Joe Wein
Fighting spam and scams
on the Internet

Home / Blog / About us
Spam
419/Nigeria
Online fraud
jwSpamSpy
Contact

Email Spam Filter:
 jwSpamSpy
Try it for free!

Google
 

"File does not exist: .../_vti_bin .../MSOffice and how to fix it

Problem: In your Apache error.log file for your website you see unexpected 404 errors for files that you never meant to exist on your site:

[Thu Nov 22 02:24:41 2007] [error] [client 123.231.132.213] File does not exist: /var/www/www.yourwebsite.com/_vti_bin
[Thu Nov 22 02:24:41 2007] [error] [client 123.231.132.213] File does not exist: /var/www/www.yourwebsite.com/MSOffice

In your access.log you'll see corresponding entries:

123.231.132.213 - - [22/Nov/2007:02:24:41 +0000] "GET /_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?UL=1&ACT=4&BUILD=6551&STRMVER=4&CAPREQ=0 HTTP/1.1" 404 217 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
123.231.132.213 - - [22/Nov/2007:02:24:41 +0000] "GET /MSOffice/cltreq.asp?UL=1&ACT=4&BUILD=6551&STRMVER=4&CAPREQ=0 HTTP/1.1" 404 217 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
D

Explanation:
The culprit is the browser listed in the access log, Microsoft Internet Explorer. If Microsoft Office is installed and IE has the discussion bar enabled, which gives the visitors a "discuss this" button then IE will try to determine if the server is IIS which support proprietary extensions. Doing this litters your error.log and access.log with error messages. The discussion bar can be enabled using "View > Explorer Bar > Discuss".

Solution:

You can set up a redirect rule in the VirtualHost of your Apache configuration file for your domain to redirect requests for those non-existent files or folders either to an existing tiny file or, if you're so inclined, redirect them away from your site altogether, for example back to Microsoft which came up with these bogus request. Either approach will keep your error and access logs tidy. 

  <Directory /var/www/www.yourwebsite.com>
    ...
    Redirect permanent /_vti_bin/owssvr.dll http://www.yourwebsite.com/blank.htm
    Redirect permanent /MSOffice/cltreq.asp http://www.yourwebsite.com/blank.htm
  </Directory>
or 
  <Directory /var/www/www.yourwebsite.com>
    ...
    Redirect permanent /_vti_bin http://www.microsoft.com/_vti_bin
    Redirect permanent /MSOffice http://www.microsoft.com/MSOffice
  </Directory>