in the posts) for the urls, but haven’t found anything.

    Needless to say, I am getting desperate. Support says I don’t look like I’m at risk of going over my monthly allotted 1000 GPUs (sort of like CPUs I guess) but I usually have more traffic than I have been getting the last few days due to the move and weekend.

    Would appreciate any help I can get on this. Thanks in advance for your time.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • This appears repeatedly in your source. (outgoing address different for each link of course);

    onclick=”urchinTracker(‘/outgoing/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_house?referer=https://pecuniarities.com/101-ways-to-save-money-in-your-everyday-life/function%20

    I don’t know anything about urchinTracker, but is there some configuration that needs to be re-edited after changing servers?

    urchinTracker

    thats google’s stats thing.

    Thread Starter Hausfraulein

    (@penny_p)

    Do you think disabling my WP Google Analytics plugin would help?

    Thread Starter Hausfraulein

    (@penny_p)

    OK, didn’t work. I tried disabling WP GA and I’m still getting the 404 emails. (I’ve received over 1500 of these emails now.)

    >>OK, didn’t work. I tried disabling WP GA and I’m still getting the 404 emails. <<

    You have to remove the code from your theme files too.

    Thread Starter Hausfraulein

    (@penny_p)

    OK, I think I’ve got it fixed. I looked at the WP Google Analytics plugin settings and unchecked:

    Log searches as /search/{search}?referrer={referrer}
    Log outgoing links as /outgoing/{url}?referrer={referrer}

    I have had more hits on my posts but the 404 notifier emails have stopped (I used to get them whenever I had a page view). Keeping my fingers crossed that that was it.

    Thanks for the replies. I wouldn’t have figured out that it was GA causing it if it hadn’t been for you guys.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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