JA4 Part 2: Detecting and Mitigating Based on Dynamic JA4 Reputation
In my previous article on JA4 I provided a brief introduction to what is JA4 and JA4+, and I shared an iRule that enables you to generate a JA4 client TLS fingerprint. But having a JA4 fingerprint (or any "identifier") is only valuable if you can take some action on it. It is even more valuable when you can take immediate action on it. In this article, I'll explain how I integrated F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF with a third-party solution that allowed me to identify JA4s that were consistently doing "bad" things, build a list of those JA4s that have a "bad" reputation, pull that list into the F5 BIG-IP, and finally, make F5 Advanced WAF blocking decisions based on that reputation. Understanding JA4 Fingerprints It is important to understand that a JA4 TLS fingerprint, or any TLS fingerprint for that matter, is NOT a fingerprint of an individual instance of a device or browser. Rather, it is a fingerprint of a TLS "stack" or application. For example, all Chrome browsers of the same version and the same operating system will generate the same JA4 fingerprint*. Similarly, all Go HTTP clients with the same version and operating system will generate an identical JA4 fingerprint. Because of this, we have to be careful when taking action based on JA4 fingerprints. We cannot simply block in our various security devices based on JA4 fingerprint alone UNLESS we can be certain that ALL (or nearly all) requests with that JA4 are malicious. To make this determination, we need to watch requests over time. TLDR; I used CrowdSec Security Engine to build a JA4 real-time reputation database; and 3 irules, an iCall script, and a custom WAF violation to integrate that JA4 reputation into F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF. CrowdSec and John Althouse - Serendipity While at Black Hat each year, I frequently browse the showroom floor (when I'm not working the F5 booth) looking for cool new technology, particularly cool new technology that can potentially be integrated with F5 security solutions. Last year I was browsing the floor and came across CrowdSec. As the name suggests, CrowdSec provides a crowd-sourced IP reputation service. I know, I know. On the surface this doesn't sound that exciting — there are hundreds of IP reputation services out there AND IP address, as an identifier of a malicious entity, is becoming (has become?) less and less valuable. So what makes CrowdSec any different? Two things jumped out at me as I looked at their solution. First, while they do provide a central crowd-sourced IP reputation service like everyone else, they also have "Security Engines". A security engine is an agent/application that you can install on-premises that can consume logs from your various security devices, process those logs based on "scenarios" that you define, and produce a reputation database based on those scenarios. This enables you to create an IP reputation feed that is based on your own traffic/logs and based on your own conditions and criteria for what constitutes "malicious" for your organization. I refer to this as "organizationally-significant" reputation. AND, because this list can be updated very frequently (every few seconds if you wanted) and pushed/pulled into your various security devices very frequently (again, within seconds), you are afforded the ability to block for much shorter periods of time and, possibly, more liberally. Inherent in such an architecture, as well, is the ability for your various security tools to share intelligence in near real-time. i.e. If your firewall identifies a bad actor, your WAF can know about that too. Within seconds! At this point you're probably wondering, "How does this have anything to do with JA4?" Second, while the CrowdSec architecture was built to provide IP reputation feeds, I discovered that it can actually create a reputation feed based on ANY "identifier". In the weeks leading up to Black Hat last year, I had been working with John Althouse on the JA4+ spec and was actually meeting him in person for the first time while there. So JA4 was at the forefront of my mind. I wondered if I could use CrowdSec to generate a reputation based on a JA4 fingerprint. Yes! You can! Deploying CrowdSec As soon as I got home from Black Hat, I started playing. I already had my BIG-IP deployed, generating JA4s, and including those in the WAF logs. Following the very good documentation on their site, I created an account on CrowdSec's site and deployed a CrowdSec Security Engine on an Ubuntu box that I deployed next to my BIG-IP. It is beyond the scope of this article to detail the complete deployment process but, I will include details relevant to this article. After getting the CrowdSec Security Engine deployed I needed to configure a parser so that the CrowdSec Security Engine (hereafter referred to simply as "SE") could properly parse the WAF logs from F5. Following their documentation, I created a YAML file at /etc/crowdsec/parsers/s01-parse/f5-waf-logs.yaml: onsuccess: next_stage debug: false filter: "evt.Parsed.program == 'ASM'" name: f5/waf-logs description: "Parse F5 ASM/AWAF logs" pattern_syntax: # The IP grok pattern that ships with crowdsec is buggy and does not capture the last digit of an IP if it is the last thing it matches, and the last octet starts with a 2 # https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/issues/938 IPv4_WORKAROUND: (?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?) IP_WORKAROUND: (?:%{IPV6}|%{IPv4_WORKAROUND}) F5WAF: 'unit_hostname="%{DATA:unit_hostname}",management_ip_address="%{DATA:management_ip_address}",management_ip_address_2="%{DATA:management_ip_address_2}",http_class_name="%{DATA:http_class_name}",web_application_name="%{DATA:web_application_name}",policy_name="%{DATA:policy_name}",policy_apply_date="%{DATA:policy_apply_date}",violations="%{DATA:violations}",support_id="%{DATA:support_id}",request_status="%{DATA:request_status}",response_code="%{DATA:response_code}",ip_client="%{IP:ip_client}",route_domain="%{DATA:route_domain}",method="%{DATA:method}",protocol="%{DATA:protocol}",query_string="%{DATA:query_string}",x_forwarded_for_header_value="%{DATA:x_forwarded_for_header_value}",sig_ids="%{DATA:sig_ids}",sig_names="%{DATA:sig_names}",date_time="%{DATA:date_time}",severity="%{DATA:severity}",attack_type="%{DATA:attack_type}",geo_location="%{DATA:geo_location}",ip_address_intelligence="%{DATA:ip_address_intelligence}",username="%{DATA:username}",session_id="%{DATA:session_id}",src_port="%{DATA:src_port}",dest_port="%{DATA:dest_port}",dest_ip="%{DATA:dest_ip}",sub_violations="%{DATA:sub_violations}",virus_name="%{DATA:virus_name}",violation_rating="%{DATA:violation_rating}",websocket_direction="%{DATA:websocket_direction}",websocket_message_type="%{DATA:websocket_message_type}",device_id="%{DATA:device_id}",staged_sig_ids="%{DATA:staged_sig_ids}",staged_sig_names="%{DATA:staged_sig_names}",threat_campaign_names="%{DATA:threat_campaign_names}",staged_threat_campaign_names="%{DATA:staged_threat_campaign_names}",blocking_exception_reason="%{DATA:blocking_exception_reason}",captcha_result="%{DATA:captcha_result}",microservice="%{DATA:microservice}",tap_event_id="%{DATA:tap_event_id}",tap_vid="%{DATA:tap_vid}",vs_name="%{DATA:vs_name}",sig_cves="%{DATA:sig_cves}",staged_sig_cves="%{DATA:staged_sig_cves}",uri="%{DATA:uri}",fragment="%{DATA:fragment}",request="%{DATA:request}",response="%{DATA:response}"' nodes: - grok: name: "F5WAF" apply_on: message statics: - meta: log_type value: f5waf - meta: user expression: "evt.Parsed.username" - meta: source_ip expression: "evt.Parsed.ip_client" - meta:violation_rating expression:"evt.Parsed.violation_rating" - meta:request_status expression:"evt.Parsed.request_status" - meta:attack_type expression:"evt.Parsed.attack_type" - meta:support_id expression:"evt.Parsed.support_id" - meta:violations expression:"evt.Parsed.violations" - meta:sub_violations expression:"evt.Parsed.sub_violations" - meta:session_id expression:"evt.Parsed.session_id" - meta:sig_ids expression:"evt.Parsed.sig_ids" - meta:sig_names expression:"evt.Parsed.sig_names" - meta:method expression:"evt.Parsed.method" - meta:device_id expression:"evt.Parsed.device_id" - meta:uri expression:"evt.Parsed.uri" nodes: - grok: pattern: '%{GREEDYDATA}X-JA4: %{DATA:ja4_fp}\\r\\n%{GREEDYDATA}' apply_on: request statics: - meta: ja4_fp expression:"evt.Parsed.ja4_fp" Sending WAF Logs On the F5 BIG-IP, I created a logging profile to send the WAF logs to the CrowdSec Security Engine IP address and port. Defining "Scenarios" At this point, I had the WAF logs being sent to the SE and properly being parsed. Now I needed to define the "scenarios" or the conditions under which I wanted to trigger and alert for an IP address or, in this case, a JA4 fingerprint. For testing purposes, I initially created a very simple scenario that flagged a JA4 as malicious as soon as I saw 5 violations in a sliding 30 second window but only if the violation rating was 3 or higher. That worked great! But that would never be practical in the real world (see the Understanding JA4 Fingerprints section above). I created a more practical "scenario" that only flags a JA4 as malicious if we have seen at least X number of requests AND more than 90% of requests from that JA4 have triggered some WAF violation. The premise with this scenario is that there should be enough legitimate traffic from popular browsers and other client types to keep the percentage of malicious traffic from any of those JA4s below 90%. Again, following the CrowdSec documentation, I created a YAML file at /etc/crowdsec/scenarios/f5-waf-ja4-viol-percent.yaml: type: conditional name: f5/waf-ja4-viol-percent description: "Raise an alert if the percentage of requests from a ja4 finerprint is above X percent" filter: "evt.Meta.violations != 'JA4 Fingerprint Reputation'" blackhole: 300s leakspeed: 5m capacity: -1 condition: | len(queue.Queue) > 10 and (count(queue.Queue, Atof(#.Meta.violation_rating) > 1) / len(queue.Queue)) > 0.9 groupby: "evt.Meta.ja4_fp" scope: type: ja4_fp expression: evt.Meta.ja4_fp labels: service: f5_waf type: waf_ja4 remediation: true