Amazon WAF Bot Control rule group - Amazon WAF, Amazon Firewall Manager, and Amazon Shield Advanced
Protection levelsUsing this rule groupLabels added by this rule groupRules listing
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Amazon WAF Bot Control rule group

VendorName: AWS, Name: AWSManagedRulesBotControlRuleSet, WCU: 50

The Bot Control managed rule group provides rules that manage requests from bots. Bots can consume excess resources, skew business metrics, cause downtime, and perform malicious activities.

Protection levels

The Bot Control managed rule group provides two levels of protection that you can choose from:

  • Common – Detects a variety of self-identifying bots, such as web scraping frameworks, search engines, and automated browsers. Bot Control protections at this level identify common bots using traditional bot detection techniques, such as static request data analysis. The rules label traffic from these bots and block the ones that they cannot verify.

  • Targeted – Includes the common-level protections and adds targeted detection for sophisticated bots that do not self identify. Targeted protections mitigate bot activity using a combination of rate limiting and CAPTCHA and background browser challenges.

    • TGT_ – Rules that provide targeted protection have names that begin with TGT_. All targeted protections use detection techniques such as browser interrogation, fingerprinting, and behavior heuristics to identify bad bot traffic.

    • TGT_ML_ – Targeted protection rules that use machine learning have names that begin with TGT_ML_. These rules use automated, machine-learning analysis of website traffic statistics to detect anomalous behavior indicative of distributed, coordinated bot activity. Amazon WAF analyzes statistics about your website traffic such as timestamps, browser characteristics, and previous URL visited, to improve the Bot Control machine learning model. Machine learning capabilities are enabled by default, but you can disable them in your rule group configuration. When machine learning is disabled, Amazon WAF does not evaluate these rules.

The targeted protection level and the Amazon WAF rate-based rule statement both provide rate limiting. For a comparison of the two options, see Options for rate limiting in rate-based rules and targeted Bot Control rules.

Using this rule group

This rule group is part of the intelligent threat mitigation protections in Amazon WAF. For information, see Amazon WAF intelligent threat mitigation.

Note

You are charged additional fees when you use this managed rule group. For more information, see Amazon WAF Pricing.

To keep your costs down and to be sure you're managing your web traffic as you want, use this rule group in accordance with the guidance at Best practices for intelligent threat mitigation.

We periodically update our machine learning (ML) models for the targeted protection level ML-based rules, to improve bot predictions. The ML-based rules have names that start with TGT_ML_. If you notice a sudden and substantial change in the bot predictions made by these rules, contact us through your account manager or open a case at Amazon Web Services Support Center.

The Bot Control rule group doesn't provide SNS update notifications.

Labels added by this rule group

This managed rule group adds labels to the web requests that it evaluates, which are available to rules that run after this rule group in your web ACL. Amazon WAF also records the labels to Amazon CloudWatch metrics. For general information about labels and label metrics, see Labels on web requests and Label metrics and dimensions.

Token labels

This rule group uses Amazon WAF token management to inspect and label web requests according to the status of their Amazon WAF tokens. Amazon WAF uses tokens for client session tracking and verification.

For information about tokens and token management, see Amazon WAF web request tokens.

For information about the label components described here, see Label syntax and naming requirements.

Client session label

The label awswaf:managed:token:id:identifier contains a unique identifier that Amazon WAF token management uses to identify the client session. The identifier can change if the client acquires a new token, for example after discarding the token it was using.

Note

Amazon WAF doesn't report Amazon CloudWatch metrics for this label.

Token status labels: Label namespace prefixes

Token status labels report on the status of the token and of the challenge and CAPTCHA information that it contains.

Each token status label begins with one of the following namespace prefixes:

  • awswaf:managed:token: – Used to report the general status of the token and to report on the status of the token's challenge information.

  • awswaf:managed:captcha: – Used to report on the status of the token's CAPTCHA information.

