Iocaine – defense mechanism against unwanted scrapers

Iocaine is a defense mechanism against unwanted scrapers, sitting between upstream resources and the fronting reverse proxy. It is designed to significantly reduce the load caused by the relentless attack of the Crawlers (mostly originating from various AI companies) in a way that does not place undue burden on legit visitors. While iocaine does support presenting a proof-of-work challenge, that should be a last resort, and even if that path is taken, the challenge is inexpensive for the human visitor.

Originally, iocaine started as a garbage generator, a tarpit, a place where the reverse proxy routed unwanted visitors, so that they’d crawl an infinite maze of garbage. Since then, it grew into a more ambitious project, and includes a scripting engine that lets the iocaine-operator tell the software how to treat each incoming request. The idea remained similar, however: to waste crawler resources, while keeping costs down.

Unlike some similar tools, iocaine does not try to make the bad bots go away, it welcomes them, into an infinite maze of garbage. It does so, because the author observed that if the bots keep being served plausibly legit looking content, they will behave slightly better: they will not try to disguise themselves as much, and they’ll keep a steady, but not overwhelming crawling pace. Serving unwanted visitors junk also evoked warm, fuzzy feelings inside the author. He likes warm, fuzzy feelings. The garbage generator used in iocane has been tuned with this in mind, to make it cheap, pretty much on par with serving a static file.

This is free and open source software.

Website: git.madhouse-project.org/iocaine/iocaine
Support:
Developer: Gergely Nagy
License: MIT License

Iocaine is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Explore Linux
	Best Free and Open Source Software - A huge collection of recommended free and open source software covering every major category.
	In-depth Linux Software Reviews - Detailed assessments of Linux software covering features, usability and overall quality.
	The Big List of Active Linux Distros - An extensive collection of actively developed Linux distributions.
	Open Source Alternatives - Alternatives to software and services from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Autodesk, Oracle and others.
	Essential Linux System Tools - Indispensable utilities for monitoring, maintaining and managing Linux systems.
	Linux Productivity Tools - Useful utilities for improving productivity and streamlining everyday tasks.
	Alternatives to Popular CLI Tools - Modern alternatives to familiar command-line utilities supplied with Linux systems.
	Awesome Free Linux Game Tools - Tools, utilities and companion software that improve gaming on Linux.
	Machine Learning on Linux - Machine learning and deep learning software, self-hosted applications and practical tools.
	Saving Money with Linux - Practical ways to reduce electricity consumption and lower computing costs with Linux.
	Linux Candy - Fun, entertaining and sometimes delightfully quirky software from the lighter side of Linux.