iRule for X509 Subject
I have an iRule that is working and inserts a certificate DN into a header In the header the cert DN is inserted as: x-ssl-client-dn: C=<country >, O=<Org>, OU=<OU>, CN=<User name> the application owner wants changed to the following: x-ssl-client-dn: CN=<Usern Name> , OU=<OU> , O=<Org> , C= <Country) How can this be reversed
Unable to create F5 in AWS via CFT - no internet access
Hello, I ma having bad times while creating deployment in AWS from templates without internet access: https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-aws-cloudformation-v2 I already deployed yaml and runtime package on apache server in VPC. Based on tcpdump, the F5s are doenloading configuration files correctly. But then there is some wget timeout in EC2 Console. I think its trying to download some other stuff, yet I have no idea how to modify the runtime package. Can even open it via tar or gzip. Does anyone know how to do this? Customer does not want to allow internet access and proxy is not supported by CFT templates. Thank you Best regards
F5 on AWS Cloud
Hi Team, We have a requirement coming up where few applications need load balancing on AWS cloud and customer want to explore the F5 load balancing options. I checked AWS marketplace and there are multiple options for Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) scheme. I have few doubts: Out of multiple options available as per throughput in AWS (25Mbps/200Mbps/1Gbps/5Mbps), how can we propose the best option. Based on the number of expected client session to the application, can we identify the correct Virtual Edition? Is there any document available that mentions the VE Image based on throughput and the number of connections it can handle? Is there any option that we can re-use the existing license from the hardware device running on-premise? Thanks in advance VijayMitigate OWASP LLM Security Risk: Sensitive Information Disclosure Using F5 NGINX App Protect
This short WAF security article covered the critical security gaps present in current generative AI applications, emphasizing the urgent need for robust protection measures in LLM design deployments. Finally we also demonstrated how F5 Nginx App Protect v5 offers an effective solution to mitigate the OWASP LLM Top 10 risks.F5 XC Session tracking with User Identification Policy
With F5 AWAF/ASM there is feature called session tracking that allows tracking and blocking users that do too many violations not only based on IP address but also things like the BIG-IP AWAF/ASM session cookie. What about F5 XC Distributed Cloud? Well now we will answer that question 😉 Why tracking on ip addresses some times is not enough? XC has a feature called malicious users that allows to block users if they generate too many service policy, waf , bot or other violations. By default users are tracked based on source IP addresses but what happens if there are proxies before the XC Cloud or NAT devices ? Well then all traffic for many users will come from a single ip address and when this IP address is blocked many users will get blocked, not just the one that did the violation. Now that we answered this question lets see what options we have. Reference: AI/ML detection of Malicious Users using F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP Trusted Client IP header This option is useful when the client real ip addresses are in something like a XFF header that the proxy before the F5 XC adds. By enabling this option automatically XC will use this header not the IP packet to get the client ip address and enforce Rate Limiting , Malicious Users blocking etc. Even in the XC logs now the ip address in the header will be shown as a source IP and if there is no such header the ip address in the packet will be used as backup. Reference: How to setup a Client IP as the Source IP on the HTTP Load Balancer headers? – F5 Distributed Cloud Services (zendesk.com) Overview of Trusted Client IP Headers in F5 Distributed Cloud Platform User Identification Policies The second more versatile feature is the XC user identification policies that by default is set to "Client IP" that will be the client ip from the IP packet or if "Trusted Client IP header" is configured the IP address from the configured header will be used. When customizing the feature allows the use of TLS fingerprints , HTTP headers like the "Authorization" header and more options to track the users and enforce rate limiters on them or if they make too many violations and Malicious users is enabled to block them based on the configured identifier if they make too many waf violations and so much more. The user identification will failover to the ip address in the packet if it can't identify the source user but multiple identification rules could be configured and evaluated one after another, as to only failover to the packet ip address if an identification rule can't be matched! If the backend upstream origin server application cookie is used for user identification and XC WAF App firewall is enabled and you can also use Cookie protection to protect the cookie from being send from another IP address! The demo juice shop app at https://demo.owasp-juice.shop/ can be used for such testing! References Lab 3: Malicious Users (f5.com) Malicious Users | F5 Distributed Cloud Technical Knowledge Configuring user session tracking (f5.com) How to configure Cookie Protection – F5 Distributed Cloud Services (zendesk.com)Service Discovery in F5 Distributed Cloud - Architecture Options
The F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) Virtual Edition (VE) Customer Edge (CE) platform can be deployed within your data center or cloud environment. It can perform service discovery for services in your Kubernetes (K8s) clusters. Why do Service discovery? Service discovery is important in systems that change and move around, like microservices architectures. It helps find and connect services automatically. Instead of hard coding network locations, service discovery makes sure that services can easily find and communicate with each other, even when they scale or change locations. This improves scalability, resilience, and simplifies managing services in complex environments like Kubernetes or cloud infrastructures. By reducing manual intervention, service discovery enhances the overall efficiency and reliability of application deployments. The F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) CE can use the native kube-apiserver, or Consul, to query for services as they come online enabling admins to reference these discovered services. These services become XC origin pool definitions and can then be published locally through a proxy (http load balancer) on the CE itself or via our Global Application Delivery Network (ADN) - (Regional Edge Deