How Web Application Firewall (WAF) Architecture Works
It is unsettling that in September 2022, a hacker accessed the internal databases of the American multinational ride-sharing company, Uber.
The hacker must have gained access to Uber's secure data via social engineering, which involves manipulating or deceiving someone, often through email messaging or phone calls, to get access to personal and financial information.?
The hacker claimed to have persuaded an Uber contractor to disclose Uber's systems password by impersonating a corporate information technology worker.
According to Uber, it is also possible that the hacker obtained the corporate password on the black market.
Sounds scary, right?
So how do you go about securing your company's database?
Read on to find out.?
An Introduction to Web Application Firewall
A WAF protects your web applications by filtering, monitoring, and blocking any malicious HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP/S) traffic to the web application and preventing unauthorized data from leaving the app.
It accomplishes this by following a set of policies that aid in determining what traffic is malicious and what traffic is safe. It can deny access to any unauthorized access.
In the same way that a proxy server acts as an ambassador to protect a client's identity, a WAF works in the opposite direction—as a reverse proxy—to preserve the web app server from a potentially malicious client.
You can deliver WAFs as software, an appliance, or a service. You can tailor policies to meet the specific requirements of your web application or set of web applications.
A web application firewall protects you from common web exploits and bots, which can disrupt availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources.?
How WAF Architecture Works
The web application firewalls (WAFs) marketplace is diverse, with various deployment options based on an organization's application and security requirements.
Suppose you wish to advance your performance, reliability, and utilization architecture. In that case, you should place the WAF at the back of the load balancing tier, closer to the application it protects.
There are three types of WAFs: cloud-based, software, and hardware-based. Every kind of WAF has its advantages and disadvantages.
?Cloud-based WAFs
A cloud-based WAF is a low-cost, easy-to-implement turnkey deployment option that you can deploy quickly. Cloud-based WAFs typically have low upfront costs and are subscription-based.?
Cloud-based WAFs have constant access to threat intelligence and may also provide managed services to assist you in defining security rules and responding to attacks as they occur.
A cloud-based WAF should ideally be deployed in-line or as an API-based, out-of-path (OOP) service.?
An API-based Object Oriented Programming (OOP) deployment has several distinct advantages that allow optimization for multi-cloud environments, on-premise environments, hybrid environments, and so on.
Customizing WAF rules and rule groups should meet your application's needs and avoid false positives.
The Edge computing engine from Azion allows you to block potential threat with maximum effectiveness and the best user experience.
For the reasons listed below, cloud-based WAFs have become the preferred deployment type for most organizations worldwide in recent years.
Why You Should Use A Cloud-Based WAF?
Cloud-based WAFs have numerous benefits and drawbacks that prospective buyers should consider.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Web Application Firewall Based On Software(WAF)
You can use a software-based web application firewall instead of a hardware-based WAF. A software-based WAF operates as a virtual appliance or agent, either locally (on-premise) or in a private or public cloud.
WAFs are also specifically designed to protect east-west traffic in container-based microservices environments like Kubernetes.
While many WAFs scale well, they can still be overwhelmed by flash traffic or attacks.
Who Should Use A WAF Based On Software?
Organizations with applications hosted in private and public cloud data centers typically use software-based WAFs.
They may also be popular with organizations that need more money and capability to support hardware-based WAFs but want to manage their own WAF or are hesitant to deploy a cloud-based WAF.
Web Application Based on Hardware Firewall (WAF)?
It involves you installing a hardware-based web application firewall on a network. Because hardware components require maintenance and storage space, these are the most expensive types of WAFs. Their primary goal is to reduce latency.
Hardware-based WAFs have become increasingly obsolete in recent years as cloud-based and Edge based WAFs have become the dominant deployment type.
Who Should Use a WAF Based on Hardware?
Large organizations with the budget and personnel to manage on-premise appliances and IT infrastructure frequently use hardware-based WAFs.
Furthermore, organizations will use hardware-based WAFs when application speed and performance are critical or when running sensitive applications in on-premise environments, such as government institutions, national security agencies, the defense industry, etc.
Points you should consider;
Advantages
Disadvantages
How WAF offers Protection Against Top Attacks
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A web application firewall is typically installed logically between users and web servers, analyzing and comparing network traffic with the vulnerability database.
In addition, a WAF policy creates a set of rules to protect your website and detect malicious traffic. It usually blocks this traffic, but you can configure it only to monitor it.
For instance, Azion’s WAF allows you to add a web application firewall option for existing web application solutions.
How?
It enables you to develop zero-trust security architectures, write and activate serverless applications, improve digital distribution experience, and build innovative IoT use cases.?
Furthermore, Azion's Multi-Access WAF assists service providers in virtualizing their infra Edge (MEC).
