Automated Bots Consume Nearly All git.kernel.org Traffic

Kernel.org administrators reported that automated clients account for about 98% of traffic to git.kernel.org, imposing substantial load on infrastructure that serves Linux kernel Git repositories. In a recent measurement, 66% of requests failed the Anubis anti-bot challenge, while roughly another third completed the browser-side JavaScript SHA-256 proof-of-work check but still exhibited bot-like behavior.

The traffic includes repeated repository retrievals through Git clone activity and web-interface requests. Across five git.kernel.org systems, Git-serving workloads consume approximately 14–16 of the service's 90 CPU cores during peak periods. IP-address blocking has offered limited relief because clients rotate or acquire new source addresses, leaving maintainers to contend with persistent automated crawling despite the challenge mechanism.