debug: false There are a few key lines to call out from this configuration file. leakspeed: This is the "sliding window" within which we are looking for our "scenarios". i.e. events "leak" out of the bucket after 5 minutes. condition: The conditions under which I want to trigger this bucket. For my scenario, I have defined a condition of at least 10 events (with in that 5 minute window) AND where the total number of events, divided by the number of events where the violation rating is above 1, is greater than 0.9. in other words, if more than 90% of the requests have triggered a WAF violation with a rating higher than 1. filter: used to filter out events that you don't want to include in this scenario. In my case, I do not want to include requests where the only violation is the "JA4 Fingerprint Reputation" violation. groupby: this defines how I want to group requests. Typiiccally, in most CrowdSec scenarios this wil be some IP address field from the logs. In my scenario, I wanted to group by the JA4 fingerprint parsed out of the WAF logs. blackhole: this defines how long I want to "silence" alerts per JA4 fingerprint after this scenario has triggered. This prevents the same scenario from triggering repeatedly every time a new request comes into the bucket. scope: the scope is used by the reputation service to "categorize" alerts triggered by scenarios. the type field is used to define the type of data that is being reported. In most CrowdSec scenarios the type is "ip". In my case, I defined a custom type of "ja4_fp" with an "expression" (or value) of the JA4 fingerprint extracted from the WAF logs. Defining "Profiles" In the CrowdSec configuration "profiles" are used to define the remediation that should be taken when a scenario is triggered. I edited the /etc/crowdsec/profiles.yaml file to include the new profile for my JA4 scenario. name: ban_ja4_fp filters: - Alert.Remediation == true && Alert.GetScope() == "ja4_fp" decisions: - type: ban scope: "ja4_fp" duration: 5m debug: true on_success: continue --- ##### Everything below this point was already in the profiles.yaml file. Truncated here for brevity. name: default_ip_remediation #debug: true filters: - Alert.Remediation == true && Alert.GetScope() == "Ip" decisions: ... on_success: break Again, there are a few key lines from this configuration file. First, I only added a new profile named "ban_ja4_fp" with lines 1 through 9 in the file above. filters: Used to define which triggered scenarios should be included in this profile. In my case, all scenarios with the "remediation" label AND the "ja4_fp" scope. decisions: Used to define what type of remediation should be taken, for which "scope", and for how long. In my case, I chose the default of "ban", for the "ja4_fp" scope, and for 5 minutes. With this configuration in place I sent several malicious requests from my browser to my test application protected by the F5 Advanced WAF. I then checked the CrowdSec decisions list and voila! I had my browser's JA4 fingerprint listed! This was great but I wanted to be able to take action based on this intelligence in the F5 WAF. CrowdSec has the concept of "bouncers". Bouncers are devices the can take action on the remediation decisions generated by the SEs. Technically, anything that can call the local CrowdSec API and take some remediating action can be a bouncer. So, using the CLI on the CrowdSec SE, I defined a new "bouncer" for the F5 BIG-IP. ubuntu@xxxxxxxx:~$ sudo cscli bouncer add f5-bigip Api key for 'f5-bigip': xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Please keep this key since you will not be able to retrieve it! I knew that I could write an iRule that could call the SE API. However, the latency introduced by a sideband API call on EVERY HTTP request would just be completely untenable. I wanted a way to download the entire reputation list at a regular interval and store it on the F5 BIG-IP in a way that would be easily and efficiently accessible from the data plane. This sounded like a perfect job for an iCall script. Customizing the F5 BIG-IP Configuration If you are not familiar with iCall scripts, they are a programmatic way of checking or altering the F5 configuration based on some trigger; they are to the F5 BIG-IP management plane what iRules are to the data plane. The trigger can be some event, condition, log message, time interval, etc. I needed my iCall script to do two things. First, pull the reputation list from the CrowdSec SE. Second, store that list somewhere accessible to the F5 data plane. Like many of you, my first thought was either an iFile or a data group. Both of these are easily configurable components accessible via iCall scripts that are also accessible via iRules. For several reasons that I will not bother to detail here, I did not want to use either of these solutions, primarily for performance reasons (this reputation lookup needs to be very performant). And the most performant place to store information like this is the session table. The session table is accessible to iRules via "table" commands. However, the session table is not accessible via iCall scripts. At least not directly. I realized that I could send an HTTP request using the iCall script, AND that HTTP request could be to a local virtual server on the same BIG-IP where I could use an iRule to populate the session table with the JA4 reputation list pulled from the CrowdSec SE. The iCall Script From the F5 BIG-IP CLI I created the following iCall script using the tmsh command 'tmsh create sys icall script crowdsec_ja4_rep_update': sys icall script crowdsec_ja4_rep_update { app-service none definition { package require http set csapi_resp [http::geturl http://10.0.2.240:8080/v1/decisions/stream?startup=true&scopes=ja4_fp -headers "X-api-Key 1a234xxxxxxxxxxxxxxe56fab7"] #tmsh::log "[http::data ${csapi_resp}]" set payload [http::data ${csapi_resp}] http::cleanup ${csapi_resp} set tupdate_resp [http::geturl http://10.0.1.110/updatetables -type "application/json" -query ${payload}] tmsh::log "[http::data ${tupdate_resp}]" http::cleanup ${tupdate_resp} } description none events none } Let's dig through this iCall script line by line: 4. Used to "require" or "include" the TCL http library. 5. HTTP request to the CrowdSec API to get the JA4 reputation list. 10.0.2.240:8080 is the IP:port of the CrowdSec SE API /v1/decisions/stream is the API endpoint used to grab an entire reputation list (rather than just query for the status of an individual IP/JA4) startup=true tells the API to send the entire list, not just additions/deletions since the last API call scopes=ja4_fp limits the returned results to just JA4 fingerprint-type decisions -headers "X-api-Key xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" includes the API key generated previously to authenticate the F5 BIG-IP as a "bouncer" 7. Store just the body of the API response in a variable called "payload" 8. free up memory used by the HTTP request tot eh CrowdSec API 9. HTTP Request to a local virtual server (on the same F5 BIG-IP) including the contents of the "payload" variable as the POST body. The IP address needs to be the IP address of the virtual server defined in the next step. An iRule will be created and placed on this virtual server that parses the "payload" and inserts the JA4 reputation list into the session table. An iCall script will not run unless an iCall handler is created that defines when that iCall script should run. I call handlers can be "triggered", "perpetual", or "periodic". I created the following periodic iCall handler to run this iCall script at regular intervals. sys icall handler periodic crowdsec-api-ja4 { interval 30 script crowdsec_ja4_list } This iCall handler is very simple; it has an "interval" for how often you want to run the script and the script that you want to run. I chose to run the iCall script every 30 seconds so that the BIGIP session table would be updated with any new malicious JA4 fingerprints very quickly. But you could choose to run the iCall script every 1 minute, 5 minutes, etc. The Table Updater Virtual Server and iRule I then created a HTTP virtual server with no pool associated to it. This virtual server exists solely to accept and process the HTTP requests from the iCall script. I then created the following iRule to process the requests and payload from the iCall script: proc duration2seconds {durstr} { set h 0 set m 0 set s 0 regexp {(\d+)h} ${durstr} junk h regexp {(\d+)m} ${durstr} junk m regexp {(\d+)\.} ${durstr} junk s set seconds [expr "(${h}*3600) + (${m}*60) + ${s}"] return $seconds } when HTTP_REQUEST { if { ([HTTP::uri] eq "/updatetables" || [HTTP::uri] eq "/lookuptables") && [HTTP::method] eq "POST"} { HTTP::collect [HTTP::header value "content-length"] } else { HTTP::respond 404 } } when HTTP_REQUEST_DATA { #log local0. "PAYLOAD: '[HTTP::payload]'" regexp {"deleted":\[([^\]]+)\]} [HTTP::payload] junk cs_deletes regexp {"new":\[([^\]]+)\]} [HTTP::payload] junk cs_adds if { ![info exists cs_adds] } { HTTP::respond 200 content "NO NEW ENTRIES" return } log local0. "CS Additions: '${cs_adds}'" set records [regexp -all -inline -- {\{([^\}]+)\},?} ${cs_adds}] set update_list [list] foreach {junk record} $records { set urec "" foreach k {scope value type scenario duration} { set v "" regexp -- "\"${k}\":\"?