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Blocking AI crawlers with Caddy (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Deckweiss@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was reading the reddit thread on Claude AI crawlers effectively DDOSing Linux Mint forums https://libreddit.lunar.icu/r/linux/comments/1ceco4f/claude_ai_name_and_shame/

and I wanted to block all ai crawlers from my selfhosted stuff.

I don't trust crawlers to respect the Robots.txt but you can get one here: https://darkvisitors.com/

Since I use Caddy as a Server, I generated a directive that blocks them based on their useragent. The content of the regex basically comes from darkvisitors.

Sidenote - there is a module for blocking crawlers as well, but it seemed overkill for me https://github.com/Xumeiquer/nobots

For anybody who is interested, here is the block_ai_crawlers.conf I wrote.

(blockAiCrawlers) {
  @blockAiCrawlers {
    header_regexp User-Agent "(?i)(Bytespider|CCBot|Diffbot|FacebookBot|Google-Extended|GPTBot|omgili|anthropic-ai|Claude-Web|ClaudeBot|cohere-ai)"
  }
  handle @blockAiCrawlers {
    abort
  }
}

# Usage:
# 1. Place this file next to your Caddyfile
# 2. Edit your Caddyfile as in the example below
#
# ```
# import block_ai_crawlers.conf
#
# www.mywebsite.com {
#   import blockAiCrawlers
#   reverse_proxy * localhost:3000
# }
# ```
top 19 comments
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[-] arisunz 66 points 6 months ago

I got meaner with them :3c

[-] JustARegularNerd@aussie.zone 19 points 6 months ago

I just want you to know that was an amazing read, was actually thinking "It gets worse? Oh it does. Oh, IT GETS EVEN WORSE?"

[-] arisunz 4 points 6 months ago

lmao that means a lot, thanks <3

[-] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

The nobots module I've linked bombs them

[-] winnie@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 months ago

Suggestion at the end:

  <a class="boom" href="https://boom .arielaw.ar">hehe</a>

Wouldn't it destroy GoogleBot (and other search engine) those making your site delisted from Search?

[-] ABasilPlant@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

In dark mode, the anchor tags are difficult to read. They're dark blue on a dark background. Perhaps consider something with a much higher contrast?

A picture of a website with a dark purple background and dark blue links.

Apart from that, nice idea - I'm going to deploy the zipbomb today!

[-] arisunz 5 points 6 months ago

nice catch, thanks (i use light mode most of the time)

[-] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 months ago

This is one of the best things I've ever read.

I'd love to see a robots.txt do a couple safe listings, then a zip bomb, then a safe listing. It would be fun to see how many log entries from an IP look like get a, get b, get zip bomb.... no more requests.

[-] pvq@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 months ago

I really like your site's color scheme, fonts, and overall aesthetics. Very nice!

[-] not_amm@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

I agree, it's readable and very cute!

[-] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 4 points 6 months ago

That’s devilishly and deliciously devious.

[-] hollyberries@programming.dev 26 points 6 months ago

I'm a fan of hellpotting them.

[-] Para_lyzed@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

From your recommendation, I found a related project pandoras_pot that I am able to run in a Docker container, and seems to run more efficiently on my Pi home server. I now use it in my Caddyfile to redirect a number of fake subdomains and paths that are likely to be found by a malicious bot (of course all are excluded in my robots.txt for bots that actually respect it). Thanks for the recommendation!

[-] Cyber@feddit.uk 2 points 6 months ago

Ooh, didn't know about that one... thanks

[-] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 21 points 6 months ago

We should do more than block them, they need to be teergrubed.

[-] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Thats an easy modification. Just redirect or reverse proxy to the tarpit instead of abort .

I was even thinking about an infinitely linked data-poisoned html document, but there seemed to be no ready made project that can generate one at the moment. (No published data-poisoning techniques for plain text at all afaik. But there is one for images.)

Ultimately I decided to just abort the connection as I don't want my servers to waste traffic or CPU cycles.

[-] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 4 points 6 months ago

Such a cool person making the video available for download

[-] winnie@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

Your link has no article, and Video inside Flash file (swf) that itn't opening in 2024.

And I don't want to install Flash on my machine...

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 months ago

Huh, looks like the post in r/linux got removed for not being relevant.
What a joke.

this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
117 points (100.0% liked)

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