How AWS WAF and Shield protects from web application exploits and DDos attack

How AWS WAF and Shield protects from web application exploits and DDoS attack

During the initial years of cloud adoption, security was one in every one of the top considerations. Organizations worried about, however, their data was secured in others’ data centers, and whether or not cloud providers would ensure their information wasn’t exposed. Cloud providers worked very hard to address these issues, obtaining a number of industry certifications that proved they were fully secured and following the required processes.

As a result, when organizations did switch to the cloud, they were able to leverage its benefits — IaaS, agility, durability, no CAPEX investment, and pay-per-use pricing — to scale up their businesses.

However, cloud adoption also gave attackers and hackers a brand new way to launch layer three, layer 4, layer 7, and mass DDoS attacks against the environment. Today, these attacks are testing the boundaries of cloud providers and also the ability of applications to handle such events. In response, cloud providers are incessantly investment in building new services and options which will block the malicious traffic at the perimeter level. To manage application web security and defend applications from malicious requests, Amazon has free 2 services — AWS net Application Firewall (AWS WAF) and AWS Shield — with the aim of mitigating net and DDoS attacks.

AWS WAF Capabilities
AWS WAF was launched in late 2015 with the goals of adding an extra layer of security protection to client environments and improving applications’ convenience by protective them from common web exploit attacks. AWS WAF will solely be used for environments hosted on AWS. It helps customers defend their environments from SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, and it filters requests based on URI, IP addresses, HTTP headers, and HTTP body.

AWS WAF was at first supposed to be used with Amazon CloudFront and was later extended to Application Load Balancers. It permits organizations to make custom web access management lists (web ACLs) which will comprise conditions to examine the traffic — which then becomes the rules. Against every rule, there's a corresponding action (allow, block, or count). The count mode will facilitate organizations to observe the pattern and choose whether or not a selected rule ought to be utilized in enable or block mode.

One of the purest examples of this can be the rate-limiting feature. With this feature, if their area unit quite 2,000 requests received from associate IP during a five-minute amount, the information processing address is mechanically blocked. Another example is that the URI-based exploits performed by hackers. several attackers attempt to exploit WordPress vulnerabilities by causation brute-force login requests to the /wp-login.php page. They additionally attempt to exploit PHPMyAdmin vulnerabilities by causation requests to the /phpmyadmin/index.php URI. For non-WordPress or non-phpMyAdmin users, these styles of requests are a waste of resources and find yourself with 404 errors within the logs. However, the danger will increase once an internet application receives giant volumes of such requests, caused by associate assaulter making an attempt out the random URIs and making an attempt to consume the calculate resources. This creates denial-of-service attacks.

AWS shield Capabilities
Due to the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the managed AWS WAF service, it's been widely adopted by AWS consumers. To expand security capabilities any, AWS launched AWS shield, a managed DDoS service that protects customers’ applications from denial-of-service attacks. AWS shield was launched with 2 modes: customary and Advanced.

AWS shield standard
AWS shield standard works at the transport layer, providing fast detection and inline attack mitigation. it's free-of-charge for AWS customers.

Quick detection: continuously monitors the network flow and identifies malicious traffic in real time by analyzing traffic signatures, anomaly algorithms, and different techniques.
Inline attack mitigation: Focuses on many techniques, like settled packet filtering and priority-based traffic shaping, to mechanically mitigate attacks while not impact on applications.
AWS shield Advanced
AWS shield Advanced provides key options like increased detection, advanced attack mitigation, attack notification, and DDoS price protection — in addition to the AWS shield customary capabilities. in contrast, to shield customary, it's not free; customers should sign a 1-year commitment to pay each a set monthly fee and usage fees. It offers:

Enhanced detection: allows users to monitor network logs and alter enhanced monitoring at the applying layer by acting integration with AWS Load Balancers, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route fifty-three, and Amazon EC2. Organizations will enable AWS WAF rules at the applying Load Balancer or CloudFront layer to provide a lot of DDoS protection, supported the customs rules.
Advanced attack mitigation: Provides automatic DDoS mitigations to applications by provisioning necessary infrastructure capability to handle massive DDoS attacks. The application-layer attacks will be lessened by leverage AWS WAF. AWS shield Advanced grants customers access to a 24/7 DDoS response team (DRT). If needed, DRT applies manual mitigations to tackle such attacks.
Attack notification: Provides visibility and notifications for transport and application-layer attacks (not on the market in AWS shield Standard).
DDoS price protection: this can be important for patrons stricken by DDoS attacks. AWS provides credits for the DDoS scaling charges.
Are AWS WAF and AWS shield Enough?
Many organizations still have this question: will AWS WAF and AWS shield sufficiently protect their applications from web exploits and DDoS attacks? this relies on the character of the applying and also the criticality of the workloads hosted on the cloud. whereas each service gives multiple ways in which to mitigate these challenges, they still lack some important capabilities. The key gaps area unit as follows.

