Defense

Rate-limit

Rate limitation is a network traffic management approach. It establishes a limit on how many times a person can repeat an action within a given timeframe—for example, attempting to log into an account. Certain types of malicious bot activity can be mitigated by rate limitation. It can help lessen the load on web servers. Rate limitation is not a complete solution for bot activity management. Rate limitation is frequently used to prevent rogue bots from wreaking havoc on a website or service. Brute force assaults, DDoS attacks, and web scraping are examples of bot attacks that rate-limiting can assist mitigate. Rate limitation also guards against API usage, which isn't always malicious or caused by bot activity but is nonetheless something to avoid.

What is rate-limiting and how does it work?

Rate limitation is implemented within an application rather than on the web server. Typically, rate limitation is accomplished by keeping track of the IP addresses from which requests originate, as well as the amount of time that passes between each request. An application's IP address is the primary means of determining who or what is making the request. A rate-limiting system measures the duration between each request from each IP address, as well as the number of requests made within a given interval. If a single IP address makes too many requests in a short period of time, the rate-limiting method will deny the IP address's request for a period of time. In essence, a rate-limited application will slow down unique users that make frequent queries.

What are some of the disadvantages of rate-limiting?

The number of connections to the website is limited by rate limiting, which in turn limits the number of visitors. All new connections will be banned after a specified threshold is reached. Rate limiting will not only keep new people away from the website, but it will also slow down existing visitors. Finally, it is important to note that rate-limit does not prevent bad traffic from accessing the website. The rate of incoming connections is limited by rate-limiting. Because rate limitation does not distinguish between good and bad traffic, it is a brute-force approach for limiting total traffic.

Bot is a computer program that automates and repeats predetermined tasks. Bots are designed to mimic or replace human user behavior. Bots are significantly faster than humans since they are automated. Bots, like any other technology, can be used for good or harm. Bad bots, such as malware bots, can be used for hacking, spamming, spying, disrupting, and compromising websites. Bots are thought to account for up to half of all internet traffic today, doing jobs such as automating customer support, replicating human conversation on social media, assisting businesses in their content searches, and assisting with search engine optimization.

How to detect bot traffic?

Trends in traffic – unusual surges in traffic could suggest bots attacking the site. This is especially true if the traffic happens at inconvenient times.

Bounce rate - unusual highs or lows could indicate dangerous bots. Bots who visit a specific page on the website and then change their IP address appear to have a 100% bounce rate.

Traffic source - The major channel transmitting traffic during a malicious attack is "direct" traffic, and the traffic will consist of news and sessions.

Server performance – a drop in server performance could indicate the presence of bots.

Suspicious IP - a spike in activity from an unknown IP range or a place where the client does not conduct business.

How does bot protection function?

Bot defense techniques emerged in tandem with bot evolution. There are three technical ways to detect and combat malicious bots currently available:

Static analysis tools can detect web requests and header information linked to dangerous bots, passively detecting the bot's identification and banning it if necessary.

Challenge-based approach: give the client's website the opportunity to assess if traffic is coming from humans or bots ahead of time. Visitors' ability to use cookies, run javascript, and interact with CAPTCHA elements can be tested using challenge-based bot detectors. Bot traffic is indicated by a diminished ability to analyze certain types of elements.

A behavioral bot mitigation technique examines each visitor's behavioral signature to see if it is what it purports to be. Behavioral bot mitigation creates a baseline of usual behavior for user agents such as Chrome and Firefox and checks to see whether the current user deviates from it. It can also match behavioral signatures to valuable, well-known problematic bot signatures.

Clients can overcome evasive bots of all varieties and successfully differentiate bot traffic from human traffic by combining the three ways.

Geo-blocking prevents users from accessing websites and other content based on their location. The system can determine a user's location in a variety of methods in order to apply the appropriate restriction protocol. This usually entails determining a location based on an IP address, validating profile information, and ping measurement. This practice is sometimes a result of government policies, but it is more commonly used by businesses. Geo-blocking software prevents users in specific locales from accessing certain websites. Users in a restricted location can be denied access to a company's website. This gives them the opportunity to generate material that is only available to certain people. A company's system uses this technology to automatically measure the details of a user's location and decide whether or not to grant access. In the end, this affects who sees material and, more crucially, what type of content is created and distributed.

What is the process of geo-blocking?

