Our server has been attacked recently and looks something like the following in the logs:
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:43 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/ynm.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:43 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/71.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:44 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/wadre.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:44 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/vm.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:44 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/test.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:44 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/1q.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:45 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/1111.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:45 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/errors.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Feb 18 09:18:46 2019] [IP_ADDRESS] script '/var/www/q.php' not found or unable to stat
These attacks go on for hours sometimes and freezes the server.
How can one protect against this? (This is for an Amazon EC2 instance for reference)
Thanks!