The NGINX access.log of my VPS is showing a curiosity.

Instead of a simple request like this…

"GET / HTTP/1.1"

…regular requests are coming in that look like this

"\x03\x00\x00\x13\x0E\xE0\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x08\x00\x03\x00\x00\x00"

Is this some kind of hack attempt?

Here’s an example of a full line from the log…

15.204.204.182 - - [24/Apr/2024:15:59:47 +0000] "\x03\x00\x00\x13\x0E\xE0\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x08\x00\x03\x00\x00\x00" 400 166 "-" "-"

EDIT: For what it might be worth, most of these requests come in singularly, from different IP addresses. Once (that I’ve noticed) repeated attempts came in quickly from one specific IP.