Strange search terms

[Paula]

My dashboard is showing some strange search terms that people have been entering, ie: ../../../../../../../../etc/pa ... and ../../../../../../../windows

I did ask Sitelock to check something for me, so am not sure if this is possibly related? Or do you have any other ideas?

Thanks.

[Paula]

I traced the IP address to a cloud hosting company. Then another lookup shows a sitelock appscan.

[Jim]

These are probably hacking attempts. They appear to be trying to access files or directories that are up several directory levels from where the search is normally looking. They won't be able to find anything that way since nothing is indexed for pages in the store (only product data is indexed) but if there is an automated script doing the searching it could use up considerable processor time and slow down every thing on that server. You might talk to your host about blocking access to the IP (and possibly entire blocks of IPs) that are attacking the site. I saw news articles related to greatly increased hacking attempts recently from China, Iran and a few other countries so blocking the IPs from those countries could be helpful.

[Paula]

Thanks for the info. It appears to be Sitelock doing this. Since I had asked them to check something for me a few days ago, this makes perfect sense.