IP Threat Report
98.159.39.174
ABUSE.MOM — BEHAVE OR GET EXPOSED
Geolocation & Classification
Detection Signatures
| Signature | Description | Points | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 404 ratio >= 60% | Majority of requests returned 404 — enumeration | +25 | |
| Burst 10/10s | Abnormally fast request rate — automated scanning | +35 | |
| Danger medium hits: 18 | Medium-risk: admin panels, config files | +60 | |
| Danger strong hits: 12 | High-risk paths: shells, RCE vectors, exploits | +100 | |
| Foreign referer | Referer from unrelated external domain | +10 | |
| UA bot: Go-http-client | Known bot/crawler User-Agent detected | +40 |
Observed Activity
Reconstructed HTTP requests from server access logs. Target domains redacted for security.
* Typical request patterns for detected signatures. Actual target domains are redacted.
Timeline
Network Provider
Recommendations
Actions taken & recommended
- IP 98.159.39.174 is blocked at application level (HTTP 403)
- Consider blocking at firewall level (iptables/CSF) to reduce server load
- Other malicious IPs detected in the same /24 subnet — consider blocking 98.159.39.0/24
- Report abuse to the network provider via their abuse contact
- Ensure sensitive files (.env, .git, backups) are not accessible from the web
🔎 Directory Scan Defense
IP 98.159.39.174 is enumerating directories. Configure fail2ban apache-404 jail after 10+ 404 errors. Disable directory listings. Normalize all 404 responses.
🌊 Flood / DDoS Mitigation
Implement limit_req_zone in nginx. Deploy CDN with DDoS protection. Configure SYN cookies and connection tracking to throttle 98.159.39.174.
🤖 Bot Detection
Address UA spoofing from 98.159.39.174: maintain blocklist of known malicious UA strings, require consistent UA across sessions, implement TLS fingerprinting.
Neighbors in 98.159.39.0/24
Other blocked IPs from the same /24 subnet — indicates systematic abuse from this network range.
Blacklist Status (DNSBL)
This IP was checked against major DNS-based blacklists used by mail servers and firewalls worldwide.
Checked: Spamhaus, SpamCop, Barracuda, SORBS, CBL, UCEProtect. Results may change over time.
Threat Analysis
98.159.39.174 has been assigned a threat score of 270/100 (Critical). With this rating, the IP falls into the critical severity bracket — among the most dangerous addresses in our monitoring database.
The following attack categories were identified:
📊 Threat Analysis
IP address 98.159.39.174 has been traced to George Town, KY, operating on the network of GSL Networks Pty LTD. Our threat detection systems have flagged this address based on observed malicious behavior patterns. During its 2-day observation window, we recorded 46 hostile requests from this IP — roughly 23 per day on average. This address belongs to a datacenter or cloud hosting provider. Hosting IPs are frequently leveraged by threat actors who rent cheap VPS instances specifically for conducting attacks. With 3 different attack patterns detected, this IP exhibits behavior characteristic of advanced automated scanning frameworks. At 270/100, this is an extremely high-risk address. All traffic should be considered hostile.
This IP belongs to a hosting or data center provider. Malicious traffic from hosting infrastructure often originates from compromised VPS instances, rented servers used for scanning campaigns, or abused free-tier cloud accounts. Hosting providers typically respond to abuse reports within 24-72 hours.
Related Threats
Security Intelligence
💡 DDoS Mitigation Approaches
Distributed denial of service attacks overwhelm infrastructure with traffic volume. Effective mitigation combines always-on traffic scrubbing, anycast network distribution, rate limiting, and the ability to quickly scale absorption capacity during attacks.
💡 Credential Stuffing at Scale
Credential stuffing uses stolen username-password pairs from data breaches to attempt logins across many websites. Since users frequently reuse passwords, these automated attacks achieve success rates of 0.1-2%, which translates to thousands of compromised accounts from millions of attempts.