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Bot Detection

Protects a Service or a Route from most common bots and has the capability of allowing and denying custom clients.

Configuration Reference

You can configure this plugin using the Kong Admin API or through declarative configuration, which involves directly editing the Kong configuration file.

This plugin is compatible with requests with the following protocols:

  • http
  • https

This plugin is compatible with DB-less mode.

In DB-less mode, Kong does not have an Admin API. If using this mode, configure the plugin using declarative configuration.

Enabling the plugin on a Service

Kong Admin API
Kubernetes
Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin on a Service by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/services/<service>/plugins \
    --data "name=bot-detection"

First, create a KongPlugin resource:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: <bot-detection-example>
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: bot-detection

Next, apply the KongPlugin resource to a Service by annotating the Service as follows:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: <service>
  labels:
    app: <service>
  annotations:
    plugins.konghq.com: <bot-detection-example>
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
    protocol: TCP
    name: <service>
  selector:
    app: <service>
Note: The KongPlugin resource only needs to be defined once and can be applied to any Service, Consumer, or Route in the namespace. If you want the plugin to be available cluster-wide, create the resource as a KongClusterPlugin instead of KongPlugin.

For example, configure this plugin on a Service by adding this section to your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: bot-detection
  service: <service>
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

<service> is the id or name of the Service that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Route

Kong Admin API
Kubernetes
Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin on a Route with:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/routes/<route>/plugins \
    --data "name=bot-detection"

First, create a KongPlugin resource:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: <bot-detection-example>
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: bot-detection

Then, apply it to an ingress (Route or Routes) by annotating the ingress as follows:

apiVersion: networking/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: <route>
  annotations:
    plugins.konghq.com: <bot-detection-example>
spec:
  rules:
  - host: examplehostname.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /bar
        backend:
          serviceName: echo
          servicePort: 80
Note: The KongPlugin resource only needs to be defined once and can be applied to any Service, Consumer, or Route in the namespace. If you want the plugin to be available cluster-wide, create the resource as a KongClusterPlugin instead of KongPlugin.

For example, configure this plugin on a Route by adding this section to your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: bot-detection
  route: <route>
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

<route> is the id or name of the Route that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin globally

A plugin which is not associated to any Service, Route, or Consumer is considered global, and will be run on every request. Read the Plugin Reference and the Plugin Precedence sections for more information.

Kong Admin API
Kubernetes
Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin globally with:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/plugins/ \
    --data "name=bot-detection"

Create a KongClusterPlugin resource and label it as global:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongClusterPlugin
metadata:
  name: <global-bot-detection>
  labels:
    global: \"true\"
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: bot-detection

For example, configure this plugin using the plugins: entry in the declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: bot-detection
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

Parameters

Here's a list of all the parameters which can be used in this plugin's configuration:

Form ParameterDescription
nameThe name of the plugin to use, in this case bot-detection.
service.idThe ID of the Service the plugin targets.
route.idThe ID of the Route the plugin targets.
enabled

default value: true		Whether this plugin will be applied.
config.allow
optional

An array of regular expressions that should be allowed. The regular expressions will be checked against the User-Agent header.
config.deny
optional

An array of regular expressions that should be denied. The regular expressions will be checked against the User-Agent header.

Default rules

The plugin already includes a basic list of rules that will be checked on every request. You can find this list on GitHub at https://github.com/Kong/kong/blob/master/kong/plugins/bot-detection/rules.lua.