Nginx Bad Bot Blocker

223 (and growing) Nginx rules to block bad bots.

Bad bots are defined as:

• E-mail harvesters
• Content scrapers
• Spam bots
• Vulnerability scanners
• Aggressive bots that provide little value
• Bots linked to viruses or malware
• Government surveillance bots
• Chinese search engine Baidu
• Spamhaus IP list block

Installation

If you have a bizarre or complicated setup, be sure to look everything over before installing. However, for anyone with a fairly straightforward Nginx installation, this should work without any issues.

Step 1.) Clone the Nginx Bad Bot Blocker repository into your Nginx directory.

cd /etc/nginx
git clone https://github.com/mariusv/nginx-badbot-blocker.git

Step 2.) Edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and add the following at the end of the http block, before the closing }

##
# Nginx Bad Bot Blocker
##
include nginx-badbot-blocker/blacklist.conf;
include nginx-badbot-blocker/blockips.conf;

Step 3.) Run the following command to verify your Nginx configuration is valid. (Note: You may need to prepend sudo to this command.)

nginx -t

You should get an output that looks something like this:

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Step 4.) Reload Nginx and you're all set!

sudo service nginx reload

---

Further information

Baidu

Unless your website is written in Chinese, you probably don't get any traffic from them. They mostly just waste bandwidth and consume resources.

Bots Are Liars

Bots try to make themselves look like other software by disguising their useragent. Their useragents may look harmless, perfectly legitimate even. For example, "^Java" but according to Project Honeypot, it's actually one of the most dangerous.

Spamhaus IP Block

Block Spamhaus Lasso Drop Spam IP Address. (I'll keep this list updated)

UPDATED 16/01/2018