AWS WAF and CloudFront KVS Enable App-Detected, Edge-Enforced Bot Blocking

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A feedback loop architecture using AWS WAF Dynamic Label Interpolation and Amazon CloudFront KeyValueStore (KVS) allows applications to detect malicious behavior and delegate enforcement to the network edge. The application layer, which has full context such as repeated login failures, identifies threats and writes fingerprint data to KVS via a PutKey call. CloudFront Functions then read KVS on subsequent requests to challenge or block flagged fingerprints before they reach the origin server. To reduce false-positive impact, each KVS entry carries an expiry timestamp that automatically lifts restrictions after a set period, with a daily cleanup job removing stale entries. A staged approach — registering fingerprints as 'challenge' before escalating to 'block' based on pass rates — adds an additional safeguard against wrongly blocking legitimate users.

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