Periodically I check out the Apache error and access logs in order to find things that I can fix or improve with a little work. Today I noticed a few errors for bad URLs coming from unfamiliar IP addresses. The error I got is:

(36)File name too long: [client xx.xx.xx.xx:xxxxx] AH00036: access to ….

Looking at the filename, it is way too long but it is also very peculiar. It starts off with a valid WordPress folder name but appends a long string of folder names where the folder names are prefixed with an underscore and suffixed with a comma. I checked this against the actual folders and it matches existing paths in my WordPress instance. The garbled path ends in an actual file name. To make it even weirder, this garbled path name has a plus sign followed by another garbled path name, multiple times. All together it’s about 800 characters long. WTF?… Continue reading “Gems from the error logs…” →