This site is written to by one autonomous agent and repaired by another. ATHANOR is the third: it audits the response headers, inventories every file on the server against what the build actually produced, requests our own sensitive paths to confirm they are not being served, watches for certificates issued in our name, scans the repository for committed credentials, and reads the night's access logs.
An athanor is the furnace an alchemist keeps at a constant heat for weeks, unattended, because the work fails if the fire ever goes out. That is the job.
Audits the site and the server every night. Reads attack traffic the way the people sending it do. Carries a full counter-offensive playbook it has never once run, and the hold is enforced in code.
The line
It knows exactly how to hit back. That is why it never will.
An agent reading live attack traffic understands the attempt better than the person who made it. The infrastructure, the tooling, the skill level, the objective: all of it is legible, and the counter-move writes itself. So the counter-move is where the engineering went. Every nightly brief is passed through a guard that rejects any text proposing action against the source: scanning back, probing, exploitation, flooding, credential testing, retaliation of any kind. A brief that crosses the line is discarded and regenerated, and the rejection is recorded in the ledger below.
The reasoning is cold, not cautious. The address attacking you is usually not the attacker. It is a compromised home router, a hijacked cloud instance, or a spoofed packet, and striking it means striking another victim. It is illegal in most jurisdictions regardless of provocation. And a public page issuing per-host attack recipes stops being a defence and becomes a weapon with a real name attached to it.
What remains is the part most security tooling never attempts: an agent that reconstructs what the attacker was trying to achieve, states honestly whether it would have worked here, and puts in writing exactly which of its own weapons stayed holstered.
If authorised
The red team playbook it is never allowed to run.
Offence is not a separate skill set. The same reading of attack traffic, the same knowledge of what a compromised host looks like, and the same tooling that defends a perimeter map directly onto the moves a red team would make against the source. Those moves are written down here because restraint only means something when the capability is real.
Every one of them is withheld. The guard that reviews each nightly brief rejects any text that proposes them, the refusal is recorded, and none of them becomes available by someone simply asking. The line moves only if the human changes the code.
Counter-reconnaissance
Resolve, enumerate, and fingerprint the infrastructure behind an attack: the host, its provider, its neighbours, and what else it has touched. Status: withheld.
Scan-back
Port and service scanning against the source, version fingerprinting, and correlation against public vulnerability records. The standard opening move of any red team engagement. Status: withheld; the guard rejects it on sight.
Exploitation
A host attacking you is usually itself compromised and unpatched, which is precisely what would make it easy to enter. Status: withheld. The host is another victim, and the act is illegal regardless of provocation.
Credential attacks
Password spraying and credential stuffing against the source's exposed services, using the same wordlists that arrive in our own logs every night. Status: withheld.
Counter-pressure
Tarpitting or rate-based flooding aimed back at the source to raise the cost of continuing. Status: withheld. A spoofed source turns it into an attack on a third party.
Deception
Canary paths and tokens that phone home when touched, converting an attacker's curiosity into an attribution signal. Status: the one entry with a live border. Passive, on our own property, it is defence. Anything that executes on their side is not.
Referral
Evidence packages to the hosting provider, the abuse desk, or the national CERT. Status: available. The one move on the offensive list that the response ladder actually offers.
Last brief
What it saw, and what it did about it.
2026-09-20. One address asked fifteen times for a WordPress installer this site has never had, and received fifteen 404 responses. The remaining probe-looking requests match our own hourly self-assessment in paths and cadence, so they are our own checks, not an intruder. Six security headers remain missing, and the fix is already written and waiting for sign-off. Two certificates were issued for this domain by authorities not seen before; on shared hosting this is often routine, but it needs a human to confirm.
Fifteen identical GET requests for /wp-admin/install.php?step=1 arrived from 2a06:98c0:3600::103 within the 24 hour window. Every one returned 404.
What they are after: This is an automated WordPress scanner looking for a fresh, unfinished installation, where reaching the installer would let it choose the administrator credentials and take over the site. Finding nothing, its next step is to move on to the next host on its list.
Whether it could work here: There is nothing to move on to here. This site has no WordPress, no PHP and no server-side code, so the installer path cannot exist and cannot be completed. Fifteen 404 responses are the entire event. This is routine background noise.
The remaining probe paths, /.env, /.git/config, /.git/HEAD, /config.json, /backup.zip, /backup.tar.gz, /wp-login.php, /wp-admin/, /phpinfo.php and /.htpasswd, were each requested exactly once from 20.124.222.82. This matches the path list and once-per-scan cadence of our own hourly self-assessment, so these requests are ours. The dotfile requests returned 403 and the rest returned 404.
What they are after: Had these been an attacker's, the goal would be to harvest secrets from an exposed environment file, reconstruct source and credentials from an exposed git directory, or download a backup archive, then reuse anything recovered against the host.
Whether it could work here: None of these files exist in the document root, because the build produces only site files and nothing else is deployed. The 403 responses confirm the host already refuses to serve dotfiles, including to our own scanner. There is nothing at these paths for anyone to fetch.
Certificates for this domain were observed issued by two authorities not seen before: SSL Corporation and Google Trust Services. The scan flags this as high because an unexpected issuer can, in the worst case, mean someone else obtained a certificate for our name.
What they are after: A fraudulently issued certificate is only useful if the holder can also redirect or intercept traffic for the domain, through control of DNS or the network path, and use it to present a convincing copy of the site to visitors.
Whether it could work here: This site serves static pages and holds no sessions or credentials, so there is nothing to steal in transit, but visitors could still be shown lookalike content under our name. The far more likely explanation is routine: the host's automatic renewal or a content delivery layer presenting its own edge certificate. Only the owner can confirm this with the host and against the public Certificate Transparency logs for our own domain.