(\[^\",\]+)\"?,?" ${record} junk v log local0. "'${k}': '${v}'" if { ${k} eq "duration" } { set v [call duration2seconds ${v}] } append urec "${v}:" } set urec [string trimright ${urec} ":"] #log local0. "$urec" lappend update_list ${urec} } set response "" foreach entry $update_list { scan $entry {%[^:]:%[^:]:%[^:]:%[^:]:%s} scope entity type scenario duration if { [HTTP::uri] eq "/updatetables" } { table set "${scope}:${entity}" "${type}:${scenario}" indefinite $duration append response "ADDED ${scope}:${entity} FOR ${duration} -- " } elseif { [HTTP::uri] eq "/lookuptables" } { set remaining "" set action "" if { [set action [table lookup ${scope}:${entity}]] ne "" } { set remaining [table lifetime -remaining ${scope}:${entity}] append response "${scope}:${entity} - ${action} - ${remaining}s remaining\r\n" } else { append response "${scope}:${entity} - NOT IN TABLE\r\n" } } } HTTP::respond 200 content "${response}" } I have attempted to include sufficient inline comments so that the iRule is self-explanatory. If you have any questions or comments on this iRule please feel free to DM me. It is important to note here that the iRule is storing not only each JA4 fingerprint in the session table as a key but also the metadata passed back from the CrowdSec API about each JA4 reputation as the value for each key. This metadata includes the scenario name, the "type" or action, and the duration. So at this point I had a JA4 reputation list, updated continuously based on the WAF violation logs and CrowdSec scenarios. I also had an iCall script on the F5 BIG-IP that was pulling that reputation list via the local CrowdSec API every 30 seconds and pushing that reputation list into the local session table on the BIG-IP. Now I just needed to take some action based on that reputation list. Integrating JA4 Reputation into F5 WAF To integrate the JA4 reputation into the F5 Advanced WAF we only need two things: a custom violation defined in the WAF an iRule to lookup the JA4 in the local session table and raise that violation Creating a Custom Violation Creating a custom violation in F5 Advanced WAF (or ASM) will vary slightly depending on which version of the TMOS software you are running. In version 17.1 it is at Security ›› Options : Application Security : Advanced Configuration : Violations List. Select the User-Defined Violations tab and click Create. Give the Violation a Title and define the Type, Severity, and Attack Type. Finally, I modified the Learning and Blocking Settings of my policy to ensure that the new custom violation was set to Alarm and Block. F5 iRule for Custom Violation I then created the following iRule to raise this new custom WAF violation if the JA4 fingerprint is found in the reputation list in the local session table. when ASM_REQUEST_DONE { # Grab JA4 fingerprint from x-ja4 header # This header is inserted by the JA4 irule set ja4_fp [HTTP::header value "x-ja4"] # Lookup JA4 fingerprint in session table if { [set result [table lookup "ja4_fp:${ja4_fp}"]] ne "" } { # JA4 was found in session table, scan the value to get "category" and "action" scan ${result} {%[^:]:%s} action category # Initialize all the nested list of lists format required for the # violation details of the ASM::raise command set viol [] set viol_det1 [] set viol_det2 [] set viol_det3 [] # Populate the variables with values parsed from the session table for this JA4 lappend viol_det1 "JA4 FP" "${ja4_fp}" lappend viol_det2 "CrowdSec Category" "${category}" lappend viol_det3 "CrowdSec Action" "${action}" lappend viol ${viol_det1} ${viol_det2} ${viol_det3} # Raise custom ASM violation with violation details ASM::raise VIOL_JA4_REPUTATION ${viol} } } Again, I tried to include enough inline documentation for the iRule to be self-explanatory. Seeing It All In Action With everything in place, I sent several requests, most malicious and some benign, to the application protected by the F5 Advanced WAF. Initially, only the malicious requests were blocked. After about 60 seconds, ALL of the requests were being blocked due to the new custom violation based on JA4 reputation. Below is a screenshot from one of my honeypot WAF instances blocking real "in-the-wild" traffic based on JA4 reputation. Note that the WAF violation includes (1) the JA4 fingerprint, (2) the "category" (or scenario), and (3) the "action" (or type). Things to Note The API communication between the F5 BIG-IP and the CrowdSec SE is over HTTP. This is obviously insecure; for this proof-of-concept deployment. I was just too lazy to spend the extra time to get signed certs on all the devices involved and alter the iCall script to use the TCL SSL library. abc
F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF: OWASP Top 10 Application Security Risks 2021 Compliance Dashboard
Introduction The increase in vulnerabilities and application or API-related attacks exploiting those vulnerabilities has steadily risen. Vulnerabilities like Log4j, and the Log4Shell exploit are spawned and continue to impact many organizations even today. This is where a web application firewall (WAF) solution can protect your apps and APIs. One of the most respected authorities in web application security is the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). OWASP is anopen-sourceproject to improve web application security, a coalition of individual contributors and sponsor companies who come together to contribute resources to the project. One of the best-known resources the project delivers is the OWASP Top 10 List. Since web application vulnerability risks change frequently, becoming comparatively more or less critical over time, the OWASP Top 10 List is periodically updated to reflect these changes. The first version of the list was created in 2004, then updated in 2007, 2010, 2013, 2017, and again in 2021 (its most recent version). Figure 1: OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks of 2021 F5 delivers a number of security solutions to help mitigate vulnerabilities in the OWASP categories, and the exploits that are produced from them. To ensure you’re compliant with the OWASP Top 10, F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF offers a dedicated OWASP compliance dashboard that enables security admins to check how well their policy is set to defend against the OWASP Top 10 and allow organizations to easily reach 100% coverage. The solution makes it simple to modify policies to improve protection from exploit of vulnerabilities in the OWASP Top 10. The compliance dashboard provides a holistic and interactive view that shows the level of mitigation applied by SecOps team against the OWASP Top 10 vulnerability categories. It provides an overall assessment of the policies created and a percentage of how much the policies protect against the various vulnerability categories. The dashboard allows SecOps to increase/adjust the level of protection in real-time based on their needs by deploying pre-defined policies that mitigate the vulnerabilities and their associated exploits. This can be achieved directly from the BIG-IP Advanced WAF’s OWASP Top 10 2021 Dashboard, simplifying protection against known, unknown, and hidden vulnerabilities. Simple, quick, and easy vulnerability and exploit protection, from a single dashboard. Protection Overview Navigating to the OWASP Compliance screen, you can see the list of all the security policies. Clicking on a policy displays the OWASP compliance status for that policy and the coverage for each category. Figure 2: OWASP Compliance screen Expanding a category presents the compliance percentage, a description of that security risk, and the configuration required for full security coverage for this category.Each category is broken down into specific security protections, including positive and negative security controls that can be enabled, disabled, or ignored directly on the dashboard based on your organization’s requirements. Required Attack Signatures: Enforce all the relevant Attack Signatures for this attack type directly from the Dashboard. Required Policy Entities: Add protection configuration components such as Cookies and login Enforcement, data masking, Evasion techniques,detection, methods, URLs, and more relevant configurations for each attack type. In addition to WAF-specific security protections, the OWASP Compliance Dashboard also provides security Best Practices to follow in your processes, such as vulnerability scanning or using trusted repositories. Figure 3: OWASP category A03 Injection – protection and compliance The following video shows how to monitor the compliance coverage of security risks and how to quickly enhance anorganization'ssecurity configuration directly from the dashboard to receive full compliance with protection from OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities being actively exploited. Conclusion Web applications remain a top target for threats, such as automated attacks, data exfiltration, and vulnerabilities. But F5 can help! Not only can you check off regulatory compliance, but also be able to create reports via the security score relative to deployed policies that addressthe OWASP Top 10, enabling security admins to view each policy’s coverage status, improving protections if necessary, and even allowing security configuration to be performed directly from the dashboard. To learn more, please visit: How to deploy a basic OWASP Top 10 for 2021 compliant declarative WAF policy for BIG-IP K45215395: Guide introduction and contents | Secure against the OWASP Top 10 for 2021 K000135973: Guide Introduction and contents | APIs and the OWASP Top 10 guide (2023) Mitigating OWASP API Security risks using BIG-IP BIG-IP Advanced WAF Webpage Overview of BIG-IP
From ASM to Advanced WAF: Advancing your Application Security
