JavaScript detections

Cloudflare’s bot products include JavaScript detections via a lightweight, invisible code injection that honors Cloudflare’s strict privacy standards Open external link . A small amount of JavaScript is injected into client devices using Google’s Picasso fingerprinting technique Open external link . Picasso results are factored into bot scores and help Cloudflare classify traffic as automated or human.

This detection technique gathers general data about the machines reaching Cloudflare. For example, Cloudflare might learn that a particular user is accessing Cloudflare via Google Chrome on a MacBook Pro. Because there are millions of people using Google Chrome on a MacBook Pro, Cloudflare cannot identify specific individuals. Cloudflare also takes steps to anonymize and phase out data for added privacy.

JavaScript is injected only in response to requests for HTML pages or page views, excluding AJAX calls. API and mobile app traffic is unaffected. Additionally, code is not injected again until its 30-minute session life expires. The Picasso script is about 70KB and execution time varies per device from 90ms to around 500ms.

​​ Enable JavaScript detections

For Free customers (Bot Fight Mode), JavaScript detections are automatically enabled and cannot be disabled.

For all other customers (Super Bot Fight Mode and Bot Management for Enterprise), JavaScript detections are optional. To adjust your settings, go to Security > Bots.

For more details on how to set up bot protection, see Get started .

​​ Considerations

​​ If you enabled Bot Management before June 2020

Customers who enabled Enterprise Bot Management before June 2020 do not have JavaScript detections enabled by default (unless specifically requested). These customers can still enable the feature in the Cloudflare dashboard.

​​ If you have a Content Security Policy (CSP)

If you have a Content Security Policy (CSP):

• Ensure that anything under /cdn-cgi/challenge-platform/ is allowed. Your CSP should allow scripts served from your origin domain (script-src self).
• If your CSP uses a nonce for script tags, Cloudflare will add these nonces to the scripts it injects by parsing your CSP response header.
• If your CSP does not use nonce for script tags and JavaScript Detection is enabled, you may see a console error such as Refused to execute inline script because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "script-src 'self'". Either the 'unsafe-inline' keyword, a hash ('sha256-b123b8a70+4jEj+d6gWI9U6IilUJIrlnRJbRR/uQl2Jc='), or a nonce ('nonce-...') is required to enable inline execution. We highly discourage the use of unsafe-inline and instead recommend the use CSP nonces in script tags which we parse and support in our CDN.