Anti botnet defense is the set of controls that detect coordinated fleets of automated clients and limit what those fleets are allowed to do.
The fleet is many clients acting together, which is a different problem from one noisy computer on its own.
How it works
A retailer sees hundreds of logins that share a rhythm, a set of browsers, and a habit of trying the same stolen password list across many accounts.
Anti botnet work groups those attempts, slows them, and removes the command that keeps the clients marching in step when that command is visible.
Without that grouping, each login looks like a normal customer who mistyped a password.
With it, the shop can protect the accounts the fleet is testing and avoid locking every honest shopper who shares a busy network.
Concrete examples
- A shop groups overnight login attempts that all pause for the same number of seconds between tries.
- A bank identifies a fleet creating accounts that never browse and only wait for a later transfer.
- A publisher notices many clients posting the same comment within a second of a single outside signal.
Protective measures
- Group suspicious clients by shared rhythm and shared targets instead of blocking one address at a time.
- Slow or stop the action the fleet is repeating, such as login or signup, while leaving ordinary browsing available.
- Notify account owners whose logins were in the tested set and require a fresh sign in from them.
- Keep a human review on the grouping rule so a classroom that starts class together is not treated as a fleet.
How CDPCaptcha helps
A browser proof of work check raises the cost of coordinated automated clients by demanding computing work from each browser session before a form or login is accepted.
CDPCaptcha is a self-hosted proof of work check in the browser, with no cookies, no tracking, and no picture puzzles.
It is made and hosted in the EU, in Germany, and the service is described at https://cdpcaptcha.com/.
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