A couple months ago I decided to finally dig in and see whether WAFs (Web Application Firewalls) are really useful, or merely another crappy shiny object we spend a lot of money on to get the auditors off our backs.

Sure, the WAF vendors keep telling me how well their products work and how many big clients they have, but that’s not the best way to figure out whether something really does the job. I also talk with a bunch of end users who provide darn good info, but even that isn’t always the best way to determine the security value of a tool. Not all users have good visibility and internal controls to measure the effectiveness of the tool, and many can’t deploy it in an optimal manner due to all sorts of political and technical issues.

In this case I started with users, then checked with a bunch of my penetration testing friends. While a pen tester doesn’t necessarily understand the overall value of a tool (since they don’t have to pay the same kind of attention to compliance/management issues), a good tester most definitely knows how much harder a security tool makes their life.

The end result was that WAFs do have value when used properly, and may provide value beyond pure security, but aren’t a panacea. Since you could say that about the value of a gerbil for defending against APT too, here’s a little more detail…

  • WAFs are best at protecting against known framework vulnerabilities (e.g., you run WordPress and haven’t patched), known automated (script kiddie) attacks, or when configured with (defensive) application-specific rules (whitelisting, although almost no one really deploys them this way).
  • WAFs are moderately effective against general XSS/SQL injection. All the researchers said it was a roadbump for custom attacks that added to the time it took them to generate a successful exploit… with varying effectiveness depending on many factors – particularly the target app behind the WAF. The better the configuration, based on deep application knowledge, the more difficult the attack. But they stated that the increasing time to exploit increases the attacker’s costs, and thus might reduce the chances the attacker would devote time to the app and increase your probability of detecting them. Still, if someone really wants to get you and is knowledgeable, no WAF alone will stop them.
  • The products often provide great analytics value because they are sometimes better than normal tracking/stats packages for understanding what’s going on with your site.
  • They don’t do anything for logic flaws (unless you hand-code/configure them) or much beyond XSS/SQL injection.
  • They aren’t as easy to use as is usually promised in the sales cycle. Gee, what a shock. Again, I could say this about gerbils.

In some ways, now that I’ve written this, I feel like I could have substituted “duh” for the entire post. Yet again we have a tool that promises a lot, is often misused, but (used properly) can provide a spectrum of value from “keeping the auditors off our backs” to “protects against some 1337 haxor in a leather bodysuit”.

But don’t let anyone tell you they are a waste of money… just make sure you know what you’re getting and use it right.

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