What Are the Differences Between WAF Forwarding and Nginx Forwarding?
Nginx directly forwards access requests to the origin server, while WAF detects and filters out malicious traffic and then forwards only the normal access requests to the origin server. The details are as follows:
- WAF forwarding
After a website is connected to WAF, all access requests pass through WAF. WAF detects HTTP(S) requests to identify and block a wide range of attacks, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting attacks, web shell uploads, command/code injection, file inclusion, sensitive file access, third-party application vulnerability attacks, CC attacks, malicious crawlers, cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. Then, WAF sends normal traffic to the origin server. In this way, security, stability, and availability of your web applications are assured.Figure 1 How WAF works for CNAME or dedicated access
- Nginx forwarding
Nginx works as a reverse proxy server. After receiving the access request from the client, the reverse proxy server directly forwards the access request to the web server and returns the result obtained from the web server to the client. The reverse proxy server is installed in the website equipment room. It functions as a proxy for the web server to receive and forward access requests.
The reverse proxy server prevents malicious attacks from the Internet to intranet servers, caches data to reduce workloads on the intranet servers, and implements access security control and load balancing.Figure 2 How Nginx Works
WAF Functions FAQs
- Can WAF Protect an IP Address?
- What Objects Does WAF Protect?
- Does WAF Block Customized POST Requests?
- Does WAF Protect Traffic from Both IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses?
- What Are the Differences Between the Web Tamper Protection Functions of WAF and HSS?
- Which Web Service Framework Protocols Does WAF Support?
- Can WAF Protect Websites Accessed Through HSTS or NTLM Authentication?
- What Are the Differences Between WAF Forwarding and Nginx Forwarding?
- What Are the Differences Between WAF and CFW?
- Can I Configure Session Cookies in WAF?
- How Does WAF Detect SQL Injection, XSS, and PHP Injection Attacks?
- Can WAF Defend Against the Apache Struts2 Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2021-31805)?
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