Protection Configuration Overview

This topic walks you through how to configure WAF protection policies, how WAF engine works, and protection rule priorities.

Process of Configuring Policies

After your website is connected to WAF, you need to configure a protection policy for it.

Table 1 Configurable protection rules

Protection Rule

Description

Reference

Basic web protection rules

With an extensive reputation database, WAF defends against Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10 threats, and detects and blocks threats, such as malicious scanners, IP addresses, and web shells.

Configuring Basic Protection Rules to Defend Against Common Web Attacks

CC attack protection rules

CC attack protection rules can be customized to restrict access to a specific URL on your website based on a unique IP address, cookie, or referer field, mitigating CC attacks.

Configuring CC Attack Protection Rules to Defend Against CC Attacks

Precise protection rules

You can customize protection rules by combining HTTP headers, cookies, URLs, request parameters, and client IP addresses.

Configuring Custom Precise Protection Rules

Blacklist and whitelist rules

You can configure blacklist and whitelist rules to block, log only, or allow access requests from specified IP addresses.

Configuring IP Address Blacklist and Whitelist Rules to Block or Allow Specified IP Addresses

Known attack source rules

These rules can block the IP addresses from which blocked malicious requests originate. These rules are dependent on other rules.

Configuring a Known Attack Source Rule to Block Specific Visitors for a Specified Duration

Geolocation access control rules

You can customize these rules to allow or block requests from a specific country or region.

Configuring Geolocation Access Control Rules to Block or Allow Requests from Specific Locations

Web tamper protection rules

You can configure these rules to prevent a static web page from being tampered with.

Configuring Web Tamper Protection Rules to Prevent Static Web Pages from Being Tampered With

Website 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.

Configuring Anti-Crawler Rules

Information leakage prevention rules

You can add two types of information leakage prevention rules.

  • Sensitive information filtering: prevents disclosure of sensitive information (such as ID numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses).

  • Response code interception: blocks the specified HTTP status codes.

Configuring Information Leakage Prevention Rules to Protect Sensitive Information from Leakage

Global protection whitelist rules

You can configure these rules to let WAF ignore certain rules for specific requests.

Configuring a Global Proteciton whitelist Rule to Ignore False Alarms

Data masking rules

You can configure data masking rules to prevent sensitive data such as passwords from being displayed in event logs.

Configuring Data Masking Rules to Prevent Privacy Information Leakage

WAF Rule Priorities

The built-in protection rules of WAF help you defend against common web application attacks, including XSS attacks, SQL injection, crawlers, and web shells. You can customize protection rules to let WAF better protect your website services using these custom rules. Figure 1 shows how WAF engine built-in protection rules work. Figure 2 shows the detection sequence of rules you configured.

Note

On the protection configuration page, select Sort by check sequence. All protection rules will be displayed by the WAF check sequence.

**Figure 1** WAF engine work process

Figure 1 WAF engine work process

**Figure 2** Priorities of protection rules

Figure 2 Priorities of protection rules

Response actions

  • Pass: The current request is unconditionally permitted after a protection rule is matched.

  • Block: The current request is blocked after a rule is matched.

  • CAPTCHA: The system will perform human-machine verification after a rule is matched.

  • Redirect: The system will notify you to redirect the request after a rule is matched.

  • Log: Only attack information is recorded after a rule is matched.

  • Mask: The system will anonymize sensitive information after a rule is matched.