Help Center/ Web Application Firewall/ User Guide (ME-Abu Dhabi Region) / Policies/ Configuring a Global Protection Whitelist Rule to Ignore False Alarms
Updated on 2024-03-14 GMT+08:00

Configuring a Global Protection Whitelist Rule to Ignore False Alarms

Once an attack hits a WAF basic web protection rule or a feature-library anti-crawler rule, WAF will respond to the attack immediately according to the protective action (Log only or Block) you configured for the rule and display an event on the Events page.

You can add false alarm masking rules to let WAF ignore certain rule IDs or event types (for example, skip XSS checks for a specific URL).

  • If you select All protection for Ignore WAF Protection, all WAF rules do not take effect, and WAF allows all request traffic to the domain names in the rule.
  • If you select Basic Web Protection for Ignore WAF Protection, you can ignore basic web protection by rule ID, attack type, or all built-in rules. For example, if XSS check is not required for a URL, you can whitelist XSS rule.

Prerequisites

A website has been added to WAF.

Constraints

  • If you select All protection for Ignore WAF Protection, all WAF rules do not take effect, and WAF allows all request traffic to the domain names in the rule.
  • If you select Basic web protection for Ignore WAF Protection, global protection whitelist rules take effect only for events triggered against WAF built-in rules in Basic Web Protection and anti-crawler rules under Feature Library.
    • Basic web protection rules

      Basic web protection defends against common web attacks, such as SQL injection, XSS attacks, remote buffer overflow attacks, file inclusion, Bash vulnerability exploits, remote command execution, directory traversal, sensitive file access, and command and code injections. Basic web protection also detects web shells and evasion attacks.

    • Feature-based anti-crawler protection

      Feature-based anti-crawler identifies and blocks crawler behavior from search engines, scanners, script tools, and other crawlers.

  • It takes several minutes for a new rule to take effect. After the rule takes effect, protection events triggered by the rule will be displayed on the Events page.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the management console.
  2. Click in the upper left corner of the management console and select a region or project.
  3. Click in the upper left corner and choose Web Application Firewall under Security & Compliance.
  4. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Policies.
  5. Click the name of the target policy to go to the protection configuration page.
  6. In the Global Protection Whitelist configuration area, click Status if needed. Then, click Customize Rule.

    Figure 1 Global Protection Whitelist configuration area

  7. In the upper left corner above the Global Protection Whitelist rule list, click Add Rule.
  8. Add a global protection whitelist rule by referring to Table 1.

    Figure 2 Add Global Protection Whitelist Rule
    Table 1 Parameters

    Parameter

    Description

    Example Value

    Scope

    • All domain names: By default, this rule will be used to all domain names that are protected by the current policy.
    • Specified domain names: Specify a domain name range this rule applies to.

    Specified domain names

    Domain Name

    This parameter is mandatory when you select Specified domain names for Scope.

    Enter a single domain name that matches the wildcard domain name being protected by the current policy.

    www.example.com

    Condition List

    Click Add to add conditions. At least one condition needs to be added. You can add up to 30 conditions to a protection rule. If more than one condition is added, all of the conditions must be met for the rule to be applied. A condition includes the following parameters:

    Parameters for configuring a condition are described as follows:
    • Field
    • Subfield: Configure this field only when Params, Cookie, or Header is selected for Field.
      NOTICE:

      The length of a subfield cannot exceed 2,048 bytes. Only digits, letters, underscores (_), and hyphens (-) are allowed.

    • Logic: Select a logical relationship from the drop-down list.
    • Content: Enter or select the content that matches the condition.

    Path, Include, /product

    Ignore WAF Protection

    • All protection: All WAF rules do not take effect, and WAF allows all request traffic to the domain names in the rule.
    • Basic web protection: You can ignore basic web protection by rule ID, attack type, or all built-in rules. For example, if XSS check is not required for a URL, you can whitelist XSS rule.

    Basic web protection

    Ignored Protection Type

    If you select Basic web protection for Ignored Protection Type, specify the following parameters:

    • ID: Configure the rule by event ID.
    • Attack type: Configure the rule by attack type, such as XSS and SQL injection. One type contains one or more rule IDs.
    • All built-in rules: all checks enabled in Basic Web Protection.

    Attack type

    Rule ID

    This parameter is mandatory when you select ID for Ignored Protection Type.

    Rule ID of a misreported event in Events whose type is not Custom. You are advised to handle false alarms on the Events page.

    041046

    Rule Type

    This parameter is mandatory when you select Attack type for Ignored Protection Type.

    Select an attack type from the drop-down list box.

    WAF can defend against XSS attacks, web shells, SQL injection attacks, malicious crawlers, remote file inclusions, local file inclusions, command injection attacks, and other attacks.

    SQL injection

    Rule Description

    A brief description of the rule. This parameter is optional.

    SQL injection attacks are not intercepted.

    Advanced Settings

    To ignore attacks of a specific field, specify the field in the Advanced Settings area. After you add the rule, WAF will stop blocking attack events of the specified field.

    Select a target field from the first drop-down list box on the left. The following fields are supported: Params, Cookie, Header, Body, and Multipart.
    • If you select Params, Cookie, or Header, you can select All or Field to configure a subfield.
    • If you select Body or Multipart, you can select All.
    • If you select Cookie, the Domain Name box for the rule can be empty.
    NOTE:

    If All is selected, WAF will not block all attack events of the selected field.

    Params

    All

  9. Click Confirm.

Related Operations

  • To disable a rule, click Disable in the Operation column of the rule. The default Rule Status is Enabled.
  • To modify a rule, click Modify in the row containing the rule.
  • To delete a rule, click Delete in the row containing the rule.