The OWASP Top 10 - 2017 vs. BIG-IP ASM

With the release of the new 2017 Edition of the OWASP Top 10, we wanted to give a quick rundown of how BIG-IP ASM can mitigate these vulnerabilities.

First, here's how the 2013 edition compares to 2017.

And how BIG-IP ASM mitigates the vulnerabilities.

	Vulnerability	BIG-IP ASM Controls
A1	Injection Flaws	Attack signatures Meta character restrictions Parameter value length restrictions
A2	Broken Authentication and Session Management	Brute Force protection Session tracking HTTP cookie protection
A3	Sensitive Data Exposure	Data Guard
A4	XML External Entities (XXE)	Attack signatures (see below)
A5	Broken Access Control	File types URL URL flows Session tracking URL flows Attack signatures (Directory traversal)
A6	Security Misconfiguration	Attack Signatures
A7	Cross-site Scripting (XSS)	Attack signatures Parameter meta characters Parameter value length restrictions Parameter type definitions (such as integer)
A8	Insecure Deserialization	Attack Signatures (see below)
A9	Using components with known vulnerabilities	Attack Signatures integration
A10	Insufficient Logging and Monitoring	BIG-IP ASM can help with the monitoring process to detect, alarm and deter attacks

Specifically, we have attack signatures for “A4:2017-XML External Entities (XXE)”:

• 200018018           External entity injection attempt

• 200018030           XML External Entity (XXE) injection attempt (Content)

Also, XXE attack could be mitigated by XML profile, by disabling DTDs (and of course enabling the “Malformed XML data” violation):

For “A8:2017-Insecure Deserialization” we have many signatures, which usually include the name “serialization” or “serialized object”, like:

• 200004188           PHP object serialization injection attempt (Parameter)
• 200003425           Java Base64 serialized object - java/lang/Runtime (Parameter)
• 200004282           Node.js Serialized Object Remote Code Execution (Parameter)

A quick run-down thanks to some of our security folks.

ps

Related:

• What’s New In The OWASP Top 10 And How TO Use It
• BIG-IP ASM Operations Guide

Mitigate L7 DDoS with BIG-IP ASM

Today, let’s look at a couple ways to mitigate an application DDoS attack with BIG-IP ASM.

We’ve logged into a BIG-IP ASM and navigated to Security>DDoS Protection>DDoS Profiles. In the General Settings of Application Security, we’ll activate an application DoS iRule event.

We’ll click TPS-based Detection to see the temporarily lowered TPS thresholds to easily simulate an attack. Often, there are multiple mitigation methods that are sequentially applied as you can see with the Source IP settings.

We can also record traffic packet captures during attacks for post analysis.

When the user requests a web application proxied by BIG-IP ASM, ASM will create a unique identifier or a Device ID. ASM will inject JavaScript to register each client device. You can see X-Device-ID: at the bottom.

And JavaScript incapable clients never make it through.

Now that the unit is ready, let’s enable some packet capture and take a go at that damn vulnerable web application.

Path for the log files is /var/log/ or /shared/log/…the PCAP folder is empty so let’s see the action.

Attack commence in 3-2-1. Some quick refreshes should do as our thresholds are low.

The first mitigation is Client Side Integrity Defense. The system issues a client-side integrity challenge that consumes client computation resources and slows down the attack. Next is Built-in Captcha. The third mitigation is Rate Limiting…

..then if they’re still not listening, you can instantly transform into a Honeypot.

The logs below show the IP address and the type of mitigation technique deployed. First Integrity, then Captcha, then Rate Limiting, then Honeypot if they don't stop. The traffic you recorded will be found in the, now populated, PCAP folders.

Thanks to F5 SE Artiom Lichtenstein for the demo video.

ps

Related:

• Lightboard Lessons: What is DDoS?

Post of the Week: BIG-IP APM Policy Sync

In this Lightboard Post of the Week, I light up the answer to a question about BIG-IP APM Policy Sync. Posted Question on DevCentral: https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/apm-policy-sync-56330

Thanks to DevCentral user Murali (@MuraliGopalaRao) for the question and special thanks to Leonardo Souza for the answer!



ps

Related:

• DevCentral’s Featured Member for May – NTT Security’s Leonardo Souza

VDI Gateway Federation with BIG-IP

Today let’s look at how F5 BIGIP APM can consolidate, secure and federate all the core VDI gateways technology. For instance, if an organization decides move from one VDI technology to another or if you’re consolidating VDI technologies, BIG-IP can help.

On the BIG-IP we’ve set up three VDI environments. Microsoft RDS/RDP with a broker authentication server, VMware Horizon and Citrix ZenApp. With only a corporate account, a user can authenticate to all of them as needed and access all available desktop content.

