How to Report Abusive IP Addresses: Evidence, Categories and Triage
Good abuse reports make blocklists more accurate. Here is what to include before submitting an IP address.
Accurate abuse reports make IP intelligence more useful. A report with a timestamp, category, and evidence is far more valuable than a bare IP address. It helps other defenders understand whether the activity was brute force, scanning, spam, phishing, malware, or a web attack.
What to include
- IP address and timestamp with timezone.
- Targeted service or URL path.
- Attack category.
- Relevant log lines with sensitive values removed.
- Frequency, such as repeated attempts in a short window.
Choose the right category
Use brute force for repeated login attempts, scanning for broad probing, web attack for exploit paths or suspicious payloads, spam for mail abuse, phishing for credential theft infrastructure, and malware for callbacks.
Protect sensitive data
Remove session tokens, passwords, private customer data, and internal hostnames before publishing evidence. The goal is to prove abuse without exposing your own environment.
Why repeated reports matter
A single event may be noise. Repeated reports from multiple sources increase confidence. IPToBlock tracks report counts and last reported time so defenders can prioritize current, repeated abuse.
Related IPToBlock resources
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