high performance WAF platform with Naxsi and HAProxy

http://blog.exceliance.fr/2012/10/16/high-performance-waf-platform-with-naxsi-and-haproxy/

Synopsis

I’ve already described WAF in a previous article, where I spoke about WAF scalability with apache and modsecurity.
One of the main issue with Apache and modsecurity is the performance. To address this issue, an alternative exists:naxsi, a Web Application Firewall module fornginx.

So using Naxsi and HAProxy as a load-balancer, we’re able to build a platform which meets the following requirements:

• Web Application Firewall: achieved by Apache andmodsecurity
• High-availability: application server and WAF monitoring, achieved byHAProxy
• Scalability: ability to adapt capacity to the upcoming volume of traffic, achieved byHAProxy
• DDOS protection: blind and brutal attacks protection, slowloris protection, achieved byHAProxy
• Content-Switching: ability to route only dynamic requests to the WAF, achieved byHAProxy
• Reliability: ability to detect capacity overusage, this is achieved byHAProxy
• Performance: deliver response as fast as possible, achieved by the whole platform

The picture below provides a better overview:

The LAB platform is composed by 6 boxes:

• 2 ALOHA Load-Balancers (could be replaced by HAProxy 1.5-dev)
• 2 WAF servers: CentOS 6.0, nginx and Naxsi
• 2 Web servers: Debian + apache + PHP + dokuwiki

Nginx and Naxsi installation on CentOS 6

Purpose of this article is not to provide such procedue. So please read this wiki article which summarizeshow to install nginx and naxsi on CentOS 6.0.

Diagram

The diagram below shows the platform with HAProxy frontends (prefixed byft_) and backends (prefixed by bk_). Each farm is composed by 2 servers.

Configuration

Nginx and Naxsi

Configure nginx as a reverse-proxy which listen in bk_waf and forward traffic to ft_web. In the mean time, naxsi is there to analyze the requests.

01

server {

02	proxy_set_header Proxy-Connection "";

03	listen       192.168.10.15:81;

04	access_log  /var/log/nginx/naxsi_access.log;

05	error_log  /var/log/nginx/naxsi_error.log debug;

06

07	location / {

08	include    /etc/nginx/test.rules;

09	proxy_pass http://192.168.10.2:81/;

10

}

11

12	error_page 403 /403.html;

13	location = /403.html {

14	root /opt/nginx/html;

15

internal;

16

}

17

18	location /RequestDenied {

19	return 403;

20

}

21

}

HAProxy Load-Balancer configuration

The configuration below allows the following advanced features:

• DDOS protection on the frontend
• abuser or attacker detection in bk_waf and blocking on the public interface (ft_waf)
• Bypassing WAF when overusage or unavailable

001	######## Default values for all entries till next defaults section

002

defaults

003	option  http-server-close

004	option  dontlognull

005	option  redispatch

006	option  contstats

007

retries 3

008	timeout connect 5s

009	timeout http-keep-alive 1s

010	# Slowloris protection

011	timeout http-request 15s

012	timeout queue 30s

013	timeout tarpit 1m          # tarpit hold tim

014	backlog 10000

015

016	# public frontend where users get connected to

017	frontend ft_waf

018	bind 192.168.10.2:80 name http

019

mode http

020	log global

021	option httplog

022	timeout client 25s

023	maxconn 10000

024

025	# DDOS protection

026	# Use General Purpose Couter (gpc) 0 in SC1 as a global abuse counter

027	# Monitors the number of request sent by an IP over a period of 10 seconds

028	stick-table type ip size 1m expire 1m store gpc0,http_req_rate(10s),http_err_rate(10s)

029	tcp-request connection track-sc1 src

030	tcp-request connection reject if { sc1_get_gpc0 gt 0 }

031	# Abuser means more than 100reqs/10s

032	acl abuse sc1_http_req_rate(ft_web) ge 100

033	acl flag_abuser sc1_inc_gpc0(ft_web)

034	tcp-request content reject if abuse flag_abuser

035

036	acl static path_beg /static/ /dokuwiki/images/

037	acl no_waf nbsrv(bk_waf) eq 0

038	acl waf_max_capacity queue(bk_waf) ge 1

039	# bypass WAF farm if no WAF available

040	use_backend bk_web if no_waf

041	# bypass WAF farm if it reaches its capacity

042	use_backend bk_web if static waf_max_capacity

043	default_backend bk_waf

044

045	# WAF farm where users' traffic is routed first

046	backend bk_waf

047	balance roundrobin

048

mode http

049	log global

050	option httplog

051	option forwardfor header X-Client-IP

052	option httpchk HEAD /waf_health_check HTTP/1.0

053

054	# If the source IP generated 10 or more http request over the defined period,

055	# flag the IP as abuser on the frontend

056	acl abuse sc1_http_err_rate(ft_waf) ge 10

057	acl flag_abuser sc1_inc_gpc0(ft_waf)