Outdated Rules
Organizations would like security-focused personnel WHO regularly leverage log analysis tools, examine traffic request patterns, determine new sets of rules (or needed modifications to existing rules), check those rules, and implement them as AWS WAF rules. this can be clearly an advanced and long method, that should be followed on a daily basis and lacks period motor vehicle change. It puts the environment in danger because the rules aren't mechanically tuned to this pattern.

Lack of Visibility
AWS WAF solely retains traffic patterns for the last 5 minutes and it doesn't give historical info which may be utilized by security teams. Also, the visualizations aren't made enough, and adding to the employment for security groups. Trained personnel should perpetually analyze load balancer and AWS WAF logs to make your mind up that rules ought to be enabled and if the applied rules area unit adequate.

Possible have to be compelled to Purchase Managed Rules for AWS WAF
As mentioned, it will be troublesome for organizations to make your mind up on the set of rules that ought to be enforced for his or her applications (not simply in step with this pattern, however additionally in step with trade best practices). several security corporations have revealed their Managed Rules for AWS WAF on AWS Marketplace. this enables organizations to directly select the principles package and implement across their environments. The client, however, doesn’t have any visibility on however the principles area unit applied or if there's a prospect to skip a rule.

A Better solution
Reblaze may be a comprehensive cloud security platform, that converts AWS WAF and AWS defend into a whole network security solution. Reblaze fills the gaps in AWS WAF and AWS Shield:

Fully integrated service. Reblaze may be a cloud SaaS platform, that integrates seamlessly with AWS. It blocks hostile traffic within the cloud before it will reach the protected web assets (customer sites and web applications).
Comprehensive protection. additionally, to a next-generation WAF/IPS and DoS/DDoS protection (both of that transcend the capabilities of AWS WAF and defend, as mentioned below), Reblaze additionally provides advanced larva detection and management, period control, full traffic transparency, and lots of different advantages.
Sophisticated threat detection. Reblaze uses a variable approach to accurately acknowledge attack traffic, employing a type of techniques, together with Application Whitelisting, Behavioral Analysis, Blacklisting, fine-grained ACL capabilities, and more.
Always up-to-date. As a totally managed SaaS platform, Reblaze is maintained remotely by a team of security consultants. it's continually up-to-date and continually effective.
Machine Learning. Reblaze regularly analyzes world web traffic (currently process over three.5 billion HTTP/s requests per day), to acknowledge new attack patterns as they occur, then directly and mechanically change the safety rules for all Reblaze deployments worldwide. as new net threats arise, Reblaze evolves and hardens itself against them.
Adaptive DoS/DDoS Protection. Reblaze provides full-scope DoS/DDoS protection across all layers. (This even includes the applying layer; Reblaze uses machine learning to spot the distinctive traffic patterns for every application it’s protective.) Legitimate traffic is allowed through, whereas hostile traffic is blocked within the cloud before it has an effect on the network’s incoming net pipe.
Cost and (No) Commitment. For a monthly subscription that’s such as the fee for AWS defend Advanced, Reblaze provides everything that defends Advanced will, and for a lot of. and in contrast, to defend Advanced, there’s no long-run commitment. Reblaze is obtainable on a month-to-month basis and may be deployed with an easy DNS modification. It’s simple and simple to undertake Reblaze.
Conclusion
Security isn't a product; it's a method. AWS WAF and AWS defend are smart starting points for users WHO wish to implement security for his or her environments. However, organizations with vital net applications have a lot of intensive security needs than what this merchandise will give. Reblaze offers comprehensive, strong net security during a totally managed, easy-to-use resolution. If you’d prefer to learn a lot of visits to our website https://www.altf9.tech/

Altf9 Technology Solutions Pvt.Ltd
5/181, J4A Third Floor
Periyar Street, Medavakkam
Chennai, India
Pincode:600100.
  INDIA: +91 8056005901

  USA: +1 (845) 576-5295

  Australia : +61291880753

  info@altf9.in