Testing AnubisBB extension against AI bots

[ghisler(Author)]

Our forum has been under heavy load for a few months, caused mainly by AI crawlers which disguise themselves as legitimate users. I have tested many things, but the bots always came back. Now I want to try the AnubisBB extension. It shows a challenge when trying to access the forum, which the browser has to solve via JavaScript to get through.

Please check whether you can access our test forum (without logging in) where I have installed this extension:
https://www.ghisler.ch/phpBB3

So far I only had one failure: Samsung browser on Android 6 fails to load the language file. However, Chrome on the same platform works well.

Btw, I have excluded the smartfeed URL from the verification. Please let me know if I need to exclude any others.

[Horst.Epp]

Tested ok, with Firefox and MS Edge

[beb]

Success!
Anubis pensively waits
Done! Took 1071ms, 187324 iterations

Vivaldi on Android 17.

Done! Took 1303ms, 187163 iterations

Chrome

[Dalai]

Firefox 78 (ESR) and older fail this test:

Code: Select all

Missing language file
Anubis pensively waits

Could not load language file
Why am I seeing this?

Firefox 102 (ESR) works fine. Don't know about ESR versions between these two.

NB: I don't like the CPU usage while waiting for the "challenge" to complete.

[funkymonk]

Tested ok with up-to-date Opera

[ghisler(Author)]

Firefox 78 (ESR) and older fail this test:

Edit: I have installed Firefox 78 ESR and found the problem. Hard coding English into the Javascript code fixed it for me.

Please try again now.

[karlchen]

Please check whether you can access our test forum (without logging in) where I have installed this extension:
https://www.ghisler.ch/phpBB3

anubis check passed without any problems, test forum accessed.
- Firefox 152.0.5 (on MX Linux 23.6)
- Vivaldi 8.0.4033.57 (on MX Linux 23.6)
- Chrome 149.0.7827.201 (on Android 12)

[CrMaReLi]

For me it works fine on Vivaldi. Both Mobile (Android) and Desktop (Linux and Windows)

For me it takes a second or two at most

[ValentinP]

Successful on New Moon 28 (64-bit) (2026-06-27) on windows XP64.

[hi5]

Firefox 152.0.5 Win 10 works, but did take 9 seconds.

[sqa_wizard]

Firefox 140.12.0esr Win 11 works, took 2 seconds.

[Dalai]

Firefox 78 (ESR) and older fail this test:

Edit: I have installed Firefox 78 ESR and found the problem. Hard coding English into the Javascript code fixed it for me.

Please try again now.

Thanks. The language file error is gone, but it still doesn't work (in some cases):

Code: Select all

Calculation error!
Anubis pensively waits

Failed to calculate challenge: {0}
Why am I seeing this?

It looks like I needed to re-enable "beacon.enabled" to make it work properly. I'll keep an eye on this.

For me it takes 10 to 12 seconds to complete the challenge, regardless of the Firefox version used.

[ghisler(Author)]

It looks like I needed to re-enable "beacon.enabled" to make it work properly. I'll keep an eye on this.

Odd, I have tried disabling this in my current Firefox (152.x), but the Anubis check still works. I have also checked the source code of the extension, and it doesn't use the "SendBeacon" Javascript function.

[petermad]

Testet OK with
Chrome 109.0.5414.120 on Windows 7
Edge 109.0.1518.140 on Windows 7
Opera 95.0.4635.90 on Windows 7
Firefox 115.37.0esr on Windows 7
SeaMonkey 2.53.23 on Windows 7

Chrome 150.0.7871.115 on Windows 10
Edge 150.0.4078.48 on Windows 10
Opera 132.0.5905.114 on Windows 10
Firefox 152.0.4 on Windows 10
SeaMonkey 2.53.23 on Windows 10

[JOUBE]

Testet OK with
firefox 102.15.1 esr (32b) on Raspbian11 (bullseye, armv7l, hardware: Raspi 3B+)