Limiting repetitive file access

Hi, Recently, a 'user' attempted to access a restricted area of my site repetitively (spanning five hours) entering the same url repetitively [probably by script]. A massive log file was generated. I would like to ban such behavior by limiting the number of successive 'get's a user can do (say 4 attempts) before an appropriate action is taken.. As a temporary measure (until I can figure a better way) the url in question was disabled. What I'd like to do, on a per-file basis using $_SESSION, is a combination of ipaddress perhaps with a counter that records the number of times that file was accessed, and limit the number of successive 'get's that can be done before the file is no longer accessible. In a script that checks for bad words, I have used: <?php if ($_SESSION['text'] = "badwords"){ $_SESSION['attempt'] = 1; header("location: unwanted.php"); } [In the file unwanted.php I checked for $_SESSION['attempt'] = 1 and booted if the condition was met] However, using this approach I cannot augment this number without resorting to a file get/put schema. Is there a way around this? Is there a better approach? I've tried .htaccess but the user in question has a dynamic address. Any help appreciated. Tia, Andre