It does not even require the PoW thing Anubis does. I've setup a simple logic that just:
Checks for existence of a specific static cookie, if it does not exist, output a small page that sets the cookie via JS and reloads. Sadly this kills Noscript, but it would be possible to add a form in <noscript> that when submitted sets the cookie serverside.
Is this trivial to bypass? Yes. It still keeps out 95% of unwanted bots.
Reality is most do not target you specifically they just want to mass-scrape with low effort. Running headless browsers is way more expensive for their op
I've extended this with a FCRDNS checked exclusion for Googlebot.
Another quite effective measure I figured out was checking the existence of Sec-Fetch-Dest header if the User-Agent claims to be a modern browser. If you don't want to close down too much.
Also, I only apply these rules to routes that are not cheap and cached.
Checks for existence of a specific static cookie, if it does not exist, output a small page that sets the cookie via JS and reloads. Sadly this kills Noscript, but it would be possible to add a form in <noscript> that when submitted sets the cookie serverside.
Is this trivial to bypass? Yes. It still keeps out 95% of unwanted bots. Reality is most do not target you specifically they just want to mass-scrape with low effort. Running headless browsers is way more expensive for their op
I've extended this with a FCRDNS checked exclusion for Googlebot.
Another quite effective measure I figured out was checking the existence of Sec-Fetch-Dest header if the User-Agent claims to be a modern browser. If you don't want to close down too much.
Also, I only apply these rules to routes that are not cheap and cached.