Shield Apache Sites From Bots

PHP, Linux, Apache, MySQL, Cloudflare, Firewall, cPanel, Security Auditing · Our sites sit behind Cloudflare and currently suffer from sudden traffic spikes that end in 524 timeout errors. The common pattern is a flood of abusive requests—sometimes pure scraping, sometimes obvious spam or probing—hammering several custom-PHP domains on the same dedicated server.

The dediocated server is managed by Digital Pacific Australia. We can provide Cpanel access to sites as well as WHM access.

Regardless of current rules at Clioudflare and basic efforts on the server, the attackers get through, so I need deeper, server-level and edge-level hardening that actually throttles or blocks them before they exhaust resources.

Here’s what I expect:

• Analyse recent access/error logs plus Cloudflare analytics to pinpoint offending IP ranges, user-agents and request patterns. • Build and deploy robust rulesets—mod_security, fail2ban, custom .htaccess directives, or Cloudflare WAF/rate-limiting—as appropriate for Apache. • Recommend changes to our existing firewall for Digital Pacific to implement as needed. Allow legitimate crawlers continue to index the sites while bad bots are challenged, throttled or black-holed. • Provide a concise report of changes, commands and