Sounds like you’re taking the appropriate steps. The whois information of the domain should be able to get you in contact with the actual owner of the domain (the email is masked with a private one, but that should forward the email to them). Adding the vhost is probably the best option if you can’t get them to stop.
There are different ways to do what you need. You can do something like this.
Method 1: For those that don’t want/need a more customized method and just want a quick solution.
Make file /etc/nginx/conf.d/rejected-sites.conf:
# Custom config, not part of MiaB
server {
listen 80;
listen 443 ssl;
listen [::]:80;
listen [::]:443 ssl;
server_name theirdomain.com www.theirdomain.com; # use the domains that are not yours
return 444; # just close the connection; no point in generating certs for non-owned domains
# turn off access and error logging for the domains
access_log off;
error_log /dev/null; # no "off" functionality for error logging. Send to null
}
# To add more domains, simply put them in the server_name directive like the example. For instance:
# server_name theirdomain.com www.theirdomain.com anotherdomain.com www.anotherdomain.com;
# Alternatively, copy and paste the server block into this same file and change the domains
Change theirdomain.com and www.theirdomain.com to the right domains.
Now test Nginx config and reload if good.
~$ sudo nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
$ sudo systemctl reload nginx
Method 2: For those that want to tailor things a little more and let real visitors (like the domain owner) know why they’re hitting an error page.
# Custom config, not part of MiaB
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name theirdomain.com www.theirdomain.com; # use the domains that are not yours
root /home/user-data/www/rejected; # place 404.html file here. This can be the root for any rejected domains pointing to your IP
error_page 404 /404.html; # custom error page; helps real people understand you won't be serving content here and why
# this is used to not get a 403 forbidden error; we want the custom 404 page
location = / {
try_files /dontchange.html = 404;
}
location /404.html {
internal;
}
# allow robots.txt to be accessed without physically making the file
location = /robots.txt {
add_header Content-Type text/plain;
return 200 "User-agent: *\nDisallow: /\n";
}
# turn off access and error logging for theirdomain.com
access_log off;
error_log /dev/null; # no "off" functionality for error logging. Send to null
}
server { # when accessed through https
listen 443 ssl;
listen [::]:443 ssl;
server_name theirdomain.com www.theirdomain.com; # use the domains that are not yours
return 444; # just close the connection; no point in generating certs for non-owned domains
}
# To add more domains, simply put them in the server_name like the examples. For instance:
# server_name theirdomain.com www.theirdomain.com anotherdomain.com www.anotherdomain.com;
# Alternatively, copy and paste the server blocks into this same file and change the domains
Make file rejected-sites.conf and place into /etc/nginx/conf.d to not have to symlink from sites-available to sites-enabled.
Use a custom 404.html page if you want to tell people why a 404 is happening:
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>404</title>
<style>
body { text-align: center; padding: 150px; }
h1 { font-size: 25px; }
body { font: 16px Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #333; }
article { display: block; text-align: left; width: 650px; margin: 0 auto; }
a { color: #dc8100; text-decoration: none; }
a:hover { color: #333; text-decoration: none; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<article>
<h1>404 Page Not Found</h1>
<div>
<p>We don't own this site. If you're the owner, remember to change your DNS to your own IP address or to that of your hosting provider.</p>
</div>
</article>
</body>
</html>
Name this file 404.html and place into a new rejected directory in the www folder (/home/user-data/www/rejected)
For bots that ignore robots.txt files, put into the above Nginx server block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* ^Baiduspider) {
return 403;
}
(Just an example — I believe Baidu normally respects the robots.txt file). You might want to keep logs on to see which bots are not complying, grab those to disallow via Nginx, and then turn them back off later. You can use a different file to keep them separate from your own domains, like:
access_log /var/log/nginx/theirdomain.com.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/theirdomain.com.error.log;
Now test Nginx config and reload if good.
~$ sudo nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
$ sudo systemctl reload nginx
There are other ways of doing this too. Like simply not redirecting a non-existent vhost to your default host (with Nginx, it’s whatever vhost comes first). For instance, you can simply use server_name _; to not be accessible, which means that anything pointing to your IP won’t redirect to your default domain. With certain servers, I prefer access to my direct IP, so I didn’t include this option above. This method, however, would mean not having to manually add each domain to your conf file. So it’s the quickest/easiest, but it’s pretty rare that people point their purchased domains to someone else’s IP address.
For your particular situation, all requests to any of theirdomain's URLs or files (PDFs) will simply hit a 404 page (or 444 error). Nothing will be logged in your box’s logs.