Blocking user agents

  • Resolved SJW

    (@whitsey)


    11 months, 3 weeks ago

    I was shocked this month when my bandwidth usage sky rocketed from 3-4 GB/mth to 60+GB

    When I investigated, I found a bot with Agent= “Go-http-client” had registered thousands of hits, consuming a massive 58GB in bandwidth.

    Logs suggest they used approx 137 IP addresses so they clearly swap regularly so blocking an IP is going to be useless.

    How can I block this User Agent???

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @whitsey, thanks for highlighting what you’ve been seeing.

    It should certainly help to reduce data usage if they’re served a block page before any content loads, especially you’re running Wordfence’s firewall in Extended Protection.

    You can block by “Browser User Agent” in the Wordfence > Firewall > Blocking tab and selecting Custom Pattern. You can then type Go-http-client*, give a brief Block Reason and hit the blue “BLOCK VISITORS MATCHING THIS PATTERN” button to save changes.

    If you end with a *, variants of the same User Agent going forward should also be blocked.

    I hope that helps you out!
    Peter.

    dimal

    (@dimalifragis)

    @whitsey Also apart from blocking the user agent, enable Rate Limiting. Because that kind of user agent is not the only one eating your bandwidth. There are hundreds of others……

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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