K07021938: BIG-IP ASM operations guide | Appendix

Operations Guide
Original Publication Date: Oct 9, 2018
Update Date: Oct 16, 2020
Details
Table of contents | Due to the nature of this material, this document refers to
numerous hardware and software products by their trade names. References to other
companies and their products are for
informational purposes only, and all trademarks are the properties of their
respective companies. It is not the intent of ProTech Professional Technical
Services, Inc. to use any of these
names generically
"Charting the Course ...
... to Your Success!"
F5 Networks Configuring BIG-IP ASM v13:
Application Security Manager
Course Summary
Description
The BIG-IP Application Security Manager course gives participants a functional
understanding of how to deploy, tune, and operate BIG-IP Application Security
Manager (ASM) to protect their web applications from HTTP-based attacks. The course
includes lecture, hands-on labs, and discussion about different ASM components for
detecting and mitigating threats from multiple attack vectors such web scraping,
Layer 7 Denial of Service, brute force, bots, code injection, and zero day
exploits.
Topics
 Setting up BIG-IP System
 Traffic Processing with BIG-IP
 Web Application Concepts
 Common Web Application Vulnerabilities
 Security Policy Deployment
 Policy Tuning and Violations
 Attack Signatures
 Positive Security Policy Building
 Cookies and Other Headers
 Reporting and Logging
 Lab Project
 User Roles and Policy Modification
 Advanced Parameter Handling
 Application-Ready Templates
 Automatic Policy Building
 Web Application Vulnerability Scanners
 Login Enforcement & Session Tracking
 Brute force and Web Scraping Mitigation
 Layered Policies
 Layer 7 DoS Mitigation
 ASM and iRules
 Content Profiles
 Review and Final Labs
 Additional Training and Certification
Audience
This course is intended for security and network administrators who will be
responsible for the installation, deployment, tuning, and day-to-day maintenance of
the Application Security Manager..
Prerequisites
Administering BIG-IP; basic familiarity with HTTP, HTML and XML; basic web
application and security concepts.
Duration
Four days
Due to the nature of this material, this document refers to numerous hardware and
software products by their trade names. References to other companies and their
products are for
informational purposes only, and all trademarks are the properties of their
respective companies. It is not the intent of ProTech Professional Technical
Services, Inc. to use any of these
names generically
"Charting the Course ...
... to Your Success!"
F5 Networks Configuring BIG-IP ASM v13: Application Security Manager
Course Outline
I. Setting up BIG-IP System
A. Introducing the BIG-IP System
B. Initially Setting Up the BIG-IP System
C. Archiving the BIG-IP Configuration
D. F5 Support Resources and Tools
II. Traffic Processing with BIG-IP
A. Identifying BIG-IP Traffic Processing Objects
B. Understanding Network Packet Flow
C. Understanding Profiles
D. Overview of Local Traffic Policies and ASM
E. HTTP Request Flow
III. Web Application Concepts
A. Overview of Web Application Request Processing
B. Web Application are vulnerable even with SSL
C. Layer 7 Protection with Web Application Firewalls
D. Overview of Web Communication Elements
E. Parsing URLs
F. Overview of the HTTP Request Structure
G. Comparing POST with GET
H. Risks within other methods
I. Methods Enforcement for URLs
J. HTTP Response Codes
K. Examining HTTP Responses
L. HTTP User Input Form Free Text Input
M. User Input Forms Free Text input
N. How ASM Parses File Types, URLs and Parameters
O. Using the Fiddler HTTP Proxy
IV. Common Web Application Vulnerabilities
A. Common Exploits Against Web Applications
V. Security Policy Deployment
A. Comparing Positive and Negative Security
B. Deployment Combining Positive and Negative Security
C. The Deployment Workflow
D. Policy Type How will the Policy be applied
E. Policy Templates: Determines the level of protection
F. Policy Template: Automatic or Manual Policy Building
G. Deployment Workflow: Advanced Settings
H. Viewing Requests
I. Security Checks offered by Rapid Deployment
J. Response Checks using Data Guard
VI. Policy Tuning and Violations
A. Post-Deployment Traffic Processing
B. Defining Violations
C. Defining False Positives
D. How violations are categorized
E. Violation Ratings: A Threat Scale
F. Defining Staging and Enforcement
G. Defining Enforcement Mode
H. Defining the Enforcement Readiness Period
I. Defining Learning
