Thanks!
Mostly there’s three steps involved:
- Setup Nepenthes to receive the traffic
- Perform bot detection on inbound requests (I use a regex list and one is provided below)
- Configure traffic rules in your load balancer / reverse proxy to send the detected bot traffic to Nepenthes instead of the actual backend for the service(s) you run.
Here’s a rough guide I commented a while back: https://dubvee.org/comment/5198738
Here’s the post link at lemmy.world which should have that comment visible: https://lemmy.world/post/40374746
You’ll have to resolve my comment link on your instance since my instance is set to private now, but in case that doesn’t work, here’s the text of it:
So, I set this up recently and agree with all of your points about the actual integration being glossed over.
I already had bot detection setup in my Nginx config, so adding Nepenthes was just changing the behavior of that. Previously, I had just returned either 404 or 444 to those requests but now it redirects them to Nepenthes.
Rather than trying to do rewrites and pretend the Nepenthes content is under my app’s URL namespace, I just do a redirect which the bot crawlers tend to follow just fine.
There’s several parts to this to keep my config sane. Each of those are in include files.
-
An include file that looks at the user agent, compares it to a list of bot UA regexes, and sets a variable to either 0 or 1. By itself, that include file doesn’t do anything more than set that variable. This allows me to have it as a global config without having it apply to every virtual host.
-
An include file that performs the action if a variable is set to true. This has to be included in the
serverportion of each virtual host where I want the bot traffic to go to Nepenthes. If this isn’t included in a virtual host’sserverblock, then bot traffic is allowed. -
A virtual host where the Nepenthes content is presented. I run a subdomain (
content.mydomain.xyz). You could also do this as a path off of your protected domain, but this works for me and keeps my already complex config from getting any worse. Plus, it was easier to integrate into my existing bot config. Had I not already had that, I would have run it off of a path (and may go back and do that when I have time to mess with it again).
The map-bot-user-agents.conf is included in the http section of Nginx and applies to all virtual hosts. You can either include this in the main nginx.conf or at the top (above the server section) in your individual virtual host config file(s).
The deny-disallowed.conf is included individually in each virtual hosts’s server section. Even though the bot detection is global, if the virtual host’s server section does not include the action file, then nothing is done.
Files
map-bot-user-agents.conf
Note that I’m treating Google’s crawler the same as an AI bot because…well, it is. They’re abusing their search position by double-dipping on the crawler so you can’t opt out of being crawled for AI training without also preventing it from crawling you for search engine indexing. Depending on your needs, you may need to comment that out. I’ve also commented out the Python requests user agent. And forgive the mess at the bottom of the file. I inherited the seed list of user agents and haven’t cleaned up that massive regex one-liner.
# Map bot user agents
## Sets the $ua_disallowed variable to 0 or 1 depending on the user agent. Non-bot UAs are 0, bots are 1
map $http_user_agent $ua_disallowed {
default 0;
"~PerplexityBot" 1;
"~PetalBot" 1;
"~applebot" 1;
"~compatible; zot" 1;
"~Meta" 1;
"~SurdotlyBot" 1;
"~zgrab" 1;
"~OAI-SearchBot" 1;
"~Protopage" 1;
"~Google-Test" 1;
"~BacklinksExtendedBot" 1;
"~microsoft-for-startups" 1;
"~CCBot" 1;
"~ClaudeBot" 1;
"~VelenPublicWebCrawler" 1;
"~WellKnownBot" 1;
