How to Build a Risk-Score Middleware in Laravel to Block Signup Abuse

A technical guide published on DEV Community outlines how to build a Laravel middleware that blocks high-risk signups using IP risk scoring rather than static blocklists. The approach addresses signup abuse, where attackers rotate IP addresses too quickly for traditional ban lists to be effective. Key implementation decisions include correctly resolving the real user IP behind proxies, avoiding blanket VPN blocks, and applying a four-band scoring system — allow, observe, challenge, and block — instead of a single threshold. The middleware calls an external scoring API with a 1.5-second timeout and caches verdicts, with developers choosing deliberately between fail-open and fail-closed behavior. Compatible with Laravel 11, 12, and 13, the full build including a service class, middleware, and Pest tests takes approximately twenty minutes to complete.