Is Kasada blocking your web scraping efforts? Kasada's anti-bot system is more advanced than ever, making it challenging to bypass without the right strategies. But after conducting thorough research, we've identified the top three ways to get around Kasada's defenses.
- Method 1: Bypass Kasada with a Web Scraper API.
- Method 2: Rotate Real Request Headers.
- Method 3: Bypass Kasada with Fortified Headless Browsers.
But first, let's understand what we're dealing with.
What Is Kasada?
Kasada is a cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) that uses sophisticated techniques to protect websites from malicious activities, including web scraping bots. It detects bot traffic by analyzing differences in configuration and behavior between bots and legitimate users. This can pose challenges during scraping if your traffic is identified as bot-like.
Now, let's look into how it detects bots so we can better navigate around its defenses.
How Does Kasada Detect Bots?
Kasada deploys multiple sophisticated methods to identify and block bot traffic. Understanding these techniques is crucial to successfully bypassing them.
1. IP Address Reputation
Kasada evaluates the reputation of an IP address to determine its trustworthiness. If your IP address has been involved in scraping activities or triggered anti-bot mechanisms in the past, Kasada is likely to block it. Data center IPs are particularly vulnerable, as they are commonly used by scrapers, and Kasada's system can easily flag them as suspicious.
Switching to high-quality residential proxies or mobile IPs can help bypass Kasada's IP detection, as these IPs appear more like those of genuine users. However, rotating the IPs too frequently or predictably could raise suspicion, especially when dealing with an advanced anti-bot mechanism like Kasada.
2. TLS Fingerprinting
Kasada also uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) fingerprinting to differentiate legitimate users from bots. During the TLS handshake, Kasada evaluates factors like cipher suites, TLS versions, and extensions, creating a unique fingerprint for each connection.
This fingerprint is compared against a list of trusted fingerprints. If any discrepancies are found, the connection may be flagged. Most web scraping tools can establish TLS connections, but they often fail to mimic subtle variations that human browsers use, making them easier to detect.
3. HTTP Details
Kasada inspects HTTP headers, such as User Agent and Referer, to gauge whether the request looks like it came from a legitimate browser. Headers that are missing or inconsistent can quickly expose a bot. Additionally, older HTTP versions (e.g., HTTP/1.1) can raise red flags since most modern browsers now use HTTP/2 or HTTP/3.
4. JavaScript Fingerprinting
Kasada uses JavaScript fingerprinting to evaluate if the client can execute JavaScript accurately, as most bots struggle to perform client-side operations. A failure to execute JavaScript properly, or even a delay, might indicate bot behavior and lead to blocks.
5. Behavior Analysis
Human interactions tend to be dynamic. Users might scroll in unpredictable bursts, pause, or click in varied sequences. Kasada detects bot behavior by flagging overly consistent or repetitive actions, such as clicking the same link repeatedly or executing rapid, identical requests. It compares these actions to what a real user might do to spot any inconsistencies.
Now that we know how Kasada identifies bots, let's explore how to bypass its detection with proven methods.
1. Bypass Kasada With a Web Scraper API
The easiest way to overcome Kasada's security barriers during web scraping is by using web scraping APIs. A standout choice is the ZenRows scraper API, which offers all the essential tools required to bypass even the most sophisticated anti-bots like Kasada effortlessly and at scale.Â
The ZenRows scraper API handles fingerprint evasion, premium proxy rotation, JavaScript execution, and header management for you. This way, you can concentrate on extracting data without dealing with complex technical details. ZenRows is especially easy for beginners, requiring only a single API call in your chosen programming language to get started.
Let's see how it works by scraping the full-page HTML of Canada Goose, a Kasada-protected website.
Sign up for free to open the Request Builder. Paste the target URL in the link box, and enable Premium Proxies and JS Rendering. Next, select your programming language (Python, in this case) and choose the API connection mode. Then, copy and paste the generated code into your scraper file.
Here's how the generated Python code looks:
# pip install requests
import requests
url = "https://www.canadagoose.com/"
apikey = "<YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY>"
params = {
"url": url,
"apikey": apikey,
"js_render": "true",
"premium_proxy": "true",
}
response = requests.get("https://api.zenrows.com/v1/", params=params)
print(response.text)
The output will display the complete HTML of the protected site:
<html lang="en-CA">
<!-- ... -->
<title>
Luxury Performance Outerwear & Clothing | Canada Goose CA
</title>
<meta name="description" content="Since 1957, Canada Goose crafts performance luxury outerwear & clothing. Discover year-round essential styles like winter jackets, light down puffers, footwear & more.">
<!-- ... -->
</html>
Pretty simple, right? In just a few lines of code, you've scraped a Kasada-protected website using the ZenRows scraper API.
While this approach is ideal for a quick and efficient solution, there are other methods if you prefer a more hands-on approach.
2. Rotate Real Request Headers
Kasada pays close attention to HTTP headers like User Agent, Referer, and Accept-Language. These headers make a request resemble one from a real browser, and Kasada's detection system will flag anything that looks unusual.
Rotating your headers involves using various User Agent strings, rotating them frequently, ensuring that other headers align with the User Agent in use, etc. For instance, if you're using a Chrome User Agent, the headers should reflect Chrome-specific details and must be updated regularly to match the latest browser versions.
However, managing headers manually can become a challenge at scale. Keeping track of ever-changing User Agents and maintaining correct header combinations can be time-consuming, and any inconsistency can quickly lead to detection and blocking. ZenRows can automate header rotation, making it easy for you to stay undetected.
3. Bypass Kasada With Fortified Headless Browsers
Browser automation tools like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium can simulate real user interactions, execute JavaScript, and run in headless or full-browser modes. However, standard versions of these tools are often easily detected because they expose bot-like characteristics, such as the HeadlessChrome
flag or the presence of WebDriver.
Using fortified headless browsers modifies the common markers that anti-bot systems look for, making it harder for detection systems like Kasada to identify your scraping activity. Popular fortified options include:
- Puppeteer Stealth: Stealth plugin with anti-bot evasions for Puppeteer.
- Playwright Stealth: Stealth plugin with anti-bot evasions for Playwright.
- SeleniumBase and Undetected ChromeDriver (UC): Enhances Selenium to avoid detection markers.
While these fortified browsers have custom tweaks to avoid detection, they are not ideal for large-scale scraping. Running multiple browser instances consumes significant memory, and despite the tweaks, they may still leave detectable traces over time.
Using ZenRows Scraping Browser as an add-on for Puppeteer and Playwright allows you to access hundreds of websites, eliminating the need for expensive cloud setups and time-consuming maintenance. This simplifies scaling and running high-volume scraping operations while enhancing your automation's overall stealth.
Conclusion
As you can see, bypassing Kasada requires a lot of preparation. Thankfully, if you follow the methods outlined above, you'll be more likely to scrape any web page.
What's even better is that you can save yourself all that time and resources and use ZenRows to do all that with a single API call. Its advanced anti-bot bypass feature, rotating proxies, geo-targeting, headless browsing, and other ones can help you scale your scraping project in no time.
Try ZenRows for free today without a credit card!