Overview 

Bot Manager provides comprehensive protection of web applications, mobile apps, and APIs from automated threats like bots. Bot Manager provides precise bot management across all channels by combining behavioral modeling for granular intent analysis, collective bot intelligence, and fingerprinting of browsers, devices, and machines. It protects against all forms of account takeover (such as credential stuffing and brute force), denial of inventory, DDoS, ad and payment fraud, and web scraping to help organizations safeguard and grow their online operations.

When a client request reaches an application in Alteon which is protected by Bot Manager, Alteon extracts information from the request headers such as the user agent header (indicating whether the request comes from a computer, a mobile device, or a script) and the source IP address of the request. Alteon then sends this information in a JSON request via a sideband connection to the Bot Manager endpoint in the cloud and waits for a response. Bot Manager will respond with one of the following instructions:

This is brief instruction documentation for Alteon customers.

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Prerequisite

  • Alteon Version 32.6.3 or above (Standalone, VA, or vADC)

  • Alteon installed with Perform package license or above.

  • The virtual service that you wish to protect with Bot Manager must already be configured on Alteon.

  • A Standalone Bot Manager license with an active bot manager Account (Global Portal, Europe Portal)

    • For Bot Manager PoC/Demo purposes, sign-up to the bot manager portal (write to the Radware Bot Manager support team for the same) and approve the account verification email sent to your registered email address.

  • On Alteon,

    • Configure the DNS server at Configuration > System > DNS Client.

    • Verify that the device time is accurate. Radware recommends that you manually configure the time date using NTP at Configuration > System > Time and Date.

Prerequisite

  • Alteon Version 32.6.3 or above (Standalone, VA, or vADC)

  • Alteon installed with Perform package license or above.

  • The virtual service that you wish to protect with Bot Manager must already be configured on Alteon.

  • A Standalone Bot Manager license with an active bot manager Account (Global Portal, Europe Portal)

    • For Bot Manager PoC/Demo purposes, sign-up to the bot manager portal (write to the Radware Bot Manager support team for the same) and approve the account verification email sent to your registered email address.

  • On Alteon,

    • Configure the DNS server at Configuration > System > DNS Client.

    • Verify that the device time is accurate. Radware recommends that you manually configure the time date using NTP at Configuration > System > Time and Date.

Note: At any stage, you can contact botmanager_support@radware.com for assistance.

Configuration Steps

Configuring the Sideband Connection

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Note: If Client NAT is not assigned to the sideband connection, disable the FQDN server and enable it again (apply and save your configuration changes). Client NAT assignment can be checked using the Command Line Interface /info/slb/sess/dump command which prints the session table. Look for the sessions with the Bot Manager engine as the destination.

Note: If Client NAT is not assigned to the sideband connection, disable the FQDN server and enable it again (apply and save your configuration changes). Client NAT assignment can be checked using the Command Line Interface /info/slb/sess/dump command which prints the session table. Look for the sessions with the Bot Manager engine as the destination.

When a client request requires Bot Manager analytics, Alteon extracts information from the request headers and sends this information in a separate request, via the sideband connection to the Bot Manager endpoint. When Alteon receives the response from Bot Manager it acts accordingly (either allowing the request to be sent to the server or redirecting to a block or Captcha page). If Alteon does not receive a response from Bot Manager within the defined timeout period, it ends the connection with Bot Manager and passes the client request to the server.

View Bot Manager statistics at Monitoring > Security > Bot Manager to monitor the average time for Alteon to receive the response from Bot Manager and the number (percentage) of client requests that were bypassed due to timeout.

Bot Manager Onboarding Process

Each Subscriber ID must pass through the verification stage before switching to production.

Configuring a Bot Manager Policy

Contact botmanager_support@radware.com before setting any of the advanced fields

Associating the Bot Manager Policy to a Virtual Service

To use your Bot Manager policy, you must connect it to the virtual service that you want to protect. You can connect a single Bot Manager policy to multiple virtual services.

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Note: In Alteon version 32.6.3, Bot Manager can be associated only at the virtual service level, where a virtual service is identified by IP address and port.

Note: In Alteon version 32.6.3, Bot Manager can be associated only at the virtual service level, where a virtual service is identified by IP address and port.

Associate Bot Manager with a virtual service as follows:

Enabling JS injection at the Bot Manager Policy

JS injection – this capability is optional. It allows the detection of sophisticated bots with human-like behavior.

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  • Contact Bot Manager support botmanager_support@radware.com before enabling this capacity.

  • A compression policy will be automatically set (if not available already) on the virtual service when JavaScript injection is enabled to enable Alteon to inject the JavaScript into the server response.

  • Contact Bot Manager support botmanager_support@radware.com before enabling this capacity.

  • A compression policy will be automatically set (if not available already) on the virtual service when JavaScript injection is enabled to enable Alteon to inject the JavaScript into the server response.

The script is available at the Bot Manager portal: Integration > Download Connectors > JS Tag.

Viewing Bot Manager Statistics

Access the Bot Manager Portal (https://portal.radwarebotmanager.com/ or http://euportal.radwarebotmanager.com/ for EU users) to get a deeper insight into the bot traffic affecting your site. (the portal link is also available from the Configuration Perspective > Security > Bot Manager Page

Bot manager statistics are also available on Alteon. see Monitoring preferences > Security > Bot Manager. The statistics include current and total statistics as shown below:

Adding Bot Manager Endpoint Certificate Authentication

This is an optional step. It allows Alteon to authenticate the Bot Manager endpoint certificate and to perform this step please shoot an email to botmanager_support@radware.com.

Write to botmanager_support@radware.com for any clarifications on this process.