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I have downloaded my access log file from my cPanel and found I have a bot I would like to stop. In the access log, there User-Agent string reads the following;

88.80.205.219 - - [08/May/2014:23:29:52 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "-"
88.80.205.219 - - [08/May/2014:23:29:56 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 29019 "-" "-"

What is the proper format in my .htaccess file to block this bot only?

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    There is no user agent string in there
    – John Conde ♦
    Commented May 9, 2014 at 19:20
  • Those are complete access log entries. The User-Agent is just the last part ie. "-" (a single hyphen, which probably represents an empty user agent string.)
    – MrWhite
    Commented May 9, 2014 at 20:20

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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To block all "blank" User-Agents or User-Agents consisting of a hyphen, you could use the following in your .htaccess

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^-?$
RewriteRule ^ - [F]
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  • can anyone explain how it works? ^-?$ what does it mean?
    – user4951
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 8:50
  • The first line indicates a conditional rewrite, in this case if the user-agent matches the regular expression which is blank with an optional - character. If the condition statement is true, then the rewrite rule on the next line is triggered. In this case the rewrite rule is to not rewrite the URL at all, but to return an HTTP forbidden code (403).
    – nathangiesbrecht
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 13:48

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