F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense Standard
F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense Standard provides foundational automated threat mitigation at the edge. It inspects incoming client requests against known bot signatures, verifies legitimate search engine web crawlers, and blocks automated scrapers, vulnerability scanners, and malicious bots.
Classification Flow
Section titled “Classification Flow”+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+| Standard Bot Classification Pipeline || || Incoming Client Request || | || v || +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ || | Signature & User-Agent Verification | || +---------------------------------+---------------------------------+ || | || +--------------------------+--------------------------+ || | Known Good Bot | Unknown || v v || +-----------------------------+ +---------------------+ || | Reverse DNS & ASN Lookup: | | Malicious Signature | || | Verified Googlebot/Bingbot | | Matching & Scrapers | || +--------------+--------------+ +----------+----------+ || | Verified | Match || v v || +-----------------------------+ +---------------------+ || | Allow Request to Origin | | Mitigate (Block/403)| || +-----------------------------+ +---------------------+ |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+Bot Categories & Actions
Section titled “Bot Categories & Actions”| Category | Examples | Default Action | Configurable Override |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good Bots | Googlebot, Bingbot, Applebot, Pingdom | Allow | Rate Limit, Block |
| Commercial Bots | Content aggregators, SEO crawlers | Allow | Block, Redirect |
| Malicious Bots | Vulnerability scanners, scrapers, exploit bots | Block | Custom Challenge |
| Untrusted Clients | Headless curl/python scripts with spoofed headers | Monitor | Block |