Functions

WAF makes it easier for you to handle web security risks.

Protection for IP Addresses and Domain Names (Wildcard, Top-level, and Second-Level Domain Names)

WAF offers the cloud and dedicated modes to protect websites. You can add either domain names or IP addresses to WAF. Before you start, get familiar with the following differences:

Cloud mode: protects your cloud and on-premises web applications as long as they have domain names.
Dedicated mode: protects your cloud web applications as long as they have domain names or IP addresses.

HTTP/HTTPS Service Protection

WAF keeps applications stable and secure. It examines HTTP and HTTPS requests to detect and block attacks, such as Structure Query Language (SQL) injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), web shells, command or code injections, file inclusion, sensitive file access, third-party vulnerability exploits, CC attacks, malicious crawlers, and cross-site request forgery (CSRF).

WebSocket/WebSockets

WAF supports the WebSocket/WebSockets protocol, which is enabled by default.

PCI DSS/PCI 3DS Compliance Certification and TLS Checks

TLS has three versions (TLS v1.0, TLS v1.1, and TLS v1.2) and seven cipher suites. You can select the one best fits your business needs.
WAF supports PCI DSS and PCI 3DS compliance certification check.

Basic Web Protection

With an extensive preset reputation database, WAF defends against Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10 threats, vulnerability exploits, web shells, and other threats.

All-around protection
WAF detects and blocks varied attacks, such as SQL injection, XSS, remote overflow vulnerabilities, file inclusions, Bash vulnerabilities, directory (path) traversal attacks, sensitive file access, command and code injections, web shells, backdoors, malicious HTTP requests, and third-party vulnerability exploits.
Precise identification
- WAF uses built-in semantic analysis engine and regex engine and supports configuring of blacklist/whitelist rules, which reduces false positives.
- WAF supports anti-escape and automatic restoration of common codes, which improves the capability of recognizing deformation web attacks.
  WAF can decode the following types of code: url_encode, Unicode, XML, OCT, hexadecimal, HTML escape, and base64 code, case confusion, JavaScript, shell, and PHP concatenation confusion

CC Attack Prevention

A CC attack protection rule can limit access to a specific path (URL) of the protected website based on a specific IP address, cookie, or referer in access requests. So, WAF can accurately identify and mitigate CC attacks, such as brute-force attacks by exploiting weak passwords. Protective actions of CC attack protection rules include Verification code, Block, Dynamically block, and Log only.

Flexible policy configuration
WAF allows you to flexibly set rate limiting policies by IP address, cookie, or Referer field.
Returned page customization
You can customize returned content and page types to meet diverse service needs.

GUI-based Security Data

WAF provides a GUI-based interface for you to monitor attack information and event logs in real time.

Centralized policy configuration
On the WAF console, you can configure policies applicable to multiple protected domain names in a centralized manner so that the policies can be quickly delivered and take effect.
Traffic and event statistics
WAF displays the number of requests, the number and types of security events, and log information in real time.

Non-Standard Ports

WAF can protect standard ports, such as 80 and 443 and a wide range of non-standard ports.