Token status labels: Label names

Following the prefix, the rest of the label provides detailed token status information:

  • accepted – The request token is present and contains the following:

    • A valid challenge or CAPTCHA solution.

    • An unexpired challenge or CAPTCHA timestamp.

    • A domain specification that's valid for the web ACL.

    Example: The label awswaf:managed:token:accepted indicates that the web requests's token has a valid challenge solution, an unexpired challenge timestamp, and a valid domain.

  • rejected – The request token is present but doesn't meet the acceptance criteria.

    Along with the rejected label, token management adds a custom label namespace and name to indicate the reason.

    • rejected:not_solved – The token is missing the challenge or CAPTCHA solution.

    • rejected:expired – The token's challenge or CAPTCHA timestamp has expired, according to your web ACL's configured token immunity times.

    • rejected:domain_mismatch – The token's domain isn't a match for your web ACL's token domain configuration.

    • rejected:invalid – Amazon WAF couldn't read the indicated token.

    Example: The labels awswaf:managed:captcha:rejected and awswaf:managed:captcha:rejected:expired indicate that the request was rejected because the CAPTCHA timestamp in the token has exceeded the CAPTCHA token immunity time that's configured in the web ACL.

  • absent – The request doesn't have the token or the token manager couldn't read it.

    Example: The label awswaf:managed:captcha:absent indicates that the request doesn't have the token.

Bot Control labels

The Bot Control managed rule group generates labels with the namespace prefix awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control: followed by the custom namespace and label name. The rule group might add more than one label to a request.

Each label reflects the Bot Control rule findings:

  • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot: – Information about the bot associated with the request.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:name:<name> – The bot name, if one is available, for example, the custom namespaces bot:name:slurp, bot:name:googlebot, and bot:name:pocket_parser.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:<category> – The category of bot, as defined by Amazon WAF, for example, bot:category:search_engine and bot:category:content_fetcher.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:organization:<organization> – The bot's publisher, for example, bot:organization:google.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified – Used to indicate a bot that identifies itself and that Bot Control has been able to verify. This is used for common desirable bots, and can be useful when combined with category labels like bot:category:search_engine or name labels like bot:name:googlebot.

      Note

      Bot Control uses the IP address from the web request origin to help determine whether a bot is verified. You can’t configure it to use the Amazon WAF forwarded IP configuration, to inspect a different IP address source. If you have verified bots that route through a proxy or load balancer, you can add a rule that runs before the Bot Control rule group to help with this. Configure your new rule to use the forwarded IP address and explicitly allow requests from the verified bots. For information about using forwarded IP addresses, see Forwarded IP address.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:user_triggered:verified – Used to indicate a bot that is similar to a verified bot, but that might be directly invoked by end users. This category of bot is treated by the Bot Control rules like an unverified bot.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:developer_platform:verified – Used to indicate a bot that is similar to a verified bot, but that is used by developer platforms for scripting, for example Google Apps Script. This category of bot is treated by the Bot Control rules like an unverified bot.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:unverified – Used to indicate a bot that identifies itself, so it can be named and categorized, but that doesn't publish information that can be used to independently verify its identify. These types of bot signatures can be falsified, and so are treated as unverified.

  • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:<additional-details> – Used for labels that are specific to the Bot Control targeted protections.

  • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:signal:<signal-details> and awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:signal:<signal-details> – Used to provide additional information about the request in some situations.

    The following are examples of signal labels. This is not an exhaustive list:

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:signal:browser_automation_extension – Indicates the detection of a browser extension that assists in automation, such as Selenium IDE.

      This label is added whenever a user has this type of extension installed, even if they're not actively using it. If you implement a label match rule for this, be aware of this possibility of false positives in your rule logic and action settings. For example, you might use a CAPTCHA action instead of Block or you might combine this label match with other label matches, to increase your confidence that automation is in use.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:signal:automated_browser – Indicates that the request contains indicators that the client browser might be automated.

    • awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:signal:automated_browser – Indicates that the request's Amazon WAF token contains indicators that the client browser might be automated.