TL;DR: As of April 01, 2021, F5 has officially placed Application Security Manager (ASM) into End of Sale (EoS) status, signifying the eventual retirement of the product. (F5 Support Announcement - K72212499 ) Existing ASM,or BEST bundle customers, under a valid support contract running BIG-IP version 14.1 or greater can simply reactivate their licenses to instantly upgrade to Advanced WAF (AdvWAF) completely free of charge. Introduction Protecting your applications is becoming more challenging every day; applications are getting more complex, and attackers are getting more advanced. Over the years we have heard your feedback that managing a Web Application Firewall (WAF) can be cumbersome and you needed new solutions to protect against the latest generation of attacks. Advanced Web Application Firewall, or AdvWAF, is an enhanced version of the Application Security Manager (ASM) product that introduces new attack mitigation techniques and many quality-of-life features designed to reduce operational overhead. On April 01, 2021 – F5 started providing free upgrades for existing Application Security Manager customers to the Advanced WAF license. Keep on reading for: A brief history of ASM and AdvWAF How the AdvWAF license differs from ASM (ASM vs AdvWAF How to determine if your BIG-IPs are eligible for this free upgrade Performing the license upgrade How did we get here? For many years, ASM has been the gold standard Web Application Firewall (WAF) used by thousands of organizations to help secure their most mission-critical web applications from would-be attackers. F5 acquired the technology behind ASM in 2004 and subsequently ‘baked’ it into the BIG-IP product, immediately becoming the leading WAF product on the market. In 2018, after nearly 14 years of ASM development, F5 released the new, Advanced WAF license to address the latest threats. Since that release, both ASM and AdvWAF have coexisted, granting customers the flexibility to choose between the traditional or enhanced versions of the BIG-IP WAF product.As new features were released, they were almost always unique to AdvWAF, creating further divergence as time went on, and often sparking a few common questions (all of which we will inevitably answer in this very article) such as: Is ASM going away? What is the difference between ASM and AdvWAF? Will feature X come to ASM too? I need it! How do I upgrade from ASM to AdvWAF? Is the BEST bundle no longer really the BEST? To simplify things for our customers (and us too!), we decided to announce ASM as End of Sale (EoS), starting on April 01, 2021. This milestone, for those unfamiliar, means that the ASM product can no longer be purchased after April 01 of this year – it is in the first of 4 stages of product retirement. An important note is that no new features will be added to ASM going forward. So, what’s the difference? A common question we get often is “How do I migrate my policy from ASM to AdvWAF?” The good news is that the policies are functionally identical, running on BIG-IP, with the same web interface, and have the same learning engine and underlying behavior. In fact, our base policies can be shared across ASM, AdvWAF, and NGINX App Protect (NAP). The AdvWAF license simply unlocks additional features beyond what ASM has, that is it – all the core behaviors of the two products are identical otherwise. So, if an engineer is certified in ASM and has managed ASM security policies previously, they will be delighted to find that nothing has changed except for the addition of new features. This article does not aim to provide an exhaustive list of every feature difference between ASM and AdvWAF. Instead, below is a list of the most popular features introduced in the AdvWAF license that we hope you can take advantage of. At the end of the article, we provide more details on some of these features: Secure Guided Configurations Unlimited L7 Behavioral DoS DataSafe (Client-side encryption) OWASP Compliance Dashboard Threat Campaigns (includes Bot Signature updates) Additional ADC Functionality Micro-services protection Declarative WAF Automation I’m interested, what’s the catch? There is none! F5 is a security company first and foremost, with a mission to provide the technology necessary to secure our digital world. By providing important useability enhancements like Secure Guided Config and OWASP Compliance Dashboard for free to existing ASM customers, we aim to reduce the operational overhead associated with managing a WAF and help make applications safer than they were yesterday - it’s a win-win. If you currently own a STANDALONE, ADD-ON or BEST Bundle ASM product running version 14.1 or later with an active support contract, you are eligible to take advantage of this free upgrade. This upgrade does not apply to customers running ELA licensing or standalone ASM subscription licenses at this time. If you are running a BIG-IP Virtual Edition you must be running at least a V13 license. To perform the upgrade, all you need to do is simply REACTIVATE your license, THAT IS IT! There is no time limit to perform the license reactivation and this free upgrade offer does not expire. *Please keep in mind that re-activating your license does trigger a configuration load event which will cause a brief interruption in traffic processing; thus, it is always recommended to perform this in a maintenance window. Step 1: Step 2: Choose “Automatic” if your BIG-IP can communicate outbound to the Internet and talk to the F5 Licensing Server. Choose Manual if your BIG-IP cannot reach the F5 Licensing Server directly through the Internet. Click Next and the system will re-activate your license. After you’ve completed the license reactivation, the quickest way to know if you now have AdvWAF is by looking under the Security menu. If you see "Guided Configuration”, the license upgrade was completed successfully. You can also login to the console and look for the following feature flags in the /config/bigip.license file to confirm it was completed successfully by running: grep -e waf_gc -e mod_waf -e mod_datasafe bigip.license You should see the following flags set to enabled: Waf_gc: enabled Mod_waf: enabled Mod_datasafe: enabled *Please note that the GUI will still reference ASM in certain locations such as on the resource provisioning page; this is not an indication of any failure to upgrade to the AdvWAF license. *Under Resource Provisioning you should now see that FPS is licensed. This will need to be provisioned if you plan on utilizing the new AdvWAF DataSafe feature explained in more detail in the Appendix below. For customers with a large install base, you can perform license reactivation through the CLI. Please refer to the following article for instructions: https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K2595 Conclusion F5 Advanced WAF is an enhanced WAF license now available for free to all existing ASM customers running BIG-IP version 14.1 or greater, only requiring a simple license reactivation. The AdvWAF license will provide immediate value to your organization by delivering visibility into the OWASP Top 10 compliance of your applications, configuration wizards designed to build robust security policies quickly, enhanced automation capabilities, and more. If you are running ASM with BIG-IP version 14.1 or greater, what are you waiting for? (Please DO wait for your change window though 😊) Acknowledgments Thanks to Brad Scherer , John Marecki , Michael Everett , and Peter Scheffler for contributing to this article! Appendix: More details on select AdvWAF features Guided Configurations One of the most common requests we hear is, “can you make WAF easier?” If there was such a thing as an easy button for WAF configurations, Guided Configs are that button. Guided Configurations easily take you through complex configurations for various use-cases such as Web Apps, OWASP top 10, API Protection, DoS, and Bot Protection. L7DoS – Behavioral DoS Unlimited Behavioral DoS - (BaDoS) provides automatic protection against DoS attacks by analyzing traffic behavior using machine learning and data analysis. With ASM you were limited to applying this type of DoS profile to a maximum of 2 Virtual Servers. The AdvWAF license completely unlocks this capability, removing the 2 virtual server limitation from ASM. Working together with other BIG-IP DoS protections, Behavioral DoS examines traffic flowing between clients and application servers in data centers, and automatically establishes the baseline traffic/flow profiles for Layer 7 (HTTP) and Layers 3 and 4. DataSafe *FPS must be provisioned DataSafe is best explained as real-time L7 Data Encryption. Designed to protect websites from Trojan attacks by encrypting data at the application layer on the client side. Encryption is performed on the client-side using a public key generated by the BIG-IP system and provided uniquely per session. When the encrypted information is received by the BIG-IP system, it is decrypted using a private key that is kept on the server-side. Intended to protect, passwords, pins, PII, and PHI so that if any information is compromised via MITB or MITM it is useless to the attacker. DataSafe is included with the AdvWAF license, but the Fraud Protection Service (FPS) must be provisioned by going to System > Resource Provisioning: OWASP Compliance Dashboard Think your policy is air-tight? The OWASP Compliance Dashboard details the coverage of each security policy for the top 10 most critical web application security risks as well as the changes needed to meet OWASP compliance. Using the dashboard, you can quickly improve security risk coverage and perform security policy configuration changes. Threat Campaigns (includes Bot Signature updates) Threat campaigns allow you to do more with fewer resources. This feature is unlocked with the AdvWAF license, it, however, does require an additional paid subscription above and beyond that. This paid subscription does NOT come with the free AdvWAF license upgrade. F5’s Security Research Team (SRT) discovers attacks with honeypots – performs analysis and creates attack signatures you can use with your security policies. These signatures come with an extremely low false-positive rate, as they are strictly based on REAL attacks observed in the wild. The Threat Campaign subscription also adds bot signature updates as part of the solution. Additional ADC Functionality The AdvWAF license comes with all of the Application Delivery Controller (ADC) functionality required to both deliver and protect a web application. An ASM standalone license came with only a very limited subset of ADC functionality – a limit to the number of pool members, zero persistence profiles, and very few load balancing methods, just to name a few. This meant that you almost certainly required a Local Traffic Manager (LTM) license in addition to ASM, to successfully deliver an application. The AdvWAF license removes many of those limitations; Unlimited pool members, all HTTP/web pertinent persistence profiles, and most load balancing methods, for example.Orchestrated Infrastructure Security - Getting Started
