express-slow-down

Express Slow Down

Basic rate-limiting middleware for Express that slows down responses rather than blocking them outright. Use to limit repeated requests to public APIs and/or endpoints such as password reset.

Plays nice with Express Rate Limit

Note: this module does not share state with other processes/servers by default. This module was extracted from Express Rate Limit 2.x and can work with it's stores:

Stores

• Memory Store (default, built-in) - stores hits in-memory in the Node.js process. Does not share state with other servers or processes.
• Redis Store
• Memcached Store

Note: when using express-slow-down and express-rate-limit with an external store, you'll need to create two instances of the store and provide different prefixes so that they don't double-count requests.

Install

$ npm install --save express-slow-down

Usage

For an API-only server where the rules should be applied to all requests:

const slowDown = require("express-slow-down");

app.enable("trust proxy"); // only if you're behind a reverse proxy (Heroku, Bluemix, AWS if you use an ELB, custom Nginx setup, etc)

const speedLimiter = slowDown({
  windowMs: 15 * 60 * 1000, // 15 minutes
  delayAfter: 100, // allow 100 requests per 15 minutes, then...
  delayMs: 500 // begin adding 500ms of delay per request above 100:
  // request # 101 is delayed by  500ms
  // request # 102 is delayed by 1000ms
  // request # 103 is delayed by 1500ms
  // etc.
});

//  apply to all requests
app.use(speedLimiter);

For a "regular" web server (e.g. anything that uses express.static()), where the rate-limiter should only apply to certain requests:

const slowDown = require("express-slow-down");

app.enable("trust proxy"); // only if you're behind a reverse proxy (Heroku, Bluemix, AWS if you use an ELB, custom Nginx setup, etc)

const resetPasswordSpeedLimiter = slowDown({
  windowMs: 15 * 60 * 1000, // 15 minutes
  delayAfter: 5, // allow 5 requests to go at full-speed, then...
  delayMs: 100 // 6th request has a 100ms delay, 7th has a 200ms delay, 8th gets 300ms, etc.
});

// only apply to POST requests to /reset-password/
app.post("/reset-password/", resetPasswordSpeedLimiter, function(req, res) {
  // handle /reset-password/ request here...
});

req.slowDown

A req.slowDown property is added to all requests with the following fields:

• limit: The options.delayAfter value (defaults to 1)
• current: The number of requests in the current window
• remaining: The number of requests remaining before rate-limiting begins
• resetTime: When the window will reset and current will return to 0, and remaining will return to limit (in milliseconds since epoch - compare to Date.now()). Note: this field depends on store support. It will be undefined if the store does not provide the value.
• delay: Amount of delay imposed on current request (milliseconds)

Configuration

• windowMs: milliseconds - how long to keep records of requests in memory. Defaults to 60000 (1 minute).

• delayAfter: max number of connections during windowMs before starting to delay responses. Number or function that returns a number. Defaults to 1. Set to 0 to disable delaying.

• delayMs: milliseconds - how long to delay the response, multiplied by (number of recent hits - delayAfter). Defaults to 1000 (1 second). Set to 0 to disable delaying.

• maxDelayMs: milliseconds - maximum value for delayMs after many consecutive attempts, that is, after the n-th request, the delay will be always maxDelayMs. Important when your application is running behind a load balancer or reverse proxy that has a request timeout. Defaults to Infinity.

  // Example
  
  // Given:
  {
      delayAfter: 1,
      delayMs: 1000,
      maxDelayMs: 20000,
  }
  
  // Results will be:
  // 1st request - no delay
  // 2nd request - 1000ms delay
  // 3rd request - 2000ms delay
  // 4th request - 3000ms delay
  // ...
  // 20th request - 19000ms delay
  // 21st request - 20000ms delay
  // 22st request - 20000ms delay
  // 23rd request - 20000ms delay
  // 24th request - 20000ms delay <-- will not increase past 20000ms
  // ...
  

• skipFailedRequests: when true failed requests (response status >= 400) won't be counted. Defaults to false.

• skipSuccessfulRequests: when true successful requests (response status < 400) won't be counted. Defaults to false.

• keyGenerator: Function used to generate keys. By default user IP address (req.ip) is used. Defaults:

  function (req /*, res*/) {
      return req.ip;
  }
  

• skip: Function used to skip requests. Returning true from the function will skip limiting for that request. Defaults:

  function (/*req, res*/) {
      return false;
  }
  

• onLimitReached: Function to listen the first time the limit is reached within windowMs. Defaults:

  function (req, res, options) {
  /* empty */
  }
  

• store: The storage to use when persisting rate limit attempts. By default, the MemoryStore is used.

  • Note: when using express-slow-down and express-rate-limit with an external store, you'll need to create two instances of the store and provide different prefixes so that they don't double-count requests.

License

MIT © Nathan Friedly