J. Defining Learning Suggestions
K. Choosing Automatic or Manual Learning
L. Defining the Learn, Alarm and Block Settings
M. Interpreting the Enforcement Readiness Summary
N. Configuring the Blocking Response Page
VII. Attack Signatures
A. Defining Attack Signatures
B. Creating User-Defined Attack Signatures
C. Defining Attack Signature Sets
D. Defining Attack Signature Pools
E. Updating Attack Signatures
F. Understanding Attack Signatures and Staging
VIII. Positive Security Policy Building
A. Defining Security Policy Components
B. Defining the Wildcard
C. The Entity Staging Lifecycle
D. Choosing the Learning Scheme
E. How to Learn: Never (Wildcard only)
F. How to Learn: Always
G. How to Learn: Selective
H. Reviewing the Enforcement Readiness Period Entities
I. Violations Without Learning Suggestions
J. Defining the Learning Score
K. Defining Trusted and untrusted IP Address
L. How to learn Compact
Due to the nature of this material, this document refers to numerous hardware and
software products by their trade names. References to other companies and their
products are for
informational purposes only, and all trademarks are the properties of their
respective companies. It is not the intent of ProTech Professional Technical
Services, Inc. to use any of these
names generically
"Charting the Course ...
... to Your Success!"
F5 Networks Configuring BIG-IP ASM v13: Application Security Manager
Course Outline (cont’d)
IX. Cookies and Other Headers
A. ASM Cookies: What to Enforce
B. Defining Allowed and Enforced Cookies
C. Configuring Security Processing on HTTP Headers
X. Reporting and Logging
A. Reporting : Build Your Own View
B. Reporting: Chart based on filters
C. Brute Force and Web Scraping Statistics
D. Viewing ASM Reports
E. PCI Compliance: PCI-DSS 3.0
F. Viewing Log files and Local Graphics
G. Logging Profiles: Build What you Need
XI. Lab Project
XII. User Roles and Policy Modification
A. Defining User Roles
B. Defining ASM User Roles
C. Defining Partitions
D. Configuring User Partition Access
E. Comparing Security Policies with Policy Diff
F. Merging Security Policies
G. Editing and Exporting Security Policies
H. Restoring with Policy History
I. Examples of ASM Deployment Types
J. ConfigSync and ASM Security Data
K. ASMQKVIEW: Provide to F5 Support of Troubleshooting
XIII. Advanced Parameter Handling
A. Defining Parameters Types
B. Defining Static Parameters
C. Defining Dynamic Parameters
D. Defining Dynamic Parameter Extraction Properties
E. Defining Parameter Levels
F. Other Parameter Considerations
XIV. Application-Ready Templates
A. Application Templates: Pre-Configured Baseline Security
XV. Automatic Policy Building
A. Overview of Automatic Policy Building
B. Defining Templates Which Automate Learning
C. Defining Policy Loosening
D. Defining Policy Tightening
E. Defining Learning Speed Traffic Sampling
F. Defining Track Site Changes
XVI. Web Application Vulnerability Scanners
A. Integrating Scanner Output Into ASM
B. Will Scan be Used for a New or Existing Policy?
C. Importing Vulnerabilities•Resolving Vulnerabilities
D. Using the Generic XML Scanner XSD file
XVII. Login Enforcement & Session Tracking
A. Defining a Login URL
B. Login Enforcement: Time and Logout Conditions
C. Defining Session Tracking
D. Configuring Actions Upon Violation Detection
E. Session Hijacking Mitigation
F. Why Fingerprint A Client
XVIII. Brute force and Web Scraping Mitigation
A. Defining Anomalies
B. Mitigating Brute Force Attacks via Login Page
C. Defining Session-Based Brute Force Protection
D. Defining Dynamic Brute Force Protection
E. Defining the Prevention Policy
F. Defining Web Scraping
G. Defining Geolocation Enforcement
H. Configuring IP Address Exceptions
IXX. Layer Policies
A. Defining a Parent Policy
B. Defining Inheritance
C. Parent Policy Deployment Use Cases
XX. Layer 7 DoS Mitigation
A. Defining Denial of Service Attacks
B. Defining DoS Profile General Settings
C. Defining Proactive Bot Defense
D. Using Bot Signatures
E. Defining TPS-based DoS Protection
F. Defining Operation Mode
G. Defining Mitigation Methods
H. Defining Behavioral and Stress-Based Detection
I. Defining Behavioral DoS
Due to the nature of this material, this document refers to numerous hardware and
software products by their trade names. References to other companies and their
products are for
informational purposes only, and all trademarks are the properties of their
respective companies. It is not the intent of ProTech Professional Technical
Services, Inc. to use any of these
names generically
"Charting the Course ...
