Drop unwanted connections

Question

I want to block unwanted Bots from accessing sites on the server.

Can nginx drop / kill the connection right away when a certain Bot is detected?

if ($http_user_agent ~ (agent1|agent2) ) {     **KILL CONNECTION**; } 

Something like example above.

Answer 1

Use return 444; This non-standard status code of 444 causes nginx to simply close the connection without responding to it.

if ($http_user_agent ~ (agent1|agent2) ) {     return 444; } 

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