**Table 1** Ports supported by WAF
Deployment Mode	Port Category	HTTP Protocol	HTTPS Protocol	Port Limit
Cloud mode	Standard ports	80	443	Unlimited
Cloud mode	Non-standard ports (86 in total)	81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 800, 808, 5000, 8000, 8001, 8002, 8003, 8008, 8009, 8010, 8020, 8021, 8022, 8025, 8026, 8077, 8078, 8080, 8085, 8086, 8087, 8088, 8089, 8090, 8091, 8092, 8093, 8094, 8095, 8096, 8097, 8098, 8106, 8118, 8181, 8334, 8336, 8800, 8686, 8888, 8889, 8999, 8011, 8012, 8013, 8014, 8015, 8016, 8017, and 8070	4443, 5443, 6443, 7443, 8081, 8082, 8083, 8084, 8443, 8843, 9443, 8553, 8663, 9553, 9663, 18110, 18381, 18980, 28443, 18443, 8033, 18000, 19000, 7072, 7073, 8803, 8804, and 8805	20
Dedicated mode	Standard ports	80	443	Unlimited
Dedicated mode	Non-standard ports (182 in total)	9945, 9770, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 800, 808, 1000, 1090, 3128, 3333, 3501, 3601, 4444, 5000, 5222, 5555, 5601, 6001, 6666, 6788, 6789, 6842, 6868, 7000, 7001, 7002, 7003, 7004, 7005, 7006, 7009, 7010, 7011, 7012, 7013, 7014, 7015, 7016, 7018, 7019, 7020, 7021, 7022, 7023, 7024, 7025, 7026, 7070, 7081, 7082, 7083, 7088, 7097, 7777, 7800, 7979, 8000, 8001, 8002, 8003, 8008, 8009, 8010, 8020, 8021, 8022, 8025, 8026, 8077, 8078, 8080, 8085, 8086, 8087, 8088, 8089, 8090, 8091, 8092, 8093, 8094, 8095, 8096, 8097, 8098, 8106, 8118, 8181, 8334, 8336, 8800, 8686, 8888, 8889, 8989, 8999, 9000, 9001, 9002, 9003, 9080, 9200, 9802, 10000, 10001, 10080, 12601, 86, 9021, 9023, 9027, 9037, 9081, 9082, 9201, 9205, 9207, 9208, 9209, 9210, 9211, 9212, 9213, 48800, 87, 97, 7510, 9180, 9898, 9908, 9916, 9918, 9919, 9928, 9929, 9939, 28080, 33702, 8011, 8012, 8013, 8014, 8015, 8016, 8017, and 8070	8750, 8445, 18010, 4443, 5443, 6443, 7443, 8081, 8082, 8083, 8084, 8443, 8843, 9443, 8553, 8663, 9553, 9663, 18110, 18381, 18980, 28443, 18443, 8033, 18000, 19000, 7072, 7073, 8803, 8804, 8805, 9999	Unlimited

Precise Protection

Support precise logic- and parameter-based access control policies.

A variety of parameter conditions
Set conditions with combinations of common HTTP parameters, such as IP, URL, Referer, User Agent, Params, and Header.
Abundant logical conditions
WAF blocks or allows traffic based on logical conditions, such as "Include", "Exclude", "Equal to", "Not equal to", "Prefix is", and "Prefix is not."

Malicious Scanner and Crawler Prevention

Blocks web page crawling with user-defined scanner and crawler rules. This feature improves protection accuracy.

IP Address Blacklist and Whitelist

This function allows you to blacklist or whitelist IP addresses or an IP address range to improve defense accuracy.

Known Attack Source

If WAF blocks a malicious request by IP address, Cookie, or Params, you can configure a known attack source rule to let WAF automatically block all requests from the attack source for a blocking duration set in the known attack source rule.
Known attack source rules can be set based on attacks blocked against the basic web protection, precise access protection, and blacklist and whitelist rules.

Connection Protection

If a large number of 502 Bad Gateway or 504 Gateway Timeout errors are detected, you can enable WAF breakdown protection and connection protection to let WAF suspend your website and protect your origin servers from being crashed. When the 502/504 error requests and pending URL requests reach the thresholds you configure, WAF starts corresponding protection for your website.

Configuring Connection Timeout

The default timeout duration for connections between a browser and WAF is 120 seconds, which cannot be manually set.
The default timeout duration for connections between WAF and your origin server is 60 seconds. If you use a dedicated WAF instance or cloud WAF instance in the professional edition (the formerly enterprise edition) or platinum edition (the formerly ultimate edition), you can customize a timeout duration.
In the Basic Information area on the website information page, enable Timeout Settings. Then, click next to WAF-to-Server Connection Timeout, Read Timeout, and Write Timeout, modify settings one by one, and click to save.

Geolocation Access Control

You can allow some web requests and block others based on the geographical locations of IP addresses that the requests originate from.

Web Page Tampering Prevention

You can configure cache for static web pages. When a user accesses a web page, the system returns a cached page to the user and randomly checks whether the page is tampered with.

Anti-Crawler Protection

This function dynamically analyzes website service models and accurately identifies crawler behavior based on data risk control and bot identification systems, such as JS Challenge.

Feature library
Blocks web page crawling with user-defined scanner and crawler rules. This feature improves protection accuracy.
JavaScript
Identifies and blocks JavaScript crawling with user-defined rules.

Global Protection Whitelist (formerly False Alarm Masking)

This function enables you to ignore certain attack detection rules for specific requests.

Data Masking

WAF masks sensitive information, such as usernames and passwords, in the event log.

Information Leakage Prevention

WAF prevents your sensitive information from being disclosed on web pages, such as ID numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Reliable

WAF can be deployed on multiple clusters in multiple regions based on the load balancing principle. This can prevent single point of failures (SPOFs) and ensure online smooth capacity expansion, maximizing service stability.