Note:TheBeaconcapabilities referenced in this article hosted on F5 Cloud Services are planning a migration to a new SaaS Platform - Check out the latesthere. Introduction A typical daisy-chained security stack is difficult to manage and make changes.All devices in the chain are physically wired to each other in a serial arrangement.Each device performs SSL decryption and re-encryption when needed.All devices in the chain need to have similar performance capabilities.All devices in the chain need to be properly configured to route traffic to their neighboring devices, and likely will need to be manually configured to trust SSL certificates used by neighboring devices for decryption and re-encryption. Failure of any device in the security chain brings the entire chain down.Capacity cannot be increased simply by adding another like-device (i.e. a NGFW) to the chain.Capacity can only be increased by replacing a single device with a higher capacity device. Removing or adding a device to the chain is problematic.For one, the entire security stack will need to be unavailable while removing or adding a device.Proper routing between devices must be maintained or the whole chain will not pass traffic.Certificate trust and other factors may need to be addressed as well. High availability is also problematic.The only way to ensure high availability is to create another daisy-chain, identical to the first.This chain needs to wait in standby mode until the primary chain fails or is taken down, and then the standby chain can take over for the primary. Managing a single daisy chain security stack is not easy.Managing two for high availability is significantly more complicated and overly expensive. Some security devices are deployed differently and cannot operate together in the security stack.Those devices would need their own separate deployment from the devices in the daisy chain, further complicating the configuration.As an example, it’s not an uncommon security practice to employ network TAP devices, explicit proxies, ICAP servers as well as Layer2/3 devices. All of these devices cannot be configured to properly route traffic in a daisy chain. SSL Orchestrator solves almost all of these challenges, and enables you to have a nimble security solution capable of adapting to almost any type of threat. High Level Network Topology The network topology used for this setup is below.BIG-IP-11 and 12 are deployed in Layer 2 mode. The Advanced WAF and AFM devices will also be deployed in Layer 2 and will be physically wired to the SSL Orchestrators.This is a high availability environment where there is one Active BIG-IP and one ready on Standby.The Port Objects (511 & 512) allow traffic to flow through either BIG-IP, in case of a failure.The applications being protected are represented by the Ubuntu servers connected to the South switch. BIG-IP Network Topology A zoomed in view of the BIG-IP devices is below.This shows the physical connectivity and the specific interfaces used by SSL Orchestrator, Advanced WAF and AFM devices. Summary This article is part of a series on implementing Orchestrated Infrastructure Security. It includes High Availability, Central Management with BIG-IQ, Application Visibility with Beacon and the protection of critical assets using F5 Advanced WAF and Protocol Inspection (IPS) with AFM.It is assumed that SSL Orchestrator is already deployed, and basic network connectivity is working. Next Steps Click Next to proceed to the next article in the series.Adopting SRE practices with F5: Layered Security Policy for North-South Traffic
In an organization with enough maturity in cybersecurity and modern application architectures, there are two different cybersecurity teams that operate the more advanced security policies for the company. NetSecOps and DevSecOps are the two cybersecurity teams in an organization, and they typically have different security requirements. NetSecOps requires a ‘Standardized Application Security Policy'. They aim to block common attacks to the production network with a high level of confidence, resulting in a ‘low-false positive rate,’ at the network level. The OWASP Top 10 threats is a good example here. Moreover, the responsibility of NetSecOps is not limited to stopping basic attack types like the OWASP Top 10, but it also covers more advanced and complicated application-based attacks such as ‘Bot Attacks,’ ‘Fraud Attacks,’ and ‘DDoS Attacks.’ However, when it comes to the ‘Modern-App environment,’ it is not easy for the NetSecOps team to understand the details of the application traffic flow inside the Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster. For this reason, as far as modern applications are concerned, the security policies of NetSecOps often focus more on compliance and audit purposes. However, DevSecOps wants the application-specific security policies for different types of applications to be operating inside their Kubernetes or OpenShift clusters. This is possible since DevSecOps understands how their applications work and they want to apply more optimized security policies for their backend applications. This is why it is sometimes difficult to achieve both security team’s goals with a single security solution. This is why the enterprise needs to deploy two different WAFs to meet the different requirements from both NetSecOps and DevSecOps. This article will cover how two different security teams can achieve their goals with two separate WAF (Web Application Firewall) deployments in the network - F5 Advanced WAF for NetSecOps and NGINX App Protect for DevSecOps. Solution Overview The solution includes two F5 components – F5 Advanced WAF and NGINX App Protect. From a technological point of view, NGINX App Protectutilizes s a subset of F5 Advanced WAF functionality, meaning that their underlying technologies are the same. Each of those WAF components can run with different security policies in order to achieve different goals. In F5 Advanced WAF, NetSecOps can apply the WAF policy for the ‘coarse-grained model’ of security, while DevSecOps adopts the ‘fine-grained model’ with the NAP. In other words, this means that F5 Advanced WAF can be configured with a ‘Negative Policy,’ and NGINX App Protect can be configured with a ‘Positive Policy.’ In our use-case, we assumed that NetSecOps wants to block the OWASP Top 10 threats while DevSecOps has a different 'file accessing' policy for each backend application. The brief architecture is depicted below. Combining F5 Advanced WAF and NGINX App Protect enables layered application security policies to prevent the most complicated and advanced application-based attacks efficiently. This architecture utilizes the following workflow: 1.The F5 Advanced WAF blocks the most commonly used attack types including ‘Command Injection,’ ‘SQL Injection,’ ‘Cross-Site Scripting,’ and ‘Server Side Request Forgery’ attacks. 2.When the attacker tries to access the different files in each application, NGINX App Protect manually specifies the file types that are allowed (or disallowed) in traffic based on the security policies configured by the DevSecOps team. 3.All alert details from F5 Advanced WAF and NGINX App Protect are sent to the ‘Elasticsearch’ for central monitoring purposes. Each of the above workflows will be discussed in the following sections. ·This blog doesn’t include all the required steps to reproduce the use-case in the environment. Please refer to this link for all the required configuration steps. NGINX App Protect provides ‘Application-Specific’ policies NGINX App Protect can provide security protection and controls at the microservice level inside the Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster. The NGINX App Protect can be deployed in the OpenShift cluster as a container image. The NGINX App Protect policy configuration uses the declarative format built on a pre-defined base template. The policy uses the JSON format to represent the policy details. This file can be edited to apply a unique security policy to the NGINX App Protect instance. Once the policy is created, the policy can be attached to the 'nginx.conf' file by referencing the policy file. In this example, we used the ‘nginx_sre.conf’ file as the main configuration file for NGINX and the ‘NginxSRELabPolicy.json’ file represents the NGINX App Protect policy. NginxSRELabPolicy.json: | { "policy": { "name": "SRE_DVWA01_POLICY", "template": { "name": "POLICY_TEMPLATE_NGINX_BASE" }, "applicationLanguage": "utf-8", "enforcementMode": "blocking", "response-pages": [ { "responseContent": "<html><head><title>SRE DevSecOps - DVWA01 - Blocking Page</title></head><body><font color=green size=10>NGINX App Protect Blocking Page - DVWA01 Server</font><br><br>Please consult with your administrator.<br><br>Your support ID is: <%TS.request.ID()%><br><br><a href='javascript:history.back();'>[Go Back]</a></body></html>", "responseHeader": "HTTP/1.1 302 OK\\r\\nCache-Control: no-cache\\r\\nPragma: no-cache\\r\\nConnection: close", "responseActionType": "custom", "responsePageType": "default" } ], "blocking-settings": { "violations": [ { "name": "VIOL_FILETYPE", "alarm": true, "block": true } ] }, "filetypes": [ { "name": "*", "type": "wildcard", "allowed": true, "checkPostDataLength": false, "postDataLength": 4096, "checkRequestLength": false, "requestLength": 8192, "checkUrlLength": true, "urlLength": 2048, "checkQueryStringLength": true, "queryStringLength": 2048, "responseCheck": false }, { "name": "pdf", "allowed": false } ] } } --- The above configuration file shows the NAP policy of application #01, where the DevSecOps team wants to disallow file access to the ‘PDF’ file format. For application #02, the NAP policy is configured to reject the access to the ‘JPG’ file. And the ‘remote logging’ configuration needs to be applied on the NGINX to export the NGINX App Protect's alert details. The below configuration shows how we exported the NGINX App Protect logging details to an external device, Elasticsearch. server { listen 8080; server_name dvwa02-http; proxy_http_version 1.1; real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For; set_real_ip_from 0.0.0.0/0; app_protect_enable on; app_protect_security_log_enable on; app_protect_policy_file "/etc/nginx/NginxSRELabPolicy.json"; app_protect_security_log "/etc/app_protect/conf/log_default.json" syslog:server=your_elk_ip_here; location / { client_max_body_size 0; default_type text/html; proxy_pass http://dvwa02; proxy_set_header Host $host; } Preventing OWASP Top 10 threats in F5 Advanced WAF F5 Advanced WAF is the next-generation WAF solution designed to prevent advanced application-based attacks. It supports 1000+ proven application-level signatures, custom signatures, Machine-Learning based DDoS prevention, Intelligence-based attack mitigation, and Behavioural-based WAF functions. But in this use-case, we focused on the prevention of the OWASP Top 10 attacks, which is only a small part of the F% Advanced WAF attack overall coverage. The important point here is how we can configure the F5 Advanced WAF to apply the WAF's efficient ‘Negative Security’ model. In order to configure the correct F5 Advanced WAF policy, one should follow the procedures below: 1. Go to 'Security' -> 'Application Security' -> 'Security Policies' -> 'Create' 2. Click the security policy that was just created (SRE_DEVSEC_01) ·Click the 'View Learning and Blocking Settings' under the 'Enforcement Mode' menu 3. Expand 'Attack Signatures' and Click 'Change' menu 4. Apply the check box. ·Click 'Close' ->click 'Save' -> click 'Apply Policy' ·Apply the policy to the virtual server. (Please make sure that we're on OCP partition.) 