Baskerville is an advanced analytics engine designed to protect websites from malicious bot traffic by leveraging machine learning to detect and mitigate unusual web traffic patterns. Running on the Deflect network, it serves as a web application firewall, working alongside tools like Challenger and Banjax. Baskerville identifies and challenges potentially harmful behavior in real time, triggering challenges (such as CAPTCHA or other turing tests) to verify if the incoming traffic is from a legitimate user or a bot.

As an open-source project, Baskerville can be integrated into any web environment, e.g. Cloudflare or AWS. Over time, it aims to become a clearinghouse for threat intelligence, allowing users to access its machine learning model to identify malicious traffic. Regular updates to the model ensure that it remains effective against constantly evolving attack patterns. The project follows privacy-by-design principles, encouraging its adoption across diverse platforms to bolster network defenses.

This tool was developed to provide fast, actionable intelligence, offering predictions and reliability even in the face of changing traffic dynamics on some of the world’s most targeted websites.