go.shabbyrobe.org/rackoff

Rack Off

El cheapo alternative to some of the heavier, or more encumbered, proof-of-work challenge based bot defense systems. Likely nowhere near as good. Very simple. Probably works. Maybe.

"Rack Off" is Australian for "Go Away". You say it when you don't want to use stronger language. Given what abusive scrapers are doing to the open internet, it's probably time for stronger language.

Quickstart

inner := http.HandlerFunc(func (w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    w.Write([]byte("OK"))
})

rackOffConfig := rackoff.Config{
    SecretKey:        "<secret>",
    CookieName:       "rackoff",
    Difficulty:       16,
    TokenLifetime:    24 * time.Hour,
    ChallengeTimeout: 2 * time.Minute,
}
rackOff, err := rackoff.NewMiddleware(rackOffConfig, inner, nil)
if err != nil {
    return err
}

http.ListenAndServe("127.0.0.1:8990", rackOff)

Expectation management

This is a tool I hack on for my own amusement in an ad-hoc fashion. No stability guarantees are made, the code is not guaranteed to work, and anything may be changed, renamed or removed at any time as I see fit.

If you wish to use any of this, I strongly recommend you copy-paste pieces as-needed (including tests and license/attribution) into your own project, or fork it for your own purposes.

Bug reports are welcome, feature requests discouraged, and code contributions will not be accepted.

License

rackoff is Copyright Blake Williams [e-mail]. It is licensed under the MIT license.