Title
Securing web service by automatic robot detection
Abstract
Web sites are routinely visited by automated agents known as Web robots, that perform acts ranging from the beneficial, such as indexing for search engines, to the malicious, such as searching for vulnerabilities, attempting to crack passwords, or spamming bulletin boards. Previous work to identify malicious robots has relied on ad-hoc signature matching and has been performed on a per-site basis. As Web robots evolve and diversify, these techniques have not been scaling. We approach the problem as a special form of the Turing test and defend the system by inferring if the traffic source is human or robot. By extracting the implicit patterns of human Web browsing, we develop simple yet effective algorithms to detect human users. Our experiments with the CoDeeN content distribution network show that 95% of human users are detected within the first 57 requests, and 80% can be identified in only 20 requests, with a maximum false positive rate of 2.4%. In the time that this system has been deployed on CoDeeN, robot-related abuse complaints have dropped by a factor of 10.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2006
USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track
turing test,automatic robot detection,human user,codeen content distribution network,automated agent,ad-hoc signature matching,malicious robot,securing web service,web robot,human web browsing,implicit pattern,effective algorithm,search engine,web service,web browsing,false positive rate,indexation
Field
DocType
Citations 
World Wide Web,Turing test,Computer science,Robots exclusion standard,Search engine indexing,Password,Web navigation,Web service,Robot,Spamming
Conference
28
PageRank 
References 
Authors
2.43
4
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
KyoungSoo Park1119873.47
Vivek Pai21532129.33
Kang-Won Lee340026.74
Seraphin Calo440427.79