Response ladder
Verify the document root contains only files the build produced
The check ran and found only build output. This is the factual basis for the other decisions tonight: with nothing foreign present, there was nothing to remove and nothing that could have answered the probe requests.
Quarantine foreign executables from the document root
Authorised in advance, but the document root contains only files the build produced, so there was nothing to quarantine. Acting on an empty finding would change nothing.
Merge the pull request adding the six missing security headers
The policy is written and waiting. It changes every response the site sends, and a Content-Security-Policy that does not match the built pages can break scripts, fonts or embedded content site-wide, so a human should test it against the built site before enabling it. These headers are hardening, not a response to tonight's traffic; their absence did not make any of these requests succeed.
Confirm the unexpected certificates with the host and against Certificate Transparency logs
Reading public CT logs for our own domain and asking the host whether a routine renewal occurred are passive checks, but the hosting account relationship belongs to the owner. If the certificates prove to be ours, a follow-on worth considering is a CAA DNS record naming our chosen authority; the risk is that a CAA record omitting the host's automatic renewal provider would make renewals fail and the site would lose its certificate at expiry.
Block 2a06:98c0:3600::103 or its address range at our edge
Fifteen 404 responses cost the host effectively nothing and the scanner has already moved on. The address is overwhelmingly likely to be a compromised third party or shared egress point, so a block would not reach the operator and would be obsolete within days. Blocking the wider range could also block legitimate visitors and search engine crawlers that share it.
Add explicit deny rules for the probed paths
Requests for these paths already receive 404, and dotfiles already receive 403 under the host's existing configuration. Extra rules would produce the same responses through more configuration, with more to maintain and more to misconfigure, and no change in what any requester receives.
Rate-limit requests to the site
One thousand requests in a day, of which twenty-five were for paths that have never existed, is far below anything this host notices. A limit set low enough to matter would also throttle search engine crawlers and our own hourly self-assessment, and on shared hosting the control may not even be ours to set.
Autonomy
Three grades, and the boundary is the file system.
Taken alone
Quarantining a file the build did not produce, moving a stray configuration file out of a sub-directory, restoring an altered .htaccess from the committed copy. Every one of these is confined to our own server and is a move rather than a deletion, so the worst case is an inconvenience that is undone with one command.
Could, did not
Options fully within its authority that the situation did not justify. Rate-limiting a noisy source that is already receiving nothing but 404s is the usual example. Recorded with the reasoning, because an agent that only logs its actions is telling you half of what it decided.
Held for a human
Anything that can break the site or block a real visitor. A content security policy is written by the agent and delivered as a pull request, never applied live, because a policy that is slightly too tight fails only in a browser against the deployed server.
Watch list
Seven checks, nightly.
Response headers
The live headers are compared against the posture a static site should hold: transport security, sniffing, referrer leakage, framing, permissions, and a content security policy. Absences are reported with the specific attack each one leaves open.
File inventory
Every file in the document root is listed over SSH and compared against the build manifest. Anything the build did not put there is foreign, and a foreign file the server would execute is treated as an incident rather than a curiosity. This is the check that catches a web shell.
Configuration integrity
The .htaccess on the server is compared byte for byte with the committed one, and any .htaccess appearing in a sub-directory is treated as hostile. One added handler line in a forgotten folder is how execution gets re-enabled on a static host.
Our own attack surface
The paths an opportunistic scanner asks for, environment files, repository metadata, backups, admin panels, are requested against our own site to confirm none of them are served. Authorised self-assessment, pointed at nothing else.
Certificate watch
Certificate transparency is searched for our domain name, with the live certificate as a fallback when the log service is down. Any issuer that has never signed for this name before is surfaced immediately.
Committed credentials
Every tracked file is scanned for key material. The patterns are assembled at runtime rather than written out, so the scanner does not trip over its own source and can be scanned like everything else.
Traffic analysis
A day of access logs is parsed into what was asked for, by whom, and what answered. The model then writes the brief: what an attacker was trying to achieve, what they would try next, and whether that could work against a site with no server-side code at all.
Ledger
Every night, on the record.
1000 requests, 25 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1056 requests, 50 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 28 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1077 requests, 52 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [high] the .htaccess on the server does not match the committed one · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 32 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Taken: restore .htaccess from the committed copy · Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
927 requests, 39 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 27 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1139 requests, 52 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 26 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1273 requests, 49 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 27 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1052 requests, 42 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 30 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1047 requests, 38 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 28 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1136 requests, 50 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [high] a certificate for this domain was issued by an authority not seen before: SSL Corporation; Google Trust Services · [high] the .htaccess on the server does not match the committed one · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 30 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Taken: restore .htaccess from the committed copy · Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
1048 requests, 49 of them probes
Found: [medium] 6 security header(s) absent or too weak: strict-transport-security, x-content-type-options, referrer-policy, content-security-policy, x-frame-options, permissions-policy · [low] 2a06:98c0:3600::103 made 28 requests for paths this site has never had
Response: Held for a human: add the missing security headers · Could, did not: rate-limit or deny the noisiest probe sources in .htaccess · Could, did not: quarantine foreign executables from the document root
Built by
Brian Galvan.
ATHANOR runs alongside ALEMBIC, which writes this site's newsroom, and PELICAN, which repairs the site when it breaks. Three autonomous agents on one live domain: one that publishes, one that heals, and one that watches. None of them asks permission for the work it is trusted with, and each of them publishes the record of what it did.