You can retrieve all labels for a rule group through the API by calling DescribeManagedRuleGroup. The labels are listed in the AvailableLabels property in the response.

The Bot Control managed rule group applies labels to a set of verifiable bots that are commonly allowed. The rule group doesn't block these verified bots. If you want, you can block them, or a subset of them by writing a custom rule that uses the labels applied by the Bot Control managed rule group. For more information about this and examples, see Amazon WAF Bot Control.

Bot Control rules listing

This section lists the Bot Control rules.

Note

The information that we publish for the rules in the Amazon Managed Rules rule groups is intended to provide you with enough information to use the rules while not providing information that bad actors could use to circumvent the rules. If you need more information than you find in this documentation, contact the Amazon Web Services Support Center.

Rule name Description
CategoryAdvertising

Inspects for bots that are used for advertising purposes. For example, you might use third-party advertising services that need to programmatically access your website.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:advertising

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryArchiver

Inspects for bots that are used for archiving purposes. These bots crawl the web and capture content for the purposes of creating archives.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:archiver

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryContentFetcher

Inspects for bots that visit the application's website on behalf of a user, to fetch content like RSS feeds or to verify or validate your content.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:content_fetcher

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryEmailClient

Inspects for bots that check links within emails that point to the application's website. This can include bots run by businesses and email providers, to verify links in emails and flag suspicious emails.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:email_client

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryHttpLibrary

Inspects for requests that are generated by bots from the HTTP libraries of various programming languages. These may include API requests that you choose to allow or monitor.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:http_library

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryLinkChecker

Inspects for bots that check for broken links.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:link_checker

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryMiscellaneous

Inspects for miscellaneous bots that don't match other categories.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:miscellaneous

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryMonitoring

Inspects for bots that are used for monitoring purposes. For example, you might use bot monitoring services that periodically ping your application website to monitor things like performance and uptime.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:monitoring

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryScrapingFramework

Inspects for bots from web scraping frameworks, which are used to automate crawling and extracting content from websites.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:scraping_framework

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategorySearchEngine

Inspects for search engine bots, which crawl websites to index content and make the information available for search engine results.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:search_engine

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategorySecurity

Inspects for bots that scan web applications for vulnerabilities or that perform security audits. For example, you might use a third-party security vendor that scans, monitors, or audits your web application’s security.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:security

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategorySeo

Inspects for bots that are used for search engine optimization. For example, you might use search engine tools that crawl your site to help you improve your search engine rankings.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:seo

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategorySocialMedia

Inspects for bots that are used by social media platforms to provide content summaries when users share your content.

Rule action, applied only to unverified bots: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:social_media

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

CategoryAI

Inspects for artificial intelligence (AI) bots.

Rule action: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:category:ai

SignalAutomatedBrowser

Inspects the request for indicators that the client browser might be automated. Automated browsers can be used for testing or scraping. For example, you might use these types of browsers to monitor or verify your application website.

Rule action: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:signal:automated_browser
SignalKnownBotDataCenter

Inspects for indicators of data centers that are typically used by bots.

Rule action: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:signal:known_bot_data_center
SignalNonBrowserUserAgent

Inspects for user agent strings that don't seem to be from a web browser. This category can include API requests.

Rule action: Block

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:signal:non_browser_user_agent
TGT_VolumetricIpTokenAbsent

Inspects for 5 or more requests from a client in the last 5 minutes that don't include a valid challenge token. For information about tokens, see Amazon WAF web request tokens.

Note

It's possible for this rule to match on a request that has a token if requests from the same client have recently been missing tokens.

The threshold that this rule applies can vary slightly due to latency.

This rule handles missing tokens differently from the token labeling: awswaf:managed:token:absent. The token labeling labels individual requests that don't have a token. This rule maintains a count of requests that are missing their token for each client IP, and it matches against clients that go over the limit.

