Problem http User-Agents
From Cookipedia
Stop the Bandwidth Hogs
An Apache rewrite rule to block the pesky httpd_User_Agents that slow up my server because of the bandwidth they use up.
Add the following lines to your httpd config file: /etc/httpd/conf.d/domainname.conf
multi-line version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} \
Custom-AsyncHttpClient|EzoicBot|Turnitin|sqlmap|wikiteam3dumpgenerator|\
Seekport|HawaiiBot|SenutoBot|Go-http-client|AwarioBot|Wget|Bytespider|\
BLEXBot|webmeup-crawler|AhrefsBot|Amazonbot|ImagesiftBot|DataForSeoBot|\
Barkrowler|MJ12Bot|Semrush|GPTBot|Qwantbot [NC]
RewriteRule . - [R=429,L]
single line version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Custom-AsyncHttpClient|EzoicBot|Turnitin|sqlmap|wikiteam3dumpgenerator|Seekport|HawaiiBot|SenutoBot|Go-http-client|AwarioBot|Wget|Bytespider|BLEXBot|webmeup-crawler|AhrefsBot|Amazonbot|ImagesiftBot|DataForSeoBot|Barkrowler|MJ12Bot|Semrush|GPTBot|Qwantbot [NC]
RewriteRule . - [R=429,L]
I prefer to use error code 429 [Too Many Requests] but if you prefer to block with httpd error code 410 [Gone] then change the RewriteRule to the example below:
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [F,L]
Test your config first!
Run the following command to test your httpd config file before restarting!
sudo apachectl configtest
If there are no errors then restart your apache daemon to begin blocking the pests with your new rules!