5. 'Local Traffic' -> 'Virtual Servers' -> 'devsecops_http_vs' -> Security -> Policies Please note that the ‘virtual server’ configuration is required in the BIG-IP before proceeding to this step. Configuring custom blocking page for F5 Advanced WAF 1.Click the security policy that was created (SRE_DEVSEC_01) 2.Go to 'Response and Blocking page' -> 'Blocking page default' -> 'Custom response' -> 'Response Body' <html><head><title>SRE DevSecOps Blocking Page</title></head><body><font color=red size=12>F5 Advanced WAF Blocking Page</font><br><br>Please consult with your administrator.<br><br>Your support ID is: <%TS.request.ID()%><br><br><a href='javascript:history.back();'>[Go Back]</a></body></html> Simulating the Attack The following steps show how to simulate the application-based attacks and to see how F5 Advanced WAF and NGINX App Protect can protect the applications efficiently. Preventing OWASP Top 10 Attacks - NetSecOps First, log in to the application through the GUI and go to the ‘Command Injection’ menu. And type the command ‘8.8.8.8 | cat /etc/passwd’ and click the ‘Submit’ button. If F5 Advanced WAF works correctly, you should be able to see the below ‘blocking page’. ·You can find the instructions from the Github link here how to simulate other attack types – SQL Injection, SSRF and XSS. Restrict file accessing based on the application types - DevSecOps 1.Access to application 01 on the browser with URL -> "http://your_app_domain.com/hackable/uploads/" 2.When the ‘PDF’ file is clicked on in this directory, the following blocking screen should be shown. Summary In modern application architectures, security concerns are becoming more serious. WAF is the major security solution available to enterprise applications. The security policy of the WAF has to protect backend applications correctly, but at the same time, it must also ensure legitimate user traffic access to the backend resources without creating issues. This sounds straightforward, but it is not easy to configure the right security policies to achieve both goals simultaneously. When it comes to modern application architectures, it is even more difficult to achieve this goal. Since traditional security teams lack understanding about the application flow inside a Kubernetes or OpenShift environment, it is challenging to apply the required security policies in the WAF to protect the microservices. Due to the nature of their microservices, different applications spin up and down frequently, and security requirements are also changed on a regular basis. The cybersecurity team needs to have a solution that can fit these unique requirements. For NetSecOps, they would require a solution that can have enterprise-level protection features and operational-efficiency for their SOC team. F5 Advanced WAF is designed to efficiently prevent known and unknown types of advanced application-based attacks, while NGINX App Protect easily provides ‘application-specific’ security policies for each application inside the microservice environment. The enterprises can acquire the proper protection for their modern app environment through the combination of F5 Advanced WAF and NGINX App Protect. Please visit the DevCentral GitHub repo and follow the guidelines to try this use-case in your environment.Making WAF Simple: Introducing the OWASP Compliance Dashboard
Whether you are a beginner or an expert, there is a truth that I want to let you in on; building and maintaining Web Application Firewall (WAF) security policies can be challenging. How much security do you really need? Is your configuration too much or too little? Have you created an operational nightmare? Many well-intentioned administrators will initially enable every available feature, thinking that it is providing additional security to the application, when in truth, it is hindering it. How, you may ask? False positives and noise. The more noise and false positives, the harder it becomes to find the real attacks and the increased likelihood that you begin disabling features that ARE providing essential security for your applications. So… less is better then? That isn't the answer either, what good are our security solutions if they aren't protecting against anything? The key to success and what we will look at further in this article, is implementing best practice controls that are both measurable and manageable for your organization. The OWASP Application Security Top 10 is a well-respected list of the ten most prevalent and dangerous application layer attacks that you almost certainly should protect your applications from. By first focusing your security controls on the items in the OWASP Top 10, you are improving the manageability of your security solution and getting the most "bang for your buck". Now, the challenge is, how do you take such a list and build real security protections for your applications? Introducing the OWASP Compliance Dashboard Protecting your applications against the OWASP Top 10 is not a new thing, in fact, many organizations have been taking this approach for quite some time. The challenge is that most implementations that claim to "protect" against the OWASP Top 10 rely solely on signature-based protections for only a small subset of the list and provide zero insight into your compliance status. The OWASP Compliance Dashboard introduced in version 15.0 on BIG-IP Advanced WAF reinvents this idea by providing a holistic and interactive dashboard that clearly measures your compliancy against the OWASP Application Security Top 10. The Top 10 is then broken down into specific security protections including both positive and negative security controls that can be enabled, disabled, or ignored directly on the dashboard. We realize that a WAF policy alone may not provide complete protection across the OWASP Top 10, this is why the dashboard also includes the ability to review and track the compliancy of best practices outside the scope of a WAF alone, such as whether the application is subject to routine patching or vulnerability scanning. To illustrate this, let’s assume I have created a brand new WAF policy using the Rapid Deployment policy template and accepted all default settings, what compliance score do you think this policy might have? Let's take a look. Interesting. The policy is 0/10 compliant and only A2 Broken Authentication and A3 Sensitive Data Exposure have partial compliance. Why is that? The Rapid Deployment template should include some protections by default, shouldn't it? Expanding A1 Injection, we see a list of protections required in order to be marked as compliant. Hovering over the list of attack signatures, we see that each category of signature is in 'Staging' mode, aha! Signatures in staging mode are not enforced and therefore cannot block traffic. Until the signature set is in enforced, we do not mark that protection as compliant. For those of you who have mistakenly left entities such as Signatures in staging for longer than desired, this is also a GREAT way to quickly find them. I also told you we could also interact with the dashboard to influence the compliancy score, lets demonstrate that. Each item can be enforced DIRECTLY on the dashboard by selecting the "Enforce" checkmark on the right. No need to go into multiple menus, you can enforce all these security settings on a single page and preview the compliance status immediately. If you are happy with your selection, click on "Review & Update" to perform a final review of what the dashboard will be configuring on your behalf before you can click on "Save & Apply Policy". Note: Enforcing signatures before a period of staging may not be a good idea depending on your environment. Staging provides a period to assess signature matches in order to eliminate false positives. Enforcing these signatures too quickly could result in the denying of legitimate traffic. Let's review the compliancy of our policy now with these changes applied. As you can see, A1 Injection is now 100% compliant and other categories have also had their score updated as a result of enforcing these signatures. The reason for this is because there is overlap in the security controls applied acrossthese other categories. Not all security controls can be fully implemented directly via the dashboard, and as mentioned previously, not all security controls are signature-based. A6 Cross-Site Scripting was recalculated as 50% complaint with the signatures we enforced previously so let's take a look at what else it required for full compliancy. The options available to us are to IGNORE the requirement, meaning we will be granted full compliancy for that item without implementing any protection, or we can manually configure the protection referenced. We may want to ignore a protection if it is not applicable to the application or if it is not in scope for your deployment. Be mindful that ignoring an item means you are potentially misrepresenting the score of your policy, be very certain that the protection you are ignoring is in fact not applicable before doing so. I've selected to ignore the requirement for "Disallowed Meta Characters in Parameters" and my policy is now 100% compliance for A7 Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). Lastly, we