Just a thought - if you design a system to prevent AI crawlers, instead of booting them off, serve crypto-mining JavaScript instead. It would be very funny.

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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      5 days ago

      If you install a captcha as part of your web server, that code is running on your server.

      The crawler interacting with the captcha on your server will not result in cryptominer code running on its server.

      Something on the crawler’s server would need to accept a download of the cryptominer code and then run that code.

      • gigachad@piefed.social
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        5 days ago

        True, but it’s more about solving the captcha as in finding its solution. However, there is no solution, but only a never ending task of calculation (the mining, which the crawler but will need to do). Of course this is highly hypothetical as I do not know anything about cryptomining (and I also don’t want to know more about it).

        • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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          5 days ago

          Without getting into the technical details, the main cost offset of running a cryptominer is the electricity used. If the crawler performs cryptominer calculations on your server it will be of no benefit to you, because you will still have to pay the electricity bill, and really it’s not the crawler doing the calculations, it’s your own server hardware.

          • some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            If it’s keeping the crawlers at bay at the same time, though, couldn’t the differential brought in by the mining represent a cost savings? This question is breaking my brain, maybe I’m not thinking about it properly.