... to Your Success!"
F5 Networks Configuring BIG-IP ASM v13: Application Security Manager
Course Outline (cont’d)
XXI. ASM and iRules
A. Common Uses for iRules
B. Identifying iRule Components
C. Triggering iRules with Events
D. Defining ASM iRule Events
E. Defining ASM iRule Commands
F. Using ASM iRule Event Modes
XXII. Content Profiles
A. Defining Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
B. Defining JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
C. Defining Content Profiles
D. The Order of Operations for URL Classification
XXIII. Review and Final Labs
A. Course Review Questions
B. Answers to Review Questions
XXIIII. Additional Training and Certification
G. Getting Started Series Web-Based Training
H. F5 Instructor Led Training Curriculum
I. F5 Professional Certification Program
Frame cookies are either created or removed due to an issue such as dynamic
parameter extraction.
The system processes a request triggering policy tightening suggestions (file
types, URLs, or
parameters).
The system processes requests for pages that have extractions configured (including
pages with
dynamic sessions).
The system processes requests for pages that are within a Flow Access (including
URLs embedded
in the cookie and logout URLs).
Applying a BIG-IP ASM security policy invalidates the BIG-IP AAM cache.
Policy Builder periodically applies a policy that invalidates the BIG-IP AAM cache.
Use BIG-IP AAM only
after automatic learning is complete and disabled. When protecting websites where
performance
improvements are critical, you can also choose a policy type (such as the Rapid
Deployment Policy
template) that does not require continuous learning.
For more information, refer to K16565: Configuring a Web Acceleration profile for
use with a BIG-IP ASM-
enabled virtual server (11.4.0 and later).
Integrated BIG-IP APM session tracking and event logging
BIG-IP ASM system integrates with BIG-IP APM to provide combined session tracking
and event logging.
This allows you to configure your security policy to capture usernames from the
BIG-IP APM login process.
It also allows you to see application security violations that are associated with
a user session.
For more information, refer to Tracking User Sessions in BIG-IP ASM:
Implementations for your system
version.
Note: For information about how to locate F5 product manuals, refer to K98133564:
Tips for searching
AskF5 and finding product documentation.
Using multiple decoding passes with evasion technique
The Multiple Decoding: Passes option for evasion techniques allows you to configure
the number of
encoding passes that the system should use to decode multiple encoded characters.
The decoding passes
are performed on URI and parameter input.
You can locate the Multiple Decoding option by going to Policy > Blocking > Evasion
Techniques.
Note: As part of the normalization process that BIG-IP ASM uses, Multiple Decoding
is performed whether
or not the Blocking properties are enabled. You can set Blocking properties to
Alarm or Block an evasion
technique when one is detected.
You can configure the Multiple Decoding option to perform two to five passes.
The number of specified decoding passes determines how the system responds. It
either flags the results
as an evasion technique, triggers an attack signature, or both.
When the Blocking properties are not set for Multiple Decoding, the ability to
identify signatures is reduced
to the number of encoded passes.
The following table shows the actions the BIG-IP ASM system takes on each of the
decoding passes.
Table A.1 Decoding pass actions
Decoding Pass(es) Behavior
2 to 3 Triggers an evasion technique but doesn?t trigger an attack signature if one
exists
4 Triggers an evasion technique and an attack signature if one exists
5 Triggers an attack signature if one exists, but does not trigger an evasion
technique
For example, Multiple Decoding set to perform three decoding passes converts a
%252fb to a/b after the
second pass. On the third decoding pass, the system responds with the appropriate
alarm or block action
you have configured.
On first pass, the system looks at the hexadecimal %252f.
