Protects a Service or a Route (or the deprecated API entity) from most common bots and has the capability of whitelisting and blacklisting custom clients.
Terminology
plugin: a plugin executing actions inside Kong before or after a request has been proxied to the upstream API.Service: the Kong entity representing an external upstream API or microservice.Route: the Kong entity representing a way to map downstream requests to upstream services.upstream service: this refers to your own API/service sitting behind Kong, to which client requests are forwarded.API: a legacy entity used to represent your upstream services. Deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.
Configuration
Enabling the plugin on a Service
Configure this plugin on a Service by making the following request:
$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/services/{service}/plugins \
--data "name=bot-detection"
service: the id or name of the Service that this plugin configuration will target.
Enabling the plugin on a Route
Configure this plugin on a Route with:
$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/routes/{route_id}/plugins \
--data "name=bot-detection"
route_id: the id of the Route that this plugin configuration will target.
Enabling the plugin on an API
If you are using an older version of Kong with the legacy API entity (deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.), you can configure this plugin on top of such an API by making the following request:
$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/apis/{api}/plugins \
--data "name=bot-detection"
api: either id or name of the API that this plugin configuration will target.
Global plugins
All plugins can be configured using the http://kong:8001/plugins/ endpoint. A plugin which is not associated to any Service,
Route or Consumer (or API, if you are using an older version of Kong) is considered "global", and will be run on every request.
Read the Plugin Reference and the
Plugin Precedence sections for more information.
Parameters
Here's a list of all the parameters which can be used in this plugin's configuration:
| form parameter | default | description |
|---|---|---|
name | The name of the plugin to use, in this case bot-detection | |
service_id | The id of the Service which this plugin will target. | |
route_id | The id of the Route which this plugin will target. | |
enabled | true | Whether this plugin will be applied. |
api_id | The id of the API which this plugin will target. Note: The API Entity is deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32. | |
config.whitelist
optional |
A comma separated array of regular expressions that should be whitelisted. The regular expressions will be checked against the |
|
config.blacklist
optional |
A comma separated array of regular expressions that should be blacklisted. The regular expressions will be checked against the |
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.