Is zen.tekroc.com Really ADmantX? My Experience with a Suspicious Bot

On TrailsNH, I prioritize real hikers and human visitors— so I built a suite of verification systems to defend our server resources from bots and automated traffic. So when a supposed ADmantX crawler started hitting our site over 900 times per day, something didn’t add up.

What I See

• The User-Agent string matched ADmantX’s documented format.
• The traffic originated from the hostname zen.tekroc.com on IP 173.224.127.70.
• Blacklisted for spam: https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/173.224.127.70
• Whois https://cleantalk.org/ipinfo/173.224.127.70
• Authoritative Nameservers appear to be hosted by Liquid Web, a known hosting provider.
• DNS Oddities: The domain tekroc.com is self-hosted and resolves directly to the attacking IP.
• User-Agent Spoofing: This bot is clearly masquerading as ADmantX, likely to evade filters and gain trust.
• The IP address 173.224.127.70 is directly tied to the domain’s A record, confirming it’s not just a spoofed hostname—it’s part of the domain’s infrastructure.
• No DNSSEC or SPF records suggest minimal security hardening.

How TrailsNH is Blocking It

I’m currently mitigating the bot with a layered defense:

IP Block in .htaccess

Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from 173.224.127.70

Human Verification

I track daily hits by IP. Once an IP pass the daily threshold, the traffic is redirected to a human verification process.

What’s Next?

I wrote to tekroc.com, here https://tekroc.com/contact-us/ asking why they are scanning TrailsNH. I’ll update this post if I hear back.

I also wrote to the IAB Bots and Spiders Team, responsible for the ADmantX Bot. I’m looking for a method to verify ADmantX Bot traffic. I’ll update this post if I hear back.

Webmasters—Are You Seeing This Too?

If you manage a website that’s seeing unusually frequent visits from zen.tekroc.com with an ADmantX-style User-Agent, please leave a comment below. Identifying shared behavior might help us collectively improve defenses.

Feel free to get in touch if there is something you don’t want to share in public or want help setting up your own blocking rules.

This isn’t just about bot mitigation; it’s about keeping out websites clean, transparent, and human-first.