directory harvesting thousands

Directory Harvesting Thousands

Probe messages are evidence of a dictionary attack (or "directory harvest attack" or "mx probe") in which the spammer sends probe messages to a large number of e-mail addresses (some of which may be guesses) and prunes out those that are rejected by the mx.
A Directory Harvest Attack (DHA) is when a spammer bombards a domain with thousands of generated email addresses in an attempt to collect valid email addresses from an organisation.
Web server logs are usually maintained in a special directory outside those of the website(s) handled by the server.