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Getting multiple requests using the User Agent [Mozilla / 5.0]

When a request arrives at my Java servlet, I check its UserAgent:

protected void service(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response){ final String UA = request.getHeader("User-Agent"); eu.bitwalker.useragentutils.Browser browser = UserAgent.parseUserAgentString(UA).getBrowser();}

Most queries have a UA (User Agent) with information in it, for example. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/43.0.2357.130 Safari/537.36 .
Some requests (about 10%) have only Mozilla/5.0 or Mozilla/4.0 .

Does this mean they are bots?
Is it possible that something in front of the servlet will delete the corresponding part in UA?

I use the HaraldWalker User Agent Utilities to identify UAs and return Mozilla for these UAs.
But this online tool returns unknown .

Can someone explain?

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This seems to be some kind of bot, as this user agent is not used by any main browser.

You will need to filter your logs to retrieve only these entries, and check if they follow any obvious bot-like patterns. For example, you can see:

  • Request every X seconds for sure
  • So that they all happen at a specific time of day
  • So that everything happens within a very short period of time
  • So they request URLs in alphabetical order
  • So that all requests come from the same IP address or a limited range of IP addresses
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