rate-limiting
3 posts
Charge the quota when you deliver value, not when you accept the request
A visitor gets two free runs. Two dead links later they have used both and received nothing. Where you decrement a quota is a product decision in disguise.
Our rate limits were bypassed by a trailing slash
Five tuned Rack::Attack throttles, all matching the path exactly. Rails normalised the path after they ran, so a dot-json or a trailing slash bypassed every one.
Layered bot defense for a public form: honeypot, Turnstile, email verification, and the pieces between
A public, unauthenticated form that writes to the database and sends email is a bot's favorite denial-of-service target. No single control is enough. The point is layering honeypot, Turnstile, rate limiting, and email verification so one layer failing doesn't sink the rest.
