Issue "VirusTotal Website Check" – too many requests for free API key, but why?

[King555]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS x64

Plesk version and microupdate number

Plesk Obsidian 18.0.46 web admin edition

I use the Plesk extension "VirusTotal Website Check". I have 16 domains which are scanned one time per day. I thought 16 domains mean 16 requests per day, which is within the range for the free API key (500 requests per day).

Today I got an e-mail from VirusTotal, telling me that my key has been disabled because of too many requests. Maybe only for the rest of the month, I don't know. I use this extension since many years and never had problems.

When I view my account at the VirusTotal website, I can see that I make between 1,000 and 1,200 requests per day. But why? Is this normal?

 

[ChristophRo]

This extension does send over all potential malicious files (.php, .js, .css and more) of a website to VirusTotal, so you'll get many requests per site and not just one

 

[King555]

Thanks, that explains a lot. Meanwhile I found out that the number of requests slightly increased after I added two new subdomains almost a month ago. I guess the limit was almost reached every day and month during the last years and now it's exceeded.

I will disable the scanning for unimportant domains now, maybe this will not exceed the limit in the future and I can still use this extension.

 

[King555]

I think that VirusTotal ignored the limits during the last years. Because currently even only a small amount of my sites generates the "quota exceeded" error message (there were more enabled domains for the last years, when it worked). I now enabled the extension for only two of 16 sites and hope that this will not exceed 500 requests per day. But if it still does, the extension is now useless for me, unfortunately. This is the quota for the free (my) VT account:

Request rate	4 lookups / min
Daily quota	500 lookups / day
Monthly quota	15.50 K lookups / month

 

[mendip_discovery]

I have only in the past few days started to get messages from Virus total complaining about overuse. Maybe there has been a policy change or a software update. Because looking at the past 30 days I was regularly hitting 1224, then since the change, it's dropped to 500. 29 Aug 1224, 30 Aug was 816, 31 Aug 500

 

[King555]

Thanks for your feedback. It's exactly like in my case.

Maybe there has been a policy change or a software update

Yes, this seems to be the only explanation.