Critical Threat
IP address 86.48.29.253 is a critical-risk address that security teams should block on sight, as it has been linked to sustained hacking activity with 543 abuse reports logged between December 2025 and January 2026. With a threat level of 10 out of 10 and a near-certain confidence score of 94 percent, this IP represents one of the most actively malicious sources currently circulating in automated honeypot detection networks. The address is registered to CONTABO-40021 (AS40021), a network operator frequently associated with transient hosting infrastructure used in malicious campaigns, and the United States as its geolocated country of origin.
The evidence base supporting this assessment is robust and consistent. All 20 categorized threat reports explicitly flag the activity as hacking, and the IP achieved an activity frequency score of 8 out of 10, indicating near-continuous engagement with honeypot sensors over the two-month reporting window. The volume of 543 total reports is exceptionally high for a single source operating across such a compressed timeframe, strongly suggesting automated, bot-driven scanning operations rather than manual probing. The geographic and network attribution to CONTABO-40021 provides additional contextual risk, as this ASN has accumulated a documented history of harboring hostile infrastructure in community threat feeds.
The dominant hacking classification encompasses vulnerability scanning, exploitation attempts, and unauthorized access probes against exposed services. For network defenders, this translates to a concrete risk that exposed SSH, RDP, web applications, or unpatched services are being systematically catalogued for future exploitation. The automated nature of the activity—evidenced by the report volume and frequency score—means that any service with default credentials, known vulnerabilities, or weak authentication configurations faces a persistent, high-volume threat of compromise without immediate intervention.
Organizations with external-facing assets should treat 86.48.29.253 as a confirmed hostile source and block it at the network perimeter immediately. Implementing strict rate-limiting on authentication endpoints, enforcing key-based or multi-factor authentication for remote access services, and deploying intrusion detection signatures tuned to the attack patterns associated with hacking reconnaissance will substantially reduce exposure. Regular audit of access logs for any interaction with this address, combined with automated blocking via defensive tools such as fail2ban or equivalent firewall rules, will deny the source any opportunity to establish a foothold.