Anubis Pilot Project Report - June 2025

Abstract

In May & June 2025, Duke University Libraries (DUL) staff successfully implemented Anubis, a configurable open source web application firewall (WAF), in order to stave off persistent onslaughts of AI-related bot scraping activity. During this pilot period (May 1 - June 10, 2025), aggressive bot scraping led to extended outages for three critical library platforms (Duke Digital Repository, Archives & Manuscripts, and the Books & Media Catalog), and in each case, implementing Anubis mitigated the problem.