Squid Access Log Filtering Guide

Quick reference for analyzing blocked domains in Squid access logs.

Log Location

# After awf execution, logs are preserved at:
/tmp/squid-logs-<timestamp>/access.log

# Find the latest log directory
ls -lt /tmp/squid-logs-* | head -1

Essential Filters

1. Show Only Blocked Requests

sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log

Output format:

1761332530.123 172.30.0.20:35274 malicious.com:443 0.0.0.0:0 1.1 CONNECT 403 TCP_DENIED:HIER_NONE malicious.com:443 "curl/7.81.0"

2. Extract Blocked Domain Names Only

sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | awk '{print \$3}' | sort | uniq

Output:

malicious.com:443
untrusted-api.example.org:443

3. Count Blocked Requests Per Domain

sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | awk '{print \$3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

Output:

25 malicious.com:443
10 untrusted-api.example.org:443
3 blocked-cdn.net:443

4. Show Blocked Requests with Timestamps

sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | awk '{print strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", \$1), \$3}'

Output:

2025-10-24 14:32:15 malicious.com:443
2025-10-24 14:32:20 untrusted-api.example.org:443

5. Exclude Health Check Noise

sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | grep -v "::1.*NONE_NONE"

Common Patterns

Identify Source of Blocked Request

# Show client IP and domain for blocked requests
sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | awk '{print "Client:", \$2, "→ Blocked:", \$3}'

Output:

Client: 172.30.0.20:35274 → Blocked: malicious.com:443
Client: 172.30.0.2:54610 → Blocked: untrusted-api.example.org:443

Filter by Time Range

# Show blocked requests in last 5 minutes of log
sudo awk -v cutoff=$(date -d '5 minutes ago' +%s) '\$1 > cutoff && /TCP_DENIED/' /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log

Show User-Agent for Blocked Requests

# Extract User-Agent (last field in quotes)
sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | sed 's/.*"\(.*\)"/\1/'

Decision Codes Reference

Code	Meaning	Action
TCP_DENIED:HIER_NONE	Domain not in allowlist	BLOCKED ❌
TCP_TUNNEL:HIER_DIRECT	Domain allowed, tunnel established	ALLOWED ✅
NONE_NONE:HIER_NONE	Connection error (no HTTP headers)	N/A (health checks)

Quick Diagnostics

1. "Why was my command blocked?"

# Find all denied domains from last run
sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" $(ls -t /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | head -1) | awk '{print \$3}' | sort -u

2. "Which domains should I add to allowlist?"

# Show most frequently blocked domains
sudo grep "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | awk '{print \$3}' | sed 's/:443$//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10

3. "Is my allowlist working?"

# Compare allowed vs blocked counts
echo "Allowed: $(sudo grep -c "TCP_TUNNEL" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log)"
echo "Blocked: $(sudo grep -c "TCP_DENIED" /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log)"

Notes

• All commands require sudo because log files are owned by the proxy user from the container
• Use $(ls -t /tmp/squid-logs-*/access.log | head -1) to automatically target the latest log
• Timestamps are Unix epoch seconds (use date -d @<timestamp> to convert)
• Port :443 indicates HTTPS traffic (most common)
• Client IPs: 172.30.0.20 = agent container, 172.30.0.2 = spawned containers