will look at items within the dashboard that fall outside the scope of WAF protections. Under A9 Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities, we are presented with a series of best practices such as “Application and system hardening”, “Application and system patching” and “Vulnerability scanner integration”. Using the dashboard, you can click on the checkmark to the right for "Requirement fulfilled" to indicate that your organization implements these best practices. By doing so, the OWASP Compliance score updates, providing you with real-time visibility into the compliancy for your application. Conclusion The OWASP Compliance Dashboard on BIG-IP Advanced WAF is a perfect fit for the security administrator looking to fine-tune and measure either existing or new WAF policies against the OWASP App Security Top 10. The OWASP Compliance Dashboard not only tracks WAF-specific security protections but also includes general best practices, allowing you to use the dashboard as your one-stop-shop to measure the compliancy for ALL your applications. For many applications, protection against the OWASP Top 10 may be enough, as it provides you with best practices to follow without having to worry about which features to implement and where. Note: Keep in mind that some applications may require additional controls beyond the protections included in the OWASP Top 10 list. For teams heavily embracing automation and CI/CD pipelines, logging into a GUI to perform changes likely does not sound appealing. In that case, I suggest reading more about our Declarative Advanced WAF policy framework which can be used to represent the WAF policies in any CI/CD pipeline. Combine this with the OWASP Compliance Dashboard for an at-a-glance assessment of your policy and you have the best of both worlds. If you're not already using the OWASP Compliance Dashboard, what are you waiting for? Look out for Bill Brazill, Victor Granic and myself (Kyle McKay) on June 10th at F5 Agility 2020 where we will be presenting and facilitating a class called "Protecting against the OWASP Top 10". In this class, we will be showcasing the OWASP Compliance Dashboard on BIG-IP Advanced WAF further and providing ample hands-on time fine-tuning and measuring WAF policies for OWASP Compliance. Hope to see you there! To learn more, visit the links below. Links OWASP Compliance Dashboard: https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K52596282 OWASP Application Security Top 10: https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/ Agility 2020: https://www.f5.com/agility/attendIntegrating OPSWAT MetaDefender with F5 Advanced WAF & BIG-IP ASM
In the age of digital economy, web applications have become the lifeblood of corporations, and protecting them is paramount for productivity and profitability. Many web servers which allow file uploadsare prime targets for malware attackson the client side, server side or both. The uploaded file could contain malicious code in the form of an exploit, virus, Trojan, or malware, and these could be used to gain control of the web server. For example, it is possible to hide PHP code inside an image file and still have it appear to be an ordinary image. When the image is opened, it also executes the code hidden in the file. The file could contain scripts or tags that exploit other well-known web application vulnerabilities, such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). A misconfigured web application can also be compromised by uploading a file, executing a web-shell, and moving laterally within the web server to get access to sensitive information and exfiltrate data. In the case of client-side attacks, uploading malicious files can make the website vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting or Cross-Site Content Hijacking. However, the attack can also be malicious for the client itself while simply using theweb applicationas a distribution channel/vector. Furthermore, advanced attacks can leverage productivity files distributed by your web application. These files areseemingly innocent, however on execution, malware will try to download the malicious payload which will run only in memory (with no trace/residue on disk). This is hard to track, and during the incident response analysis, the typical conclusion may point the finger at the web application even though the traffic was seemingly legitimate. Aworrying trend is the useof PowerShell as an attack vector by using macros as the onboarding mechanism. As an example, in the past two years,attackers have used PowerShell to deploy Trojan.Kotver obfuscated in the registry as a fileless infection to steal financial data. Attackers often use multiple vectors for distributing malicious code.One worrying example is the installation of application backdoors that communicate with their Command and Control (C&C) serversand proceed to exfiltrate data. Moreover, malware in some cases can use application servers to directly communicate with the C&C and thereby bypass the firewall rules. Typical security controls cannot understand and block such clever means of data theft, and, even if they occasionally do, threat actors can establish a foothold behind the firewall, steal credentials, conduct lateral movement and finally exfiltrate data. Without thorough inspection of files(including verification of file type, examination of embedded active objects and ability to verify malware-free content)other security mitigation approaches fall short. To address the challenges posed by file uploads and files attached to emails, F5 has teamed up with OPSWATto allow for comprehensive content analysis andsanitization. All F5 products such as BIG-IP LTM, BIG-IP ASM, Advanced WAF, and SSL Orchestrator that expose ICAP interface can take full Advantage of OPSWAT’s MetaDefendercapabilities.Thesecapabilities include thorough malware scanning using over 30 leading anti-malware enginesas well as Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) services for file sanitization and vulnerability assessment. OPSWAT Deployment In F5 Ecosystem MetaDefender Integration With F5 BIG-IP OPSWAT’s independently-deployable MetaDefender is built on proven technology that offers the in-depth customizable logic of OPSWAT Multiscanning for granular content inspection capability, greater capacity for file type analysis, archive extraction, and the power to remove all traces of detected malware from files without impacting usability or productivity. MetaDefender CDR detects and disables malicious active objects like embedded Macros, scripts (e.g. JavaScript), OLE objects, ActiveX controls and other potentially harmful elements. MetaDefender integrates seamlessly for total protection in file uploads (REQMOD) and file downloads (RESPMOD) while capable of deploying on-premises in cases where secure data workflow is of critical importance. Abstraction Of MetaDefender Platform ICAP performs content manipulation as a servicefor the appropriate client HTTP request or HTTP response. This service is also referred to as "content adaptation." Readymade F5 iApp templates available for MetaDefender provide configuration ease so that profile setting for application services is automated through a wizard. Once the iApp script runs, a profile is established and MetaDefender ICAP pool is defined. All that remains is to enable the profiles in the relevant field on the Virtual Server(s). F5 Advanced WAF/BIG-IP ASM act as anICAP client, which forwards the traffic to the ICAP server (MetaDefender) to support business-critical use cases such as file upload. The ICAP server executes its transformation service on messages and sends back responses to the F5 Advanced WAF/BIG-IP ASM. MetaDefender performs malware detection, data sanitization through CDR and either returns: A blocking page, showing that the content is either malicious or not in accordance withdefined policies Modifieddata (remove the sensitive information and/or potentially malicious payload through CDR) A clean bill of health to examined files Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) In Action One of the greatest benefits of using Metadafender ICAP Server is one-step configuration in the beginning of the integration. All future updates and enhancements may be rolled in without additional integration efforts. Moreover, automation of traffic steering by offloading file inspection to MetaDefender reduces administrative costs and enables DevSecOps to gain more value from investments already made in security services. F5 Advanced WAF and OPSWAT MetaDefender file content security To enable comprehensive malware checking and data sanitization capability in Advanced WAF/BIG-IP ASM, you should configure the system to connect with the OPSWAT MetaDefender ICAP Server. First, import the iApp Template from OPSWAT’s Github account. OPSWAT iApp Template List Second, create an Application by using the newly imported template: opswat_metadefender_icap OPSWAT Template Import This will generate the ICAP profiles and the MetaDefender ICAP Virtual Server (shown in screenshot below): Then, once the previous steps are completed, just apply the new profiles in the web app Virtual Server (Select Advanced) and choose Metadefender ICAP Request and/or Response Adapt Profile, as deemed appropriate (REQMOD or RESPMOD). Application Security Setting MetaDefender ICAP Server works with the default (virus header and URI) values out of the box so that you dont' need toconfigure internal system variables in the Configuration utility. After the above steps are completed, your web applications are protected against malicious files. To test the setup, simply use a test file such as eicar. Last,you can check ICAP History on OPSWAT MetaDefender ICAP Server side to view the archives of file analysis. Viewing File Upload/Download History In MetaDefender User Interface Since ICAP can perform a variety of services including Data Loss Prevention (DLP), deploying OPSWAT MetaDefender services through ICAP provides for seamless service additions without operational disturbance and the need to reconfigure web apps. This can apply to both request (client-to-server) and response (server-to-client) payloads.
