AI-powered crawlers are getting smarter—and they’re not shy about grabbing open code from public and self-hosted Git repositories. If you run a private Git server (Gitea, GitLab CE, etc.) in your homelab or company network, you’ve probably seen unusual requests in your logs. To keep your intellectual property safe, SafeLine WAF provides a Git-focused ruleset to block suspicious AI crawlers and automated tools.
Why Do You Need This?
- Code theft and scraping: AI models train on anything they can find. Your Git repo is no exception.
- Increased traffic noise: Automated tools waste resources and can lead to performance issues.
- Security risks: Bots may attempt brute-force access or map your repo structure.
This SafeLine ruleset specifically targets AI bots and generic scrapers discovered in real-world traffic. It’s tuned for SafeLine 7.3.0 and above.
What’s in the Ruleset?
Whitelist: None (you can add your own trusted clients).
Blacklist (examples):
- Block automation tools – catches common HTTP clients used for automated cloning and requests.
- Block AI crawlers – stops User-Agents identified as AI-related scrapers.
- Block unknown scrapers – covers suspicious sources with no clear identification.
- Block missing User-Agent – many bots don’t send headers.
-
Block any User-Agent containing “Bot” – regex
[Bb]otpicks up common patterns.
These patterns ensure any suspicious or automated request gets denied before touching your Git repos.
How to Configure It in SafeLine
Here’s a simplified YAML-style example to show how you could set up these rules:
rules:
- name: Block missing UA
match: Header.User-Agent == null
action: deny
- name: Block AI crawlers
match: Header.User-Agent matches "AI|GPT|LLM"
action: deny
- name: Block known automation tools
match: Header.User-Agent matches "curl|wget|python|go-http-client"
action: deny
- name: Block unknown sources
match: Composite conditions for unidentified clients
action: deny
- name: Block UA containing Bot
match: Header.User-Agent matches "[Bb]ot"
action: deny
Tip: Always test in a staging environment before applying to production. Overly aggressive filters may block legitimate developers or CI/CD pipelines.
When to Use It?
- Self-hosted Git (homelab or SMB) – Protect your personal or internal code.
- Public mirrors with private components – Stop indexers and scrapers.
- IP-restricted repos – Adds an extra layer of header-based filtering.
Join the SafeLine Community
If you continue to experience issues, feel free to contact SafeLine support for further assistance.
Top comments (1)
This was such a valuable read! You’ve highlighted an issue that a lot of developers and small teams overlook—AI scrapers silently collecting data from self-hosted Git repos. I really like how you broke down the problem and provided practical steps that anyone can follow to strengthen security.
What stood out most is your point about testing carefully before applying strict filters. It’s easy to forget that overly aggressive rules might block legitimate traffic or disrupt CI/CD workflows, so that reminder was super helpful.
I also think it’s important that conversations like this encourage developers to be more proactive about protecting their code, whether that’s through access rules, monitoring unusual activity, or simply ensuring sensitive files aren’t exposed online in the first place.
Thanks for sharing this—it’s a great resource for anyone running self-hosted environments!