Stop the Madness: Redirect those Ridiculous Favicon 404 Requests

For the last several months, I have been seeing an increasing number of 404 errors requesting “favicon.ico” appended onto various URLs:

https://perishablepress.com/press/favicon.ico
https://perishablepress.com/press/2007/06/12/favicon.ico
https://perishablepress.com/press/2007/09/25/absolute-horizontal-and-vertical-centering-via-css/favicon.ico
https://perishablepress.com/press/2007/08/01/temporary-site-redirect-for-visitors-during-site-updates/favicon.ico
https://perishablepress.com/press/2007/01/16/maximum-and-minimum-height-and-width-in-internet-explorer/favicon.ico

When these errors first began appearing in the logs several months ago, I didn’t think too much of it — “just another idiot who can’t find my site’s favicon..” As time went on, however, the frequency and variety of these misdirected requests continued to increase. A bit frustrating perhaps, but not serious enough to justify immediate action. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? The idiot might actually find the blasted thing? Wouldn’t that be nice..

But no, the 404 favicon errors just won’t go away. Last week, as I was digging through my site’s error logs, there were hundreds of these infamous favicon requests — line after line of moronic URL activity, scripted directory brachiation targeting the all-empowering favicon exploit. Give me a break. Finally, I just couldn’t deal with it any more and decided to put an end to the madness..

Pssst: it’s in the root directory

Fortunately, stopping this nonsense is relatively easy. My knee-jerk reaction was to simply block all requests for favicon.ico:

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
 RedirectMatch 403 favicon.ico
</IfModule>

..very effective; 29 characters and problem solved. I could even add this line to my 3G Blacklist, but I don’t want to prevent direct access to my real favicon, so an alternate strategy is required. Let’s try it again, this time invoking the mind-boggling powers of Apache’s mod_rewrite:

# REDIRECT FAVICONZ
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} favicon.ico [NC]
 RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.tld/favicon.ico [R=301,L] 
</ifmodule>

Ahh, much better. With this code placed in your site’s root blog’s subdirectory ¹ HTAccess file, all requests for your site’s favicon.ico file will be directed to the original location, as specified in the RewriteRule. First line: check for the proper Apache module (mod_rewrite); second line: match any request for favicon.ico (regardless of casing); third line: rewrite all matched requests as http://domain.tld/favicon.ico and declare the redirect as permanent (301); last line: close the module-check container.

I have been using this code for about a week now and have seen no further 404 errors for misdirected favicon requests. Filtering out the noise from my error and access logs makes it easier to identify more serious issues.

Finally, in case you were wondering about the identity of the ruthless favicon bandit, here you go:

<Limit GET POST PUT>
 order allow,deny
 allow from all
 deny from 65.60.102.254   "# favicon bandit zombie "
 deny from 76.175.130.100  "# favicon bandit zombie "
 deny from 80.219.216.247  "# favicon bandit zombie "
 deny from 163.192.21.42   "# favicon bandit zombie "
 deny from 203.123.182.138 "# favicon bandit zombie "
</LIMIT>

These are all coming from completely different hosts, however blocking them for the immediate future may provide some temporary relief against any other cracker nonsense (i.e., non-favicon exploits) executed through these zombie machines.

And that’s a wrap. If you are experiencing similar 404 favicon requests, I would be interested in hearing about them. As always, thank you for your generous attention :)

Footnote

• ¹ It has been discovered that the redirection method described in this article works only when placed in a subdirectory, such as would be the case for blogs installed in their own directory. When placed in the root directory, this code will create an infinite redirection loop. For more information, and to learn about a similar technique that works in all directories (including the root directory) check out my article, Redirect All Requests for a Nonexistent File to the Actual File.

Related posts:

1. Redirect All Requests for a Nonexistent File to the Actual File
2. Stop 404 Requests for Mobile Versions of Your Site
3. htaccess Redirect to Maintenance Page
4. Redirect All (Broken) Links from any Domain via HTAccess
5. htaccess Combo Pack: WordPress Permalinks and non-www Redirect

https://perishablepress.com/block-favicon-url-404-requests/

JavaScript - Page Redirection

What is Page Redirection ?

You might have encountered a situation where you clicked a URL to reach a page X but internally you were directed to another page Y. It happens due to page redirection. This concept is different from JavaScript Page Refresh.

There could be various reasons why you would like to redirect a user from the original page. We are listing down a few of the reasons −

• You did not like the name of your domain and you are moving to a new one. In such a scenario, you may want to direct all your visitors to the new site. Here you can maintain your old domain but put a single page with a page redirection such that all your old domain visitors can come to your new domain.
• You have built-up various pages based on browser versions or their names or may be based on different countries, then instead of using your server-side page redirection, you can use client-side page redirection to land your users on the appropriate page.
• The Search Engines may have already indexed your pages. But while moving to another domain, you would not like to lose your visitors coming through search engines. So you can use client-side page redirection. But keep in mind this should not be done to fool the search engine, it could lead your site to get banned.

How Page Re-direction Works ?

The implementations of Page-Redirection are as follows.

Example 1

It is quite simple to do a page redirect using JavaScript at client side. To redirect your site visitors to a new page, you just need to add a line in your head section as follows.

<html>
   <head>
      
      <script type="text/javascript">
         <!--
            function Redirect() {
               window.location="http://www.tutorialspoint.com";
            }
         //-->
      </script>
      
   </head>
   
   <body>
      <p>Click the following button, you will be redirected to home page.</p>
      
      <form>
         <input type="button" value="Redirect Me" onclick="Redirect();" />
      </form>
      
   </body>
</html>

Output

Example 2

You can show an appropriate message to your site visitors before redirecting them to a new page. This would need a bit time delay to load a new page. The following example shows how to implement the same. Here setTimeout() is a built-in JavaScript function which can be used to execute another function after a given time interval.

<html>
   <head>
   
      <script type="text/javascript">
         <!--
            function Redirect() {
               window.location="http://www.tutorialspoint.com";
            }
            
            document.write("You will be redirected to main page in 10 sec.");
            setTimeout('Redirect()', 10000);
         //-->
      </script>
      
   </head>
   
   <body>
   </body>
</html>

Output

You will be redirected to tutorialspoint.com main page in 10 seconds!

Example 3

The following example shows how to redirect your site visitors onto a different page based on their browsers.

<html>
   <head>
   
      <script type="text/javascript">
         <!--
            var browsername=navigator.appName;
            if( browsername == "Netscape" )
            {
               window.location="http://www.location.com/ns.htm";
            }
            else if ( browsername =="Microsoft Internet Explorer")
            {
               window.location="http://www.location.com/ie.htm";
            }
            else
            {
               window.location="http://www.location.com/other.htm";
            }
         //-->
      </script>
      
   </head>
   
   <body>
   </body>
</html>

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