#"~python-requests" 1;
"~bitdiscovery" 1;
"~bingbot" 1;
"~SemrushBot" 1;
"~Bytespider" 1;
"~AhrefsBot" 1;
"~AwarioBot" 1;
# "~Poduptime" 1;
"~GPTBot" 1;
"~DotBot" 1;
"~ImagesiftBot" 1;
"~Amazonbot" 1;
"~GuzzleHttp" 1;
"~DataForSeoBot" 1;
"~StractBot" 1;
"~Googlebot" 1;
"~Barkrowler" 1;
"~SeznamBot" 1;
"~FriendlyCrawler" 1;
"~facebookexternalhit" 1;
"~*(?i)(80legs|360Spider|Aboundex|Abonti|Acunetix|^AIBOT|^Alexibot|Alligator|AllSubmitter|Apexoo|^asterias|^attach|^BackDoorBot|^BackStreet|^BackWeb|Badass|Bandit|Baid|Baiduspider|^BatchFTP|^Bigfoot|^Black.Hole|^BlackWidow|BlackWidow|^BlowFish|Blow|^BotALot|Buddy|^BuiltBotTough|
^Bullseye|^BunnySlippers|BBBike|^Cegbfeieh|^CheeseBot|^CherryPicker|^ChinaClaw|^Cogentbot|CPython|Collector|cognitiveseo|Copier|^CopyRightCheck|^cosmos|^Crescent|CSHttp|^Custo|^Demon|^Devil|^DISCo|^DIIbot|discobot|^DittoSpyder|Download.Demon|Download.Devil|Download.Wonder|^dragonfl
y|^Drip|^eCatch|^EasyDL|^ebingbong|^EirGrabber|^EmailCollector|^EmailSiphon|^EmailWolf|^EroCrawler|^Exabot|^Express|Extractor|^EyeNetIE|FHscan|^FHscan|^flunky|^Foobot|^FrontPage|GalaxyBot|^gotit|Grabber|^GrabNet|^Grafula|^Harvest|^HEADMasterSEO|^hloader|^HMView|^HTTrack|httrack|HTT
rack|htmlparser|^humanlinks|^IlseBot|Image.Stripper|Image.Sucker|imagefetch|^InfoNaviRobot|^InfoTekies|^Intelliseek|^InterGET|^Iria|^Jakarta|^JennyBot|^JetCar|JikeSpider|^JOC|^JustView|^Jyxobot|^Kenjin.Spider|^Keyword.Density|libwww|^larbin|LeechFTP|LeechGet|^LexiBot|^lftp|^libWeb|
^likse|^LinkextractorPro|^LinkScan|^LNSpiderguy|^LinkWalker|msnbot|MSIECrawler|MJ12bot|MegaIndex|^Magnet|^Mag-Net|^MarkWatch|Mass.Downloader|masscan|^Mata.Hari|^Memo|^MIIxpc|^NAMEPROTECT|^Navroad|^NearSite|^NetAnts|^Netcraft|^NetMechanic|^NetSpider|^NetZIP|^NextGenSearchBot|^NICErs
PRO|^niki-bot|^NimbleCrawler|^Nimbostratus-Bot|^Ninja|^Nmap|nmap|^NPbot|Offline.Explorer|Offline.Navigator|OpenLinkProfiler|^Octopus|^Openfind|^OutfoxBot|Pixray|probethenet|proximic|^PageGrabber|^pavuk|^pcBrowser|^Pockey|^ProPowerBot|^ProWebWalker|^psbot|^Pump|python-requests\/|^Qu
eryN.Metasearch|^RealDownload|Reaper|^Reaper|^Ripper|Ripper|Recorder|^ReGet|^RepoMonkey|^RMA|scanbot|SEOkicks-Robot|seoscanners|^Stripper|^Sucker|Siphon|Siteimprove|^SiteSnagger|SiteSucker|^SlySearch|^SmartDownload|^Snake|^Snapbot|^Snoopy|Sosospider|^sogou|spbot|^SpaceBison|^spanne
r|^SpankBot|Spinn4r|^Sqworm|Sqworm|Stripper|Sucker|^SuperBot|SuperHTTP|^SuperHTTP|^Surfbot|^suzuran|^Szukacz|^tAkeOut|^Teleport|^Telesoft|^TurnitinBot|^The.Intraformant|^TheNomad|^TightTwatBot|^Titan|^True_Robot|^turingos|^TurnitinBot|^URLy.Warning|^Vacuum|^VCI|VidibleScraper|^Void
EYE|^WebAuto|^WebBandit|^WebCopier|^WebEnhancer|^WebFetch|^Web.Image.Collector|^WebLeacher|^WebmasterWorldForumBot|WebPix|^WebReaper|^WebSauger|Website.eXtractor|^Webster|WebShag|^WebStripper|WebSucker|^WebWhacker|^WebZIP|Whack|Whacker|^Widow|Widow|WinHTTrack|^WISENutbot|WWWOFFLE|^
WWWOFFLE|^WWW-Collector-E|^Xaldon|^Xenu|^Zade|^Zeus|ZmEu|^Zyborg|SemrushBot|^WebFuck|^MJ12bot|^majestic12|^WallpapersHD)" 1;
}
deny-disallowed.conf
# Deny disallowed user agents
if ($ua_disallowed) {
# This redirects them to the Nepenthes domain. So far, pretty much all the bot crawlers have been happy to accept the redirect and crawl the tarpit continuously
return 301 https://content.mydomain.xyz/;
}
Maybe I should flesh it out into an actual guide. The Nepenthes docs are “meh” at best and completely gloss over integrating it into your stack.
You’ll also need to give it corpus text to generate slop from. I used transcripts from 4 or 5 weird episodes of Voyager (let’s be honest: shit got weird on Voyager lol), mixed with some Jack Handy quotes and a few transcripts of Married…with Children episodes.
https://content.dubvee.org/ is where that bot traffic lands up if you want to see what I’m feeding them.