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# What is a malicious request?


|| A malicious request is a message sent to your site or application with the aim of attacking it rather than using it normally: exploiting a vulnerability, stealing data, hijacking a service. Spotting and blocking it before it reaches your services is part of protecting your hosting.

## Reminder: what is a request?

Every time a visitor loads a page, logs in, or submits a form, their browser sends a "request" to your server, which responds. That's the normal back-and-forth of the web. **A malicious request travels the same channel, but with hostile intent.**

## What makes a request malicious

A request is malicious when it's designed to trigger unintended behavior. The main families:
* **Injections**: slipping code into a field (a form, a URL) to try to manipulate your database or server.
* **Cross-site scripting (XSS)**: inserting code that would then run in your other visitors' browsers.
* **Unauthorized access**: trying to reach files or areas that shouldn't be accessible.
* **Exploiting known vulnerabilities**: targeting a specific vulnerability in software that hasn't been updated.
* **Automated abuse**: hammering a login form or an API to force access or overwhelm the service.
The common thread: hijacking normal operation to extract access, data, or cause an outage.

## How they're spotted

A malicious request often has an unusual shape: characters or patterns that have no business being in a legitimate field, a suspicious target, or an abnormal volume. They're identified through known attack signatures and real-time behavior analysis.
In the interest of honesty: the line isn't always clear-cut. An unusual but legitimate request can be flagged by mistake (a "false positive"). Good protection strikes a balance between blocking what's harmful and letting normal traffic through.

## What Hodi does

Filtering these requests is part of the security included with your hosting:
* a web application firewall (WAF) analyzes requests and blocks those matching attack patterns, before they reach your services;
* our 24/7 monitoring watches for abnormal behavior and continuously adjusts the protection;
* security updates reduce the vulnerabilities these requests try to exploit.
Here again, the goal isn't to promise an unbeatable defense, but to significantly reduce the risk and react quickly.

## What does this mean for you?

Most of the filtering happens without any action on your part. Your best complementary ally: keeping your applications and extensions up to date, since many malicious requests only target vulnerabilities that have already been patched elsewhere.