058	tcp-request content reject if abuse flag_abuser

059

060	# Specific WAF checking: a DENY means everything is OK

061	http-check expect status 403

062	timeout server 25s

063	default-server inter 3s rise 2 fall 3

064	server waf1 192.168.10.15:81 maxconn 100 weight 10 check

065	server waf2 192.168.10.16:81 maxconn 100 weight 10 check

066

067	# Traffic secured by the WAF arrives here

068	frontend ft_web

069	bind 192.168.10.2:81 name http

070

mode http

071	log global

072	option httplog

073	timeout client 25s

074	maxconn 1000

075	# route health check requests to a specific backend to avoid graph pollution in ALOHA GUI

076	use_backend bk_waf_health_check if { path /waf_health_check }

077	default_backend bk_web

078

079	# application server farm

080	backend bk_web

081	balance roundrobin

082

mode http

083	log global

084	option httplog

085	option forwardfor

086	cookie SERVERID insert indirect nocache

087	default-server inter 3s rise 2 fall 3

088	option httpchk HEAD /

089	# get connected on the application server using the user ip

090	# provided in the X-Client-IP header setup by ft_waf frontend

091	source 0.0.0.0 usesrc hdr_ip(X-Client-IP)

092	timeout server 25s

093	server server1 192.168.10.11:80 maxconn 100 weight 10 cookie server1 check

094	server server2 192.168.10.12:80 maxconn 100 weight 10 cookie server2 check

095

096	# backend dedicated to WAF checking (to avoid graph pollution)

097	backend bk_waf_health_check

098	balance roundrobin

099

mode http

100	log global

101	option httplog

102	option forwardfor

103	default-server inter 3s rise 2 fall 3

104	timeout server 25s

105	server server1 192.168.10.11:80 maxconn 100 weight 10 check

106	server server2 192.168.10.12:80 maxconn 100 weight 10 check

Detecting attacks

On the load-balancer

The ft_waf frontend stick table tracks two information: http_req_rate and http_err_rate which are respectively the http request rate and the http error rate generated by a single IP address.
HAProxy would automatically block an IP which has generated more than 100 requests over a period of 10s or 10 errors (WAF detection 403 responses included) in 10s. The user is blocked for 1 minute as long as he keeps on abusing.
Of course, you can setup above values to whatever you need: it is fully flexible.

To know the status of IPs in your load-balancer, just run the command below:

echo show table ft_waf | socat /var/run/haproxy.stat - 
# table: ft_waf, type: ip, size:1048576, used:1
0xc33304: key=192.168.10.254 use=0 exp=4555 gpc0=0 http_req_rate(10000)=1 http_err_rate(10000)=1

Note: The ALOHA Load-balancer does not provide watch tool, but you can monitor the content of the table in live with the command below:

while true ; do echo show table ft_waf | socat /var/run/haproxy.stat - ; sleep 2 ; clear ; done

On the Waf

Every Naxsi error log appears in /var/log/nginx/naxsi_error.log. IE:

2012/10/16 13:40:13 [error] 10556#0: *10293 NAXSI_FMT: ip=192.168.10.254&server=192.168.10.15&uri=/testphp.vulnweb.com/artists.php&total_processed=3195&total_blocked=2&zone0=ARGS&id0=1000&var_name0=artist, client: 192.168.10.254, server: , request: "GET /testphp.vulnweb.com/artists.php?artist=0+div+1+union%23foo*%2F*bar%0D%0Aselect%23foo%0D%0A1%2C2%2Ccurrent_user HTTP/1.1", host: "192.168.10.15:81"

Naxsi log line is less obvious than modsecurity one. The rule which matched os provided by the argumentidX=abcde.
No false positive during the test, I had to build a request to make Naxsi match it .

conclusion

Today, we saw it’s easy to build a scalable and performing WAF platform in front of any web application.
The WAF is able to communicate to HAProxy which IPs to automatically blacklist (throuth error rate monitoring), which is convenient since the attacker won’t bother the WAF for a certain amount of time
The platform allows to detect WAF farm availability and to bypass it in case of total failure, we even saw it is possible to bypass the WAF for static content if the farm is running out of capacity. Purpose is to deliver a good end-user experience without dropping too much the security.
Note that it is possible to route all the static content to the web servers (or a static farm) directly, whatever the status of the WAF farm.
This make me say that the platform is fully scallable and flexible.
Thanks to HAProxy, the architecture is very flexible: I could switch my apache + modexurity to nginx + naxsi with no issues at all This could be done as well for any third party waf appliances.
Note that I did not try any naxsi advanced features like learning mode and the UI as well.

Related links

• naxsi
• HTTP request flood mitigation
• Use a load-balancer as a first row of defense against DDOS

Links

• Exceliance
• Aloha load balancer: HAProxy based LB appliance
• HAPee: HAProxy Enterprise Edition