Significant Threat
IP 178.83.200.3 is a high-risk address originating from Switzerland that has generated 173 abuse reports between February and May 2026, with automated honeypot sensors flagging it primarily for hacking activity including intrusion attempts and unauthorized access probing. With a threat level of 8 out of 10 and a 94 percent confidence score, this IP demonstrates sustained, high-frequency malicious behavior that warrants immediate blocking by operators running exposed services.
The 173 reports attributed to 178.83.200.3 represent significant automated detection volume over a four-month window, indicating persistent rather than opportunistic activity. All 20 recent threat-category reports specifically classify the activity as hacking, and the detection originated exclusively from automated honeypot sensors, suggesting structured reconnaissance rather than casual scanning. The observed attack patterns include malformed TCP protocol elements such as broken acknowledgment packets, which are consistent with stateful connection manipulation, protocol fuzzing, or firewall evasion techniques commonly employed during network intrusion campaigns. The IP routes through AS212238, operated by a private customer in Switzerland, providing no commercial or institutional attribution that might indicate a legitimate network.
The dominant hacking classification encompasses a range of intrusion methodologies, including vulnerability exploitation attempts, credential attacks, and protocol-level manipulation designed to compromise or enumerate exposed services. The TCP anomalies detected suggest the actor is testing networkstack implementations or attempting to establish stateful sessions for further exploitation, potentially preparing for data exfiltration or lateral movement within penetrated networks. An IP with this frequency of hostile connections poses concrete risk to any service accepting inbound traffic, particularly those with exposed SSH, RDP, or web-facing management interfaces.
Operators should implement immediate blocking or rate-limiting for traffic from 178.83.200.3 at the firewall or network edge, as the sustained report volume indicates ongoing hostile intent. Enforcing strong authentication on all remote access services, employing tools such as fail2ban to dynamically block repeat offenders, and maintaining up-to-date intrusion detection signatures will substantially reduce exposure. Continuous monitoring of connection logs for patterns matching the observed protocol anomalies will aid in early detection of follow-up attempts from this or associated source addresses.