In this example, we connect to the BIG-IP APM. This is the default view.

And here we’ve put some advanced security fields like OTP or multifactor authentication for instance.

So here we’d use our username and password and for additional security we'll choose a secondary grid. By default, a grid is not generally available from any of the VDI vendors. When we select grid, BIG-IP APM will present a grid for a PIN entry. This is provided through a partnership with Gemalto. BIG-IP is connecting to Gemalto servers to present the grid to the user. We then enter our confidential PIN.

 Upon auth, we’re presented with our BIG-IP APM Webtop and BIG-IP did the necessary single sign on for all the VDI technologies and environments assigned to us.

With a single, multifactor authentication we’re able to gain access to our federated BIG-IP Webtop and select the specific VDI resource we need.

From an administrative view, here is the full Visual Policy Editor (VPE) for the overall solution. This also shows where the OTP/Grid is if you follow the Host FQDN path.

And here are the specific inspections and criteria for the VDI scenario. You can see a path for each VDI vendor along with specific inspections and actions depending on the situation.

Special thanks to F5 Sr. Security SE Matthieu Dierick for the explanation and you can watch the demo video.

ps

Lightboard Lessons: What is DDoS?

Over the last quarter, there were approximately 500 DDoS attacks daily around the world with some lasting as long as 300 hours. In this Lightboard Lesson I light up some #basics about DoS and DDoS attacks.



ps

Related:

• DDoS attacks in Q2 2017
• DDoS attack - Distributed Denial of Service
• DDoS Attacks 101: Types, targets, and motivations

DevCentral’s Featured Member for November – Nathan Britton

Nathan Britton works as a Principal Security Consultant in the UK for a security solutions provider called NTT Security, part of the NTT Group. They work with customers to design and implement security solutions and his team specializes in application delivery and security in particular. His specific role is focused on solution design and technical governance. Nathan is a BIG-IP ASM SME, a DevCentral MVP and our Featured Member for November!

DevCentral: You are a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

Nathan: Hands down it’s the best community forum I’ve ever participated in and, over the years, I’ve taken a lot from it. As such, I like to ensure that, time and my knowledge permitting, I give back to the community whenever I can. Also, there are always new things to learn, so being active on DevCentral makes sure I see what other community members are doing to solve other peoples’ issues and I keep on top of new features of the products.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

NB: My main background has been BIG-IP LTM and ASM. I was a customer of F5 for around 5 years where we had a number of BIG-IPs load balancing internal applications, and also a pair of ASMs protecting our internet facing web applications. I still recall the day I joined the team and was asked to look after the BIG-IP that had been a little bit neglected and not knowing my F5 from my BIG-IP and what was an application delivery controller anyway! Fortunately, some free F5 University training and some lurking on DevCentral soon got me on track.

DC: You are an Engineer at NTT Security. Can you describe your typical workday and how you manage a work/life balance?

NB: As a consultant there is no typical working day. One day I could be onsite at a customer workshop going through a solution design on the whiteboard, the next day could be working on proposals which we hope will turn into a new customer engagement and other days I could be assisting colleagues with technical governance on one of their projects. Part of the enjoyment of being a consultant, rather than an end user, is the exposure to varied work on a day by day basis.

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including Technology Specialist (LTM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

NB: As a consultant working for an F5 partner it is vital for us to have certified members of the team, in fact NTT Security attained the highest partner status in F5’s Guardian Professional Services program. On a personal note I think the certifications have been vital in ensuring I have a breadth of knowledge as you never know what feature or module a customer may choose to implement. To that end, the self-study and lab work needed to achieve the certification has been invaluable. I’ve also helped design questions for the 401 exam so, as you can see, I’m very invested in the certification process. I think Ken and his team, especially Heidi, have done a great job.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

NB: My first challenge was the fact that I did not know anything about F5 or BIG-IP when I first got my hands on them. DevCentral, with its 101 series back in the day was a great starting point, and for that I need to thank the likes of Jason, Colin and Joe. Since then the security sessions with Josh and now John are invaluable and useful to my everyday work. Since being more comfortable with the technology DC has helped enormously when presented with very specific use cases to solve by customers, especially if iRules are required, there’s always a codeshare item that can be used as a basis for a custom solution. It saves a lot of time and head scratching.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

NB: Growing up I was fascinated by true crime books and TV shows. So if I had my time again I would definitely be a lawyer, a barrister perhaps…although I’m not sure how the wig would look on me!

Thanks Nathan! Check out all of Nathan's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on Twitter and visit NTT Security or follow on Twitter.