How to protect an instance
==========================

Searx depens on external search services. To avoid the abuse of these services it is advised to limit the number of requests processed by searx.

An application firewall, ``filtron`` solves exactly this problem. Information on how to install it can be found at the `project page of filtron <https://github.com/asciimoo/filtron>`__.

Sample configuration of filtron
-------------------------------

An example configuration can be find below. This configuration limits the access of

 * scripts or applications (roboagent limit)

 * webcrawlers (botlimit)

 * IPs which send too many requests (IP limit)

 * too many json, csv, etc. requests (rss/json limit)

 * the same UserAgent of if too many requests (useragent limit)


.. code:: json

   [{
      "name":"search request",
      "filters":[
         "Param:q",
         "Path=^(/|/search)$"
      ],
      "interval":"<time-interval-in-sec (int)>",
      "limit":"<max-request-number-in-interval (int)>",
      "subrules":[
         {
            "name":"roboagent limit",
            "interval":"<time-interval-in-sec (int)>",
            "limit":"<max-request-number-in-interval (int)>",
            "filters":[
               "Header:User-Agent=(curl|cURL|Wget|python-requests|Scrapy|FeedFetcher|Go-http-client)"
            ],
            "actions":[
               {
                  "name":"block",
                  "params":{
                     "message":"Rate limit exceeded"
                  }
               }
            ]
         },
         {
            "name":"botlimit",
            "limit":0,
            "stop":true,
            "filters":[
               "Header:User-Agent=(Googlebot|bingbot|Baiduspider|yacybot|YandexMobileBot|YandexBot|Yahoo! Slurp|MJ12bot|AhrefsBot|archive.org_bot|msnbot|MJ12bot|SeznamBot|linkdexbot|Netvibes|SMTBot|zgrab|James BOT)"
            ],
            "actions":[
               {
                  "name":"block",
                  "params":{
                     "message":"Rate limit exceeded"
                  }
               }
            ]
         },
         {
            "name":"IP limit",
            "interval":"<time-interval-in-sec (int)>",
            "limit":"<max-request-number-in-interval (int)>",
            "stop":true,
            "aggregations":[
               "Header:X-Forwarded-For"
            ],
            "actions":[
               {
                  "name":"block",
                  "params":{
                     "message":"Rate limit exceeded"
                  }
               }
            ]
         },
         {
            "name":"rss/json limit",
            "interval":"<time-interval-in-sec (int)>",
            "limit":"<max-request-number-in-interval (int)>",
            "stop":true,
            "filters":[
               "Param:format=(csv|json|rss)"
            ],
            "actions":[
               {
                  "name":"block",
                  "params":{
                     "message":"Rate limit exceeded"
                  }
               }
            ]
         },
         {
            "name":"useragent limit",
            "interval":"<time-interval-in-sec (int)>",
            "limit":"<max-request-number-in-interval (int)>",
            "aggregations":[
               "Header:User-Agent"
            ],
            "actions":[
               {
                  "name":"block",
                  "params":{
                     "message":"Rate limit exceeded"
                  }
               }
            ]
         }
      ]
   }]



Route request through filtron
-----------------------------

Filtron can be started using the following command:

.. code:: bash

    $ filtron -rules rules.json

It listens on 127.0.0.1:4004 and forwards filtered requests to 127.0.0.1:8888 by default.

Use it along with ``nginx`` with the following example configuration.

.. code:: nginx

    location / {
        proxy_set_header        Host    $http_host;
        proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header        X-Scheme $scheme;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4004/;
    }

Requests are coming from port 4004 going through filtron and then forwarded to port 8888 where a searx is being run.