The @honeypot block both deleted and set X-Scrabble-Honeypot in one reverse_proxy.
Caddy applies header_up deletions *after* sets, so the tag we set was immediately
stripped: the gateway never saw it, and a decoy hit (e.g. GET /.env) fell through
to the gateway's /app redirect (308) instead of tripping the honeypot. Drop the
delete — the bare set already replaces any client-supplied value. The real
endpoints keep stripping the header in the @gateway block (delete-only, no
conflicting set). Caught on the live test contour (no caddy locally).
Add a prod-only, in-memory IP ban enforced at the edge, fed by three signals:
sustained rate-limiter rejections (the IP-keyed public/email/admin classes — the
user class stays the backend soft-flag's concern), a honeypot decoy-path hit (the
contour caddy tags decoys with X-Scrabble-Honeypot and routes them to the gateway),
and a honeytoken (a planted bearer, GATEWAY_HONEYTOKEN). A banned IP is refused with
429 by the abuseGuard middleware before any work — covering the Connect edge, the
live stream and the static SPA/landing the per-op limiter never gated.
The ban is off by default: it keys by the real client IP the shared-NAT test contour
does not expose, so a ban there would be self-inflicted; detection still logs in the
contour, only the ban action is gated (GATEWAY_ABUSE_BAN_ENABLED). Rejection bans last
GATEWAY_ABUSE_BAN_DURATION; tripwire/honeytoken hits are near-zero-false-positive and
earn longer fixed bans. Each ban increments gateway_abuse_banned_total{reason}.
Operators see and lift active bans on the admin console's Throttled page; the gateway
syncs its active set to the backend every 30s (POST /api/v1/internal/bans/sync,
backend/internal/banview) and applies the operator unbans the response returns.
PRERELEASE phase AG. Docs baked into ARCHITECTURE / FUNCTIONAL (+ru) / both READMEs.
Ilia Denisov