Okay, so I was looking at my web server logs to see how many people had looked at the Jude user's guide (see the previous entry), and I noticed an unusual number of 404 errors like this:
61.135.131.236 - - [01/Feb/2005:09:52:40 -0500] "HEAD /abcdefghijklmn.htm HTTP/1.1" 404 0
30 of these in the first two days of February. Another 15 from January 23rd through the end of the month. All are HEAD requests. No GETs or POSTs. And they all come from the 61.135.131 subnet, which is somewhere in China, according to whois.
I have no idea what this is about. But googling for abcdefghijklmn.htm brings up lots of site statistics showing that lots of sites are getting hit with this. It also brings up this blogger's musings about the same problem.
Google only finds one page that actually has that URL. Its a conspiracy site, however, so I won't bother linking to it.
Add a "l" to the end of the URL to make ".html" instead of ".htm" and Google brings up, and offers to translate, two Japanese sites. One has this url:
homepage3.nifty.com/alchemy/abcdefghijklmn.htm. The word "alchemy" interests me. The translation begins with the intriguing "Here is the door to the room of the secret which is hidden". But it degenerates from there into gibberish: "Being to be the feeling which includes the woman direction member element delicately".
I suppose we'll never know what this is about. Makes me feel kind of like I'm in a William Gibson novel, though.
Comments on (until the spammers find it) in case anyone knows something about this.
@__DavidFlanagan
I was just doing my own site stats and came across the same thing. I, too, am researching it, which is how I came upon your blog. Mysterious...
I also noticed it last month. I put a copy of my index page using that file name on my site to stop the error codes but now I have noticed that this page has received 49 hits this month. I sure would like an answer too.
I noticed this too on several of my clients (I manage a server with various virtual hosts).
The Ip-adresses issuing "HEAD /abcdefghijklmn.htm HTTP/1.1" range from 220.181.26.65 to 220.181.26.72,
and the client identifies itself as "sohu-search".
Those IP-addresses are from China. I suppose, they're are setting up a new search-engine and trying to fill it with data. However they should also ask for robots.txt and name their client "sohu-bot" or somethnig more self-explainig.
You may find ou more by googling for "sohu-search". or going directly to http://www.sohu.com/about/English/
[Following is an extract from my 19th Feb 2005 analog listing. The first failed file was asked for 4425 in a 24 hour period!]
Listing the top 1000 files by the number of failed requests, sorted by the number of failed requests.
#reqs: file
-----: ----
4425: /abcdefghijklmn.htm
9: /info/en/north_america/united_states/connecticut/localities.htm
7: /main/style.css
7: /main/localpin.js
7: /main/images/localpin_logo_239x100.gif
6: /info/tr/index/index.htm