Bot detection

[PSNAppz]

Why Bot Detection?

1. Reduced Server Load: Bots can make a lot of requests in a short period, causing unnecessary server load. Filtering out bot traffic can significantly reduce this load.
2. Prevent Data Scraping: Bots can be used to scrape content from websites, potentially stealing valuable data or intellectual property.
3. Avoid Fraud: Some bots are designed to perform malicious activities such as fraudulently clicking on ads, skewing analytics, or spamming forums and comment sections.
4. Enhance Security: Bots can be used for vulnerability scanning or brute-force attacks. Detecting and blocking them can prevent potential security breaches.

How Bots are Typically Detected:

1. User-Agent Strings: Many bots identify themselves with specific User-Agent strings. By checking the User-Agent against a list of known bot signatures, you can filter out a lot of bot traffic. However, sophisticated bots might imitate popular browsers' User-Agent strings.
2. Behavior Analysis: Bots often exhibit behavior that's different from human users, such as making requests too quickly, accessing a site at regular intervals, or following specific patterns in navigation.
3. CAPTCHA: You can challenge the user to solve a CAPTCHA. Bots typically can't solve CAPTCHAs, so this can be a good way to filter out automated traffic.
4. Honeypots: These are invisible or non-interactive elements on a page. While a human user wouldn't interact with them, a bot might, revealing its nature.
5. Rate Limiting: If an IP address is making requests too frequently, it could be a sign of a bot.
6. Advanced Techniques: More advanced techniques involve machine learning and behavior analytics to differentiate between bots and real users based on numerous factors.

Implementation in ShadowGuard:

Given that ShadowGuard is a plugin-based system, we can introduce a new BotDetectionPlugin. This plugin can incorporate multiple techniques to detect bots and either block them or take other appropriate actions.

Here's a high-level plan:

1. Bot Signature Database: Maintain a list of known bot User-Agent strings. Update this list regularly.
2. Behavior Analysis: Monitor the frequency, pattern, and type of requests. If an IP is making too many requests in a short time, flag it.
3. Integrate CAPTCHA: For suspect traffic, challenge with a CAPTCHA.
4. Honeypots: Add invisible elements to web pages and monitor interactions with them.
5. Rate Limiting: Integrate with our existing rate limiter or enhance it to be more dynamic based on bot-like behavior.
6. Logging & Notification: Log all detected bot activities and notify administrators or take automatic actions.