I want to block unwanted Bots from accessing sites on the server.
Can nginx drop / kill the connection right away when a certain Bot is detected?
if ($http_user_agent ~ (agent1|agent2) ) {
**KILL CONNECTION**;
}
Something like example above.
Answer
Use return 444; This non-standard status code of 444 causes nginx to simply close the connection without responding to it.
if ($http_user_agent ~ (agent1|agent2) ) {
return 444;
}