Rule action, applied only to clients that are not verified bots: Challenge

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:volumetric:ip:token_absent

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

TGT_VolumetricSession

Inspects for an abnormally high number of requests from a client session in any 5 minute window. The evaluation is based on a comparison to standard volumetric baselines that Amazon WAF maintains using historic traffic patterns.

This inspection only applies when the web request has a token. Tokens are added to requests by the application integration SDKs and by the rule actions CAPTCHA and Challenge. For more information, see Amazon WAF web request tokens.

Note

This rule can take 5 minutes to go into effect after you enable it. Bot Control identifies anomalous behavior in your web traffic by comparing the current traffic to traffic baselines that Amazon WAF computes.

Rule action, applied only to clients that are not verified bots: CAPTCHA

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:volumetric:session:high

The rule group applies the following labels to medium volume and lower volume requests that are above a minimum threshold. For these levels, the rule takes no action, regardless of whether the client is verified: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:volumetric:session:medium and awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:volumetric:session:low.

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

TGT_SignalAutomatedBrowser

Inspects the request's token for indicators that the client browser might be automated. For more information, see Token characteristics.

This inspection only applies when the web request has a token. Tokens are added to requests by the application integration SDKs and by the rule actions CAPTCHA and Challenge. For more information, see Amazon WAF web request tokens.

Rule action, applied only to clients that are not verified bots: CAPTCHA

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:signal:automated_browser

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

TGT_SignalBrowserInconsistency

Inspects for inconsistent browser interrogation data. For more information, see Token characteristics.

This inspection only applies when the web request has a token. Tokens are added to requests by the application integration SDKs and by the rule actions CAPTCHA and Challenge. For more information, see Amazon WAF web request tokens.

Rule action, applied only to clients that are not verified bots: CAPTCHA

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:signal:browser_inconsistency

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

TGT_TokenReuseIp

Inspects for the use of a single token among more than 5 distinct IP addresses.

Note

The thresholds that this rule applies can vary slightly due to latency. A few requests might make it through beyond the limit before the rule action is applied.

Rule action: Count

Label: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:volumetric:session:token_reuse:ip
TGT_ML_CoordinatedActivityMedium and TGT_ML_CoordinatedActivityHigh

Inspect for anomalous behavior consistent with distributed, coordinated bot activity. The rule levels indicate the level of confidence that a group of requests are participants in a coordinated attack.

Note

These rules only run if the rule group is configured to use machine learning (ML). For information about configuring this choice, see Adding the Amazon WAF Bot Control managed rule group to your web ACL.

Amazon WAF performs this inspection through machine learning analysis of website traffic statistics. Amazon WAF analyzes web traffic every few minutes and optimizes the analysis for the detection of low intensity, long-duration bots that are distributed across many IP addresses.

These rules might match on a very small number of requests before determining that a coordinated attack is not underway. So if you see just a match or two, the results might be false positives. If you see a lot of matches coming out of these rules however, then you're probably experiencing a coordinated attack.

Note

These rules can take up to 24 hours to go into effect after you enable the Bot Control targeted rules with the ML option. Bot Control identifies anomalous behavior in your web traffic by comparing the current traffic to traffic baselines that Amazon WAF has computed. Amazon WAF only computes the baselines while you're using the Bot Control targeted rules with the ML option, and it can take up to 24 hours to establish meaningful baselines.

We periodically update our machine learning models for these rules, to improve bot predictions. If you notice a sudden and substantial change in the bot predictions that these rules make, contact your account manager or open a case at Amazon Web Services Support Center.

Rule actions, applied only to clients that are not verified bots:

  • Medium: Count

  • High: Count

Labels: awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:coordinated_activity:medium and awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:coordinated_activity:high

For verified bots, the rule group takes no action, but it adds the rule labeling plus the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:bot:verified.

The rule group also adds the label awswaf:managed:aws:bot-control:targeted:aggregate:coordinated_activity:low to indicate a low confidence level, but it doesn't apply any rule or take any action for these requests.