You can also use network firewalls to monitor HTTP(S) requests forwarded to your secured web application resources.
Traditional firewalls do not block encrypted HTTPS traffic because they cannot see the content.
The web application firewall is a reverse proxy server. You can use LoadMaster load balancers as both reverse proxy servers and WAFs. To prevent web attacks, this hides application servers from clients.??
A WAF policy has an application layer 7 in the Open Systems Interconnection Models(OSI) defense, but its custom security rules cannot defend against all attacks.
This method of attack mitigation is typically part of a suite of tools whose load balancing form a comprehensive defense against various attack vectors.
Here's a rundown of the key WAF security features that comprise WAF detection and prevention strategies.
This approach, however, may not be effective against novel attack patterns. CDN (Content delivery network): A network-deployed cloud-based WAF can provide a CDN for website caching and improving load times.
Examples of delivered WAF protection include;?
Cookie Tampering
Client-side cookie tampering is a technique for tampering with information stored on a user's web browser and manipulating it so that it can be used maliciously, such as hijacking a user's session on a website or application.
Hackers use cookies to track and maintain states across HTTP sessions and in authentication and authorization processes.
Hackers can also use cookies to carry out many attacks (SQL injection, XSS, buffer overflow, and integer overflow) by injecting negative values into them.
WAF protects against cookie poisoning.
Cross-Site Request Forgery(CSRF)
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF or XSRF) attacks cause a web application to execute unwanted commands.?
These exploits take the user's authorization level and appear genuine to the application to which the user logs in. has authenticated.?
A WAF policy prevents CSRF attempts by inspecting referrer headers on their data path.
Injection Attacks
These security flaws enable an attacker to introduce code into a program, query, or install malware on a computer to implement remote commands which can modify a database or change data on a website.
WAF protects against such attacks by monitoring client HTTP traffic flows for malicious injection patterns and preventing unauthorized execution.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS attacks target common vulnerabilities in web-based applications by sending scripts invisibly activated by clients when loaded. These attacks use malicious code, which allows for the theft of user identities, the poisoning of cookies, and malicious redirection.
A web application firewall is application security that prevents XSS attacks. WAFs can detect bots and other malicious activity indicative of an attack. You can prevent attacks before you run any script.
Preventing Data Loss?
Unauthorized transmission of sensitive data from a network can occur maliciously or unintentionally. There is a broad range of reasons for data leaks.
Web application firewall prevents the malicious or unintentional transfer of sensitive content out of application infrastructures by inspecting and denying egress traffic containing unauthorized data.
Buffer Overflow Protection
A buffer overflow happens when the volume of data exceeds the memory buffer's storage capacity.?
As a result, the writing program fails. Data to the buffer overwrites memory locations adjacent to it.
Attackers take advantage of buffer overflow issues by overwriting an application's memory.?
Overwriting alters the program's execution path, resulting in a response that damages files or exposes private information.?
A WAF policy allows legitimate traffic while preventing horrible traffic. With an enterprise-class cloud WAF, you can protect your applications on and off the edge.
Denial of Service Protection
Cloud-based platforms can protect you against distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS).
If the web application firewall detects a DDoS attack, it can route the traffic to a DDoS protection platform that can handle large attacks.
Botnet Attack Preventions
A botnet is an Internet-connected network of devices. Each runs one or more bots.?
Hackers can use botnets to launch Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and gain access to the device and its connection.
Create WAF to detect and prevent distributed botnet-based DDoS attacks from overloading application servers.
Using Edge Firewall As a Modern Approach To Security
Edge WAF is a type of data protection that protects corporate assets that are no longer housed within the secure confines of a consolidated datacenter
It is used to protect consumers and apps at the "Edge" of a corporate servers, where sensitive data is particularly susceptible to security threats.
You should use Edge WAF since it is? a parallel software paradigm that places your computation and file storage as close to the point of suggestion as possible to provide low latency and save bandwidth.
Edge WAF deployment would be ideal in situations where IoT devices have poor connectivity and it is inefficient for IoT devices to be constantly connected to the cloud.
How Azion Edge Firewall Can Help You Prevent Attacks?
Azion is a full-stack Edge platform that makes building better, faster applications easier. We can help you orchestrate your multi-cloud, on-premise, or remote-device deployment.
Stop false positives and protect apps and APIs with a DevOps-like automated solution that provides precise prevention, zero policy administration, and automated deployment in any environment.
With Azion's Data Streaming connectors, you can collect real-time data and channel it to your Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system and data analysis platforms for computer controlled incident response.
Talk to us today to learn how Azion’s Edge based web application firewall on Azure CDN service protects your web applications from malicious attacks.?