How to Install the hCaptcha® Integration

hCaptcha is an integration to protect your assets from bot attacks, SPAM, and others.

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hCaptcha® is a CAPTCHA (which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) service that aims to improve user privacy and security by using puzzles that are harder for bots to solve, and by using the solved puzzles to train machine learning models to improve the overall security of the internet. You can use it to avoid bots, web crawlers, and other automated tools that misuse your resources.

Azion’s integration with hCaptcha® runs on the edge nodes of Azion. It ensures that only authentic requests get access to your infrastructure by identifying whether the request is valid before accessing the origin. Rather than figuring out the logic of when, where, and how to display requests, you can speed up your requests by simply enabling and configuring JSON args.

Getting the integration

To install this integration provided by Azion’s Marketplace, you have to:

  1. Access Azion Console > Marketplace.
  2. On the Marketplace homepage, select the integration’s card.
  3. Once the integration’s page opens, click the Install button, at the bottom-right corner of the page.

You’ll see a message indicating that your integration was successfully installed.

You can search any integration by browsing through the cards, using the filters, or typing a keyword in the search bar.

Getting the keys

To configure this integration, you have to provide two keys: your secret-key and your site-key. To get these credentials, you’ll have to register at the hCaptcha site.

To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the hCaptcha dashboard.
    • If you don’t have an account, you can create one here.
    • Pay attention when creating a new account, because the site will provide your secret key. This secret key will be used to configure the integration later on, so store it somewhere safe.
  2. On the dashboard click the Add Site button.
  3. It’s optional, but recommended, to name your instance of hCaptcha.
  4. Fill in the hostnames you want to use the challenge on and click the Add Domain button.
  5. Choose your challenge mode. You have three options:
  • Always Challenge (Free. Every request will load a challenge)
  • Passive (Paid. There’s no challenge and the CAPTCHA will be triggered according to the behavior of the user)
  • 99.9% Passive (Paid. The challenge will only appear for users at high risk of being bots).
  1. Choose the passing threshold you want for your site according to the difficulty level: auto, easy, moderate, and difficult. These modes will determine how accurate the user’s answers should be to pass the test.
  2. With everything filled-up, click the Save button on the top-right corner.

Now your site is configured to use the hCaptcha integration.

To configure Azion’s integration, you now have to get the site-key from hCaptcha. Still in the hCaptcha site, follow these steps:

  1. In your dashboard, on the upper-menu, click on Sites.
  2. After loading your sites listed, find the one you configured above. In the first column, you’ll see a label with a string chain that’ll look like this: efdb42c7-10ee-4969-8013-cfcb5f7ad007. This is your site key.
  3. Hover over the string and click to copy your site key.
  4. Save the site key and the secret key to configure Azion’s integration as explained in the next sections.

Configuring the integration

Setting up an firewall

To start the configuration, follow these steps:

  1. On the Products menu, select Firewall in the SECURE section.
  2. Click the + Firewall button.
  3. Give an easy-to-remember name to your firewall.
  4. Turn on the Functions switch.
  5. Click the Save button.

Done. Now you’ve instantiated the firewall for your integration and it has access to functions.

Setting up the integration

To instantiate the integration, while still on the Firewall page:

  1. Select the Functions Instances tab.
  2. Click the + Function Instance button.
  3. Give a name to your instance.
  4. On the dropdown menu, select the hCaptcha function.
  • This action will load the Arguments tab, where you can add the parameters to execute your application.
  1. In the Arguments tab, pass the two keys and your variables:
{
"site_key": "<your_site_key>", // Replace with your site key
"secret_key": "<your_secret_key>", // Replace with your secret key
"cookie_secret": "A key to sign the cookies",
"expiration_in_seconds": 3600,
"origin_address": "https://xxxxxxxx.map.azionedge.net", // Replace with your domain
"origin_headers": {
"X-Custom": "value",
"X-Another-Custom": "another-value"
},
"captcha_args": {
"theme": "dark",
"size": "compact"
"custom_message": "My message",
"custom_html": "<html><!-- azion_captcha --></html>"
}
}

Where:

VariableRequiredDescription
site_keyYesThe site key you obtained at the hCaptcha page
secret_keyYesThe secret key you obtained at the hCaptcha page
expiration_in_secondsYesThe time in seconds until the challenge expires
origin_addressYesYour domain from which the function will fetch the content after the user solves the challenge
origin_headersNoWhenever the access to the origin requires the usage of specific request headers
captcha_argsNoThese args modify and customize the layout of the challenge box
custom_messageNoA customized message you want to show users
custom_htmlNoThe customized HTML to render the challenge box
cookie_secretYesThis cookie is generated by the function and used in order for the functions not to be re-run

Due to the algorithm used in cryptography, any string of any length can be used as cookie_secret.

  1. Click the Save button to save your configuration.

Done. Now your hCaptcha instance is saved.

Setting up the Firewall Rules Engine

To finish, you have to set up the Rules Engine to configure the behavior and the criteria to run the function.

Still on the Firewall page:

  1. Select the Rules Engine tab.
  2. Click the + Rule Engine button.
  3. Give a name to the rule.
  4. Select a criteria to run and catch the domain you want to run the integration on. Example: if Hostname is equal xxxxxxxxxxxx.map.azionedge.net.
  5. Below, select a behavior to the criteria. In this case, it’ll be Run Function.
    • Select the adequate function according to the name you gave it during the instantiation step.
  6. Click the Save button.

On the Console, you must now configure your domain so your firewall protects it.

  1. On the Products menu, select Worloads.
  2. Click on the domain you want to protect with your hCaptcha function.
  3. In the Settings section, click on the Firewall selector and choose the firewall you created.
  4. Click the Save button.

Done. Now the integration is running for every request made to the domain you indicated.

Trademarks

hCaptcha is a registered trademark of Intuition Machines, Inc.

Watch a video on how to install the hCaptcha® integration through Azion Marketplace on Azion’s YouTube channel.