Geo-blocking is made possible by websites detecting users' geographical location when they access the website. When a website receives a connection request from a user's device, all it has to do is verify whether it is whitelisted or blacklisted. It will redirect the user to a page reserved for the user's region if it is blacklisted. Alternatively, the website can refuse a user's connection request and display a web error page informing them that the service is not accessible in their country.

What is the purpose of geo-blocking?

Geo-blocking can be used for a variety of purposes. It's crucial when it comes to applying the tax to internet purchases ( different areas have different tax laws). Gambling, which is permitted in some countries but outlawed in others, is another potential constraint. Geo-blocking ensures that firms with time and location-sensitive bids for prices of items are not shorted. Geo-blocking restricts particular content to places that aren't the intended market for a firm. It also guards against content that could detract from the product's or service's image. This allows businesses to maintain control over their online publications, which would otherwise be available to everybody, regardless of location. In some ways, it's a limiting tool that could help with sharing and transmission of information.

IP Whitelist When a client grants network access to only particular IP addresses, this is known as IP whitelisting. Each employee (or allowed user) gives the network administrator their home IP address, which is subsequently added to a whitelist that permits them network access. While IP whitelisting is a valuable security feature, it is not always feasible for larger enterprises. When a client has a large number of users, whitelisting takes a long time and is often a never-ending effort to maintain manually.

Why is IP whitelisting necessary, and what are the benefits and drawbacks of doing so? IP whitelisting has various benefits for a company:

Increases security - limiting access to company networks to just pre-approved personnel reduces the risk of clients being infected with viruses, malware, or another type of cyber assault. It can also assist clients in sharing any sensitive information about their business with only people whom they trust.

Creates secure remote access - If a colleague or employee wants remote access to a client's network, the client's network administrator can grant access to the remote person's IP address.

IP whitelisting drawbacks:

The most significant stumbling block for IP whitelisting is the various sorts of IP addresses that an authorized user may have. A device that can connect to the internet will have one of two types of IP addresses:

1. A static IP address is one that does not change over time.

2. A dynamic IP address is one that changes at random and on a regular basis.

Because most internet service providers assign IP addresses dynamically, the majority of users will have dynamic IP addresses. Every 24 hours, a large number of dynamic addresses are renumbered. An IP address change might also occur as a result of a power outage. The issue with this is that the system administrator must add a new IP address to the whitelist every time a dynamic IP address changes. Users must therefore keep track of which IP addresses belong to which individuals. The system administrator must remove the old IP address from the whitelist when the IP address is changed or a user is no longer authorized to access. Removing access is equally as crucial as gaining it when it comes to access management.

How to whitelist IP addresses?

Filename: The client can determine whether or not an application is permitted by looking up its file name in the whittles.

File size: Malicious programs have the ability to alter the file size of modified programs. As a result, checking for file size should be included to the program whitelist as a criterion.

File path: Whitelisting an application from a specified file path or directory is also possible.

Digital signature: The sender's validity can be confirmed by confirming the application's digital signature or the file path.

CDN back office: Select edit —> security settings —> IP whitelist —> “Enter IP address” —> save.

IP blacklisting is a technique for preventing unauthorized or malicious IP addresses from gaining access to client networks. A blacklist is a collection of IP addresses or ranges of IP addresses that the client wants to prohibit. This list can be used in conjunction with firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and other traffic filtering technologies by the client. Clients can filter harmful traffic according to policies or manually add IP addresses to a blacklist by creating and applying it. Many IP blacklist-based network security programs can also add new addresses to be blacklisted. IP blacklists and domain blacklists are the two most common types of blacklists. The IP blacklist contains the addresses of known spammers' sending servers. Domain blacklists are a collection of domain names that appear in the body of an email. The URL in the email's body contains a domain that has been identified as a spam source.

Why put an IP address on a blacklist?

Blacklisting can occur for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is when an IP address is accused of spamming. Continuous blacklisting will harm the IP address's reputation because it will be recognized as a spam source on a frequent basis.

How does IP blacklisting work?

IP address blacklisting is a method of preventing malicious attacks on the web and other internet servers. This is performed by defining what traffic will be considered an attack in server software or hardware routers, and then blocking the systems that generate that traffic from connecting again. Clients can either obtain an IP blacklist from IP blacklist directories or configure their own list in our CDN back office.