Behind the Scenes: Understanding Anubis - The Server Protection Hack

As a user, you may have experienced frustrating downtime on your favorite websites due to an unexpected visit from AI-powered scrapers. But what's behind this phenomenon? Meet Anubis, a server protection hack designed to safeguard websites against these malicious actors.

Anubis is a Proof-of-Work scheme that uses a similar concept as Hashcash, a proposed proof-of-work scheme aimed at reducing email spam. The idea is straightforward: while the additional load may seem insignificant on an individual scale, it becomes prohibitive when faced with mass scrapers. In essence, Anubis makes scraping much more expensive and time-consuming.

The primary goal of Anubis is to provide a "good enough" placeholder solution, allowing website administrators to spend more time on fingerprinting and identifying legitimate headless browsers (e.g., via font rendering). By doing so, they can ensure that the challenge proof-of-work page doesn't need to be presented to users who are likely to be legitimate visitors.

However, Anubis comes with a caveat: it requires the use of modern JavaScript features. Unfortunately, this means that plugins like JShelter will disable these features, rendering your experience incomplete. To bypass this challenge, you must enable JavaScript on your device.

But what's driving the need for such measures? AI companies have rewritten the social contract around website hosting, making it necessary to adopt no-JS solutions as a work-in-progress. While Anubis may seem like a hack, it's a necessary compromise in the ongoing battle against malicious scrapers.

In summary, Anubis is a server protection hack designed to safeguard websites against AI-powered scrapers. By requiring modern JavaScript features and using Proof-of-Work schemes, Anubis makes scraping more expensive and time-consuming. While it may seem like a temporary solution, Anubis plays a crucial role in protecting websites from these threats.