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>If scrapers reuse a cookie, traditional anti-abuse mechanisms will work. Scrapers can't change their strategy? It's not hard to think of mitigations: keep on

by gruez 1mo ago

>If scrapers reuse a cookie, traditional anti-abuse mechanisms will work. Scrapers can't change their strategy? It's not hard to think of mitigations: keep on using a session until you're banned, and failing that rotate your IP. Nowadays you don't even need to think. You can probably tell a LLM "write me a scraper that has adaptive anti-anti-bot mechanism".

embedding-shape 1mo ago
> Scrapers can't change their strategy? Yes, but you normally don't try to fight all strategies up front, you add stuff on a need-to basis. Currently, lots of people are in the stage of "need to get this thing using bunch of IPs to stop hammering my servers", apparently Anubis helps them with that. If that stops working, other tactics are tried, and so it goes on for the life of your service. Hasn't stopped yet, doesn't seem to be stopped soon either.
- gruez 1mo ago
  That argument also works against anubis. Why bother forcing clients to solve a PoW challenge, when you're fighting a bunch of unsophisticated attackers that will be deterred by a javascript challenge that requires them to solve `result = x + y`?
  - mitxela 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    - myng111 29d ago
      [flagged]
  - xena 1mo ago
    This is why there's the meta refresh challenge as an option: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challenges/metarefresh https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challeng... Turns out that in practice there's some bots that implement support for this but not JavaScript.
  - embedding-shape 1mo ago
    Point is, you get problems because of something like this, you try either approach. And when that stops working (because eventually it will), you add something else. Some work better against some actors, but also feels like it never ends, so slowly you add more things. I don't think Anubis is uniquely able to stop that particular type of annoyance, it's just one of the tools you can see if it helps. If you want to try something else before, makes a lot of sense to do so.
  - well_ackshually 1mo ago
    You're not fighting unsophisticated attackers. 50% of them are, maybe. The rest? They're actively hostile, detecting blocking attempts, moving on to botnets, DDoSing you and trying everything they can to bypass you. People have been sent to jail for participating in LOIC attacks which were less destructive that what these bots do on the daily.
bulder 1mo ago
Plenty of these abusive scrapers are utilizing retail residential proxies, which will be applying forced rotations to avoid "burning" their compromised and or otherwise surreptitiously utilized IP address.

by gruez 1mo ago

embedding-shape 1mo ago

> Scrapers can't change their strategy? Yes, but you normally don't try to fight all strategies up front, you add stuff on a need-to basis. Currently, lots of people are in the stage of "need to get this thing using bunch of IPs to stop hammering my servers", apparently Anubis helps them with that. If that stops working, other tactics are tried, and so it goes on for the life of your service. Hasn't stopped yet, doesn't seem to be stopped soon either.

gruez 1mo ago
That argument also works against anubis. Why bother forcing clients to solve a PoW challenge, when you're fighting a bunch of unsophisticated attackers that will be deterred by a javascript challenge that requires them to solve `result = x + y`?
- mitxela 1mo ago
  [flagged]
  - myng111 29d ago
    [flagged]
- xena 1mo ago
  This is why there's the meta refresh challenge as an option: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challenges/metarefresh https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challeng... Turns out that in practice there's some bots that implement support for this but not JavaScript.
- embedding-shape 1mo ago
  Point is, you get problems because of something like this, you try either approach. And when that stops working (because eventually it will), you add something else. Some work better against some actors, but also feels like it never ends, so slowly you add more things. I don't think Anubis is uniquely able to stop that particular type of annoyance, it's just one of the tools you can see if it helps. If you want to try something else before, makes a lot of sense to do so.
- well_ackshually 1mo ago
  You're not fighting unsophisticated attackers. 50% of them are, maybe. The rest? They're actively hostile, detecting blocking attempts, moving on to botnets, DDoSing you and trying everything they can to bypass you. People have been sent to jail for participating in LOIC attacks which were less destructive that what these bots do on the daily.

bulder 1mo ago

Plenty of these abusive scrapers are utilizing retail residential proxies, which will be applying forced rotations to avoid "burning" their compromised and or otherwise surreptitiously utilized IP address.