I noticed some slowing on my server earlier today and when I looked into the log files, in between legitimate site requests are blank requests like this:
108.212.75.60 – – [13/Sep/2012:16:56:28 -0400] "-" 408 – "-" "-"
108.212.75.60 – – [13/Sep/2012:16:56:28 -0400] "-" 408 – "-" "-"
108.212.75.60 – – [13/Sep/2012:16:56:28 -0400] "-" 408 – "-" "-"
108.212.75.60 – – [13/Sep/2012:16:56:28 -0400] "-" 408 – "-" "-"
Does anybody have any idea what these might be or how I can prevent them? They seem to be taking up a decent chunk of my server resources.
408 is because of timeout,
look for MaxClients and KeepAliveTimeout , 24 and 5 is nice (in order)
if this is a managed server, your admin should look for these.
if these requests are coming from a single ip or a bunch of ips, and if you think this is an attack on purpose, you may ban them via .htaccess.