Large number of 404 errors on URL for articles

Question

I checked the server logs and I found a large number of 404 errors. For example, this post https://historycollection.com/10-little-known-facts-abou-axis-prisoners-of-war-in-world-war-ii/ has some 404 URLs because something appended in the URL text like this one /-&e=MOAT.(something)

Example of URLs: https://historycollection.com/10-little-known-facts-abou-axis-prisoners-of-war-in-world-war-ii/-&e=MOAT.load

https://historycollection.com/16-horrifying-historical-locations-where-people-continue-to-live-in-the-united-states/4/-&e=MOAT.measurable

https://historycollection.com/10-little-known-facts-abou-axis-prisoners-of-war-in-world-war-ii/-&e=MOAT.inView2sec

https://historycollection.com/10-little-known-facts-abou-axis-prisoners-of-war-in-world-war-ii/-&e=MOAT.smallplayer

https://historycollection.com/10-little-known-facts-abou-axis-prisoners-of-war-in-world-war-ii/-&e=MOAT.viewable&tv=1

Most of them having referrers like this one https://historycollection.com/16-horrifying-historical-locations-where-people-continue-to-live-in-the-united-states/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Ads&utm_campaign=16-horrifying-historical-locations-where-people-continue-to-live-in-the-united-states-Automatic

And user agents like these ones:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; SM-N975U1 Build/QP1A.190711.020; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/85.0.4183.101 Mobile Safari/537.36 [FB_IAB/FB4A;FBAV/289.0.0.40.121;]

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 9; E6910 Build/4.601VZ.0191.a; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/72.0.3626.121 Mobile Safari/537.36 [FB_IAB/FB4A;FBAV/163.0.0.43.91;]

Does anybody have any idea about this?

Thanks,

Answer 1

These are probably bots probing for vulnerabilities.

Run the IP through something like AbuseIPDB and see what others have to say about it.