AppSec Made Easy: Proactive Bot Defense
Learn how to use the F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall to easily protect your applications against bots. Bots can be used as tools for a variety of attacks such as DoS, credential stuffing and brute force, or web scraping. See the entire AppSec Made Easy series.Building Applications For The Rest Of Us With BIG-IQ 6
If you enjoy hoarding vast depths of knowledge from your business partners this article is not for you. If you want to provide a scalable and simplified deployment model to empower and enable your teams then read on my friend. Of of the two pieces of the BIG-IP Cloud Edition ecosystem, BIG-IQ 6.0 provides a streamlined way to deploy applications for the rest of us. Tying simplified application deployment to BIG-IP Per App Virtual Edition's auto-scaling functionality within AWS or VMWare, Cloud Edition provides scalable deployment models you've been looking for from F5. Quick application compliance is a button click away for any team wanting complete ADC and Advanced WAF features provided by BIG-IQ and BIG-IP. Using role-based access controls (RBAC) our below example will deploy an application with the assistance of a BIG-IP admin, a Security Manager, and Application Owner. A Template for You and A Template For You; Templates for Everyone! Our BIG-IP admin provides a service catalog of application templates to users who have roles allowing app creation/deployment. Predefining a service catalog gives them the ability to create traffic profiles and tune networking requirements without complicating the deployment process for his application owners. This keeps our BIG-IP admin in control of the network and applications traffic profiles running on it without slowing down deployments. In our example, they'llclone a BIG-IQ default template so the rest of the team can deploy a web application firewall (WAF) enabled application. Our security engineer will create his security policies based on corporate compliance requirements and Dwayne will apply Mick's security policies to the service catalog offerings. Mary our App Manager will choose the new WAF enabled catalog item to deploy a new application in front of her web servers. tl;dr - check out the pretty picture. BIG-IQ 6 comes with several prebuilt templates. They're quite useful for new BIG-IQ administrators to review so they'll see how service catalog items are built from preexisting BIG-IP profiles and configurations. The prebuilt templates, similar to default BIG-IP profiles, are not modified by administrators but cloned or used as references for new service catalog offerings. Note: Templates that do not define an HTTP profile cannot be deployed to a service-scaling group (used for auto-scaling in AWS and VMWare). Security Policies Our Security Manager needs to build a new WAF template for the upcoming application. They've been granted the Security Manger role within BIG-IQto create and manage security policies, relying on the BIG-IP admin to apply them to service catalog items. In this particular case our Security Managerwill edit the policy viol_subviol, change the learning mode to manual and make it available to application templates for use. To apply the new security policy, the BIG-IPadmin will clone the default f5-HTTPS-WAF-lb-template, in this case we're calling it f5-HTTPS-WAF-lb-custom1 (not too creative, I know). The admin can now select theupdated ASM policy viol_subviol and the logging profile templates-default for the virtual servers. Deploying A Service Catalog As An Applications With our creation complete our Application Owner can log into BIG-IQ and starting deploying. TheApplication Manager role wasgranted and will permit them to deploy, edit, and monitor applications (within allowances set by our admins service catalog template). When our App Manager logs in, they'll see a Application Manager specific dashboard; RBAC limits the Application Manager role's view and prevents access to device, security, or global configurations. They'llcreate a new application named site18.example.com (she's not very creative either) based on our predefined f5-HTTPS-WAF-lb-custom1 template. The only information our Application Managerneeds to provide tothe service catalog is the IP address of the virtual server, the IP address and ports open for the application servers, and the FQDN of her application. The Application Managerfills out the application template and clicks Create. BIG-IQ is off to the races to deploy the application and within minutes we'll sees a healthy status on the new site18.example.com application. NOTE: If there was a configuration issue or deployment failure, Dwayne our admin can tail the BIG-IQ logs at /var/log/restjavad.0.log to determine the cause. If the Applicaiton Managernoticed an issue they can click through the application dashboard to find out further details. In this case, the application is fine but they'll update the application health alert rules to coincide with the application's SLA. We can also request other people in the applicaitonteamaccess to monitor this application specifically without viewing others. Our BIG-IP adminhas no problem achieving this with RBAC. Reviewing Application Statistics Application deployment is complete and the Appteam has completed traffic and application testing. Our security manager will log back in, check the viol_subviol ASM policy and then accept the learning completed from thetesting. After that they'll change the enforcement mode to blocking. When our Application Managerlogs back in they can click on security within traffic diagram under Application Services. This will give them security specific analytics and configurations. "Start Blocking" is available for our managerto enable now now that traffic learning was accepted and applied to the system. Sooner or later some cranky people start sending us some malicious traffic some malice and we can view the changes in traffic behavior. Automating Your Deployments BIG-IQ can also assist with automation. BIG-IQ's use of RBAC allows administrators to create automation-centric service accounts for deployment and management needs. Administratorscan segregate service accounts based on unique requirements and further control your application lifecycles as you and your team see fit. ShouldApplication Manager have decided to deploy the application via Ansible they could have clicked View Sample API Request and BIG-IQ will provide the JSON snippet along with entered data to populate the playbook. Of course this is a one-off example but it's providing the template needed to deploy further applications should Ansible authenticate with the appropriate credentials. BIG-IQ 6is a significant step forward to provide ADC and Security functions in front of ALL of your applications, not just the mission critical. We just scratched the surface with application deployment in what BIG-IQ 6 can do for you. In our next article we'll cover auto-scaling applications using service scaling groups with BIG-IP Per App VE. Together BIG-IQ and Per App VE form BIG-IP Cloud Edition and a new way to protect and maintain all of your applications no matter how big or small. As always, if you have questions or feedback, please go to our BIG-IP Cloud Edition Discussion in Q&A. Happy Admining.Skies Never Looked So Good With BIG-IP Cloud Edition
Don't let the title fool you. Yes I know BIG-IP is already available in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and your various private cloud flavors. But there's something BIG-IP hasn't done yet in cloud environments. We've had auto-scaling for a while but we'veadded a new twist. BIG-IP Cloud Editiongives administrators the ability to automatically scale on a per App basiswithlower cost licensing.Combine autoscaling features with role-based access to applications, analytics, and security policies you're finally providing BIG-IP's ADC and Advanced WAF features where your teams need it. Application owners now have a seat at the infrastructure table without comprimising other systems. AnFAQ about BIG-IP Cloud Edition including Per App VE is available here. The BIG-IP Cloud Edition Pie There are three slices to this solution. The BIG-IQ Configuration Management slice, the Per App VE Slice, and your preferred cloud provider slice. As the FAQ stated, at launch BIG-IP Cloud Edition will support AWS and VMWare. Azure, Google and others will following in subsequent BIG-IQ releases. Let's discuss the BIG-IQ Slice. A slice of BIG-IQ 6.0 BIG-IQ is your portal into auto-scaling, role-based access controls, API application access, and reporting. Administrators will create a series of templates that application owners can use in a service catalog environment (or use REST API to manage through an external service catalog). Security teams can have WAF and traffic policies built-in and monitor security reports as they happen from RBAC customized dashboards. Dashboards give everyone visibility into the application configuration and health. Application owners can drill down to the individual application nodes to identify slow response times. Security admins can drill down to find out why one application keeps denying password changes. It's all customizable to meet your unique team's role requirements. A slice of BIG-IP Per App VE Building off this week's earlier discussion, when paired with BIG-IQ 6.0, Per App VE's can be deployed in BIG-IQ service scaling groups defined in BIG-IQ to expand and contract triggered by customizable thresholds. The Per App VE lower cost license options offer LTM and Advanced WAF BIG-IP modules in 25 and 200Mbps traffic rates. Using BIG-IQ as the license manager or using utility billing (where applicable) BIG-IP Per App VE provides the lightweight and quicker deployment times needed to meet application elasticity needs. A slice of Cloud As previously stated, BIG-IP Cloud Edition will initially launch with support for AWS and VMWare with other cloud providers soon to follow. Cloud Edition accesses the Per App VE scaling groups by using a cloud provider specific L4 traffic manager. For VMWare this is a special lower cost BIG-IP HA license. For AWS, we use ELB Classic to provide basic L4 traffic forwarding. As Per App VE's are scaled out, the service scalar is notified of additional nodes and configured as needed. Scaling groups give you several benefits beyond just auto-scaling. You can deploy BIG-IP in environments where you previously relied on monolithic devices. Auto-scaling may not be beneficial for VMWare, but allowing smaller one-off deployments for development teams is. For AWS, you can create regional service scaling groups and distribute out BIG-IP to different locations and VPC's as needed. RBAC and flexible device templates offer a exponential possibilities. Heck, just offer 1 Per App VE to development teams and scale up to 2 for throughput testing. For production apps, offer more. It's up to you. What's Next? BIG-IP already has success in private and public clouds for those critical applications that require robust and reliable ADC and Security features. On the flip side, it's still a Royal Rumble when different Ops groups needed to make changes. NetOps doesn't want SecOps to break traffic, while DevOps just want REST access to their apps so they can automate deployments and changes. BIG-IP Cloud Edition turns that no holds barred cage match into a family style pot luck where everyone brings their best dishes, everyone shares, and everyone leaves happy. Best. Analogy. Ever. If you have questions we've started a discussion board in our Q&A. Please feel free to ask questions, leave comments or just say hi. Happy admining.