In ASCII, 25 translates to %, so the first pass decoding result is %2f.
On second pass, the system decodes 2f to / in ASCII.
The two decoding passes of a %252fb result in a/b.
On third pass, the system takes action. The encoding attempt of the characters a/b
results in action
specified by the Learn, Alarm, and Block settings of the Evasion Technique Detected
category on the
Blocking Policy page.
For example:
/nameandcolor.asp? aaa=%2525253cSCRIPT%2525253e
Using the previous string as an example within a URI, the string translates from
hexadecimal to ASCII is as
the following table shows.
Table A.2 Hexadecimal to ASCII translation
Hexadecimal ASCII
25 %
3C <
3e >
The following table shows the decoding results for this URI string, based on the
number of passes
configured.
Table A.3 Decoding passes and results
Passes Result
2 to 3
First decoding pass results in 25253c and 25253e.
Second decoding pass results in 253c and 253e.
Third decoding pass results in < and >.
System triggers an evasion technique and responds with the appropriate action.
The number of configured passes is not high enough for the system to check
/nameandcolor.asp?
aaa=<SCRIPT> against the list of known attack signatures, which could possibly
trigger an attack
signature.
4
Fourth decoding pass results in the system checking the fully decoded results
against the known
attack signatures.
The system triggers both an evasion technique and an attack signature.
5
Fifth decoding pass results in the system triggering on the detected matching
attack signature.
No Evasion technique violation is reported.
Note: A higher number of decoding passes impacts system performance. F5 recommends
that you set
Blocking properties when you use the lower settings (two to three passes).
Resource Materials
BIG-IP ASM product documentation
BIG-IP ASM product documentation provides step-by-step instructions for how to
create a security policy
and add available protections.
BIG-IP ASM documentation for 11.6.
BIG-IP ASM documentation for 12.0.
BIG_IP ASM documentation for 13.0
BIG-IP ASM documentation for 14.0
BIG-IP ASM documentation for 15.0
AskF5 articles
The following articles contain information you may find useful.
Table A.4 Useful AskF5 articles
For information about Refer to this article
Opening a support case K6825: Information required when opening a support case for
BIGIP
ASM
Updating BIG-IP ASM attack
signatures
K82512024: Managing BIG-IP ASM Live Updates (14.1.x - 15.x)
K8217: Managing BIG-IP ASM attack signatures(11.5.x - 14.0.x)
Understanding BIG-IP ASM cookies K6850: Overview of BIG-IP ASM cookies
Using local traffic policies
K04597703: Overview of the Local Traffic Policies feature (12.1.0
and later)
K15085: Overview of the Local Traffic Policies feature (11.4.0 -
12.0.0)
Configuring the language encoding K6335 Overview of encoding language settings for
BIG-IP ASM
Sending SNMP traps to communicate
a blocked request and violation
K7738 Configuring the BIG-IP ASM system to send SNMP traps to
communicate a blocked request and request violation
Redirecting response page to an
external server
K7825: Redirecting a blocking response support ID to an external
error page
Working with Evasion technique
violations
K7929: Working with Evasion technique detected violations
Using the wildcard entity in the BIG-IP
ASM system
K8623: Using the wildcard entity in BIG-IP ASM
Understanding the BIG-IP ASM
system and caching
K14880: BIG-IP ASM may prevent object caching
Reducing false positive violations K70544352: Reducing false positive violations
Building web application security
policies with entities
K74535942: Building web application security policies with entities
Succeeding with application security K07359270: Succeeding with application
security
BIG-IP ASM daemons K14020: BIG-IP ASM daemons (11.x - 15.x)
BIG-IP ASM operations guide
Chapter 1: Guide introduction and contents
Chapter 2: Conventions unique to the BIG-IP ASM guide
Chapter 3: BIG-IP ASM event logging
Chapter 4: Policy tuning and enhancement
Chapter 5: Regulatory compliance
Chapter 6: Common deployment topologies
Chapter 7: Common management tasks
Chapter 8: Troubleshooting BIG-IP ASM
Chapter 9: Collecting BIG-IP ASM data
Supplemental Information
About operations guides
Optimizing the support experience
Applies to:
Product: BIG-IP, BIG-IP ASM
15.X.X, 14.X.X, 13.X.X, 12.X.X, 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1