# 🌀 Miasma
[](#)
[](https://crates.io/crates/miasma)
[](https://crates.io/crates/miasma)
[](https://crates.io/crates/miasma/0.1.15/dependencies)
[](https://github.com/austin-weeks/miasma/actions/workflows/Checks.yaml)
[](#)
<picture>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austin-weeks/miasma/main/.github/images/miasma-art.png" alt="Web crawlers getting stuck in a cloud of poison miasma." title="Cover art by @delphoxlover334" />
</picture>
AI companies continually scrape the internet at an enormous scale, swallowing up all of its contents to use as training data for their next models. If you have a public website, _they are already stealing your work._
_Miasma_ is here to help you fight back! Spin up the server and point any malicious traffic towards it. _Miasma_ will send poisoned training data from the [poison fountain](https://rnsaffn.com/poison3) alongside multiple self-referential links. It's an endless buffet of slop for the slop machines.
_Miasma_ is very fast and has a minimal memory footprint - you should not have to waste compute resources fending off the internet's leeches.
> [!CAUTION]
> There is inherent risk in deploying this software. Please fully read [configuration](#configuration) and [disclaimer](#disclaimer) before use.
<details>
<summary>Sample <em>Miasma</em> Response</summary>
<p align="center">
<picture>
<source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austin-weeks/miasma/main/.github/images/response-dark.png">
<img width="625" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austin-weeks/miasma/main/.github/images/response-light.png" alt="Sample response from Miasma.">
</picture>
</p>
</details>
## Installation
Install with [cargo](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html) (recommended):
```sh
cargo install miasma
```
Or, download a pre-built binary from [releases](https://github.com/austin-weeks/miasma/releases).
## Quick Start
Start _Miasma_ with default configuration:
```sh
miasma
```
View all available [configuration options](#configuration):
```sh
miasma --help
```
## How to Trap Malicious Scrapers
Let's walk through an example of setting up a server to trap scrapers with _Miasma_. We'll pick `/naughty-bots` as our server's path to direct scraper traffic. We'll be using [_Nginx_](https://nginx.org/) as our server's reverse proxy, but the same result can be achieved with many different setups.
When we're done, scrapers will be trapped like so:
<p align="center">
<picture>
<source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austin-weeks/miasma/main/.github/images/flow-chart-dark.png">
<img height="425" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austin-weeks/miasma/main/.github/images/flow-chart-light.png" alt="Flow chart depicting cycle of trapped scrapers.">
</picture>
</p>
### Embedding Hidden Links
Within our site, we'll include a few hidden links leading to `/naughty-bots`.
```html
<a href="/naughty-bots" style="display: none;" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">
Amazing high quality data here!
</a>
```
The `style="display: none;"`, `aria-hidden="true"`, and `tabindex="-1"` attributes ensure links are totally invisible to human visitors and will be ignored by screen readers and keyboard navigation. They will **only** be visible to scrapers.
### Configuring our Nginx Proxy
Since our hidden links point to `/naughty-bots`, we'll configure this path to proxy _Miasma_. Let's assume we're running _Miasma_ on port `9855`.
We'll also set up aggressive rate limiting based on the scraper's user agent to help ensure we don't accidentally DDoS ourselves.
```nginx
http {
# Reserve 8MB memory for tracking user agents
limit_req_zone $http_user_agent zone=miasma:8m rate=1r/s;
server {
location ~ ^/naughty-bots($|/.*)$ {
# Rate limit via the 'miasma' zone with no 429 delay
limit_req_status 429;
limit_req zone=miasma burst=5 nodelay;
# Proxy requests to Miasma
proxy_pass http://localhost:9855;
}
}
}
```
This will match all variations of the `/naughty-bots` path -> `/naughty-bots`, `/naughty-bots/`, `/naughty-bots/12345`, etc.
### Run _Miasma_
Lastly, we'll start _Miasma_ and specify `/naughty-bots` as the link prefix. This instructs _Miasma_ to start links with `/naughty-bots/`, which ensures scrapers are properly routed through our _Nginx_ proxy back to _Miasma_.
We'll also limit the number of max in-flight connections to 50. At 50 connections, we can expect 50-60 MB peak memory usage. Note that any requests exceeding this limit will immediately receive a **429** response rather than being added to a queue.
```sh
miasma --link-prefix '/naughty-bots' -p 9855 -c 50
```
### Enjoy!
Let's deploy and watch as misbehaving bots greedily eat from our endless slop machine!
<p align="center">
<picture>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austin-weeks/miasma/main/.github/images/logs.gif" />
</picture>
</p>
### `robots.txt`
Be sure to protect well-behaved bots and search engines from _Miasma_ via your [`robots.txt`](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro)!
```text
User-agent: *
Disallow: /naughty-bots
```
## Configuration
_Miasma_ can be configured via its CLI options:
| `port` | `9999` | The port the server should bind to. |
| `host` | `localhost` | The host address the server should bind to. |
| `unix-socket` | | Bind to a Unix domain socket rather than a TCP address. _Only available on Unix-like systems._ |
| `max-in-flight` | `500` | Maximum number of allowable in-flight requests. Requests received when in flight is exceeded will receive a _429_ response. **_Miasma's_ memory usage scales directly with the number of in-flight requests - set this to a lower value if memory usage is a concern.** |
| `link-prefix` | `/` | Prefix for self-directing links. This should be the path where you host _Miasma_, e.g. `/naughty-bots`. |
| `link-count` | `5` | Number of self-directing links to include in each response page. |
| `force-gzip` | `false` | Always gzip responses regardless of the client's _Accept-Encoding_ header. **Forcing compression can help reduce egress costs.** |
| `unsafe-allow-html` | `false` | Don't escape HTML characters in the poison source's responses. Escaping is enabled by default to prevent unintended client-side JavaScript execution. **Use this option with care.** |
| `poison-source` | `https://rnsaffn.com/poison2/` | Proxy source for poisoned training data. |
## Development
Contributions are welcome! Please open an [issue](https://github.com/austin-weeks/miasma/issues) for bugs reports or feature requests. Primarily AI-generated contributions will be automatically rejected.
## Disclaimer
_Miasma_ is not affiliated with [the poison fountain](https://rnsaffn.com/poison3). We have no control over its responses and cannot guarantee the safety of its contents. You should **_never_** direct users towards your _Miasma_ location.
_Miasma_ is not responsible for any retaliation from operators of affected scrapers. It is your responsibility to comply with applicable laws and hosting provider policies. See [LICENSE](LICENSE) (GPL-v3) for full warranty & limitation of liability details.
---
_Cover art by [@delphoxlover334](https://www.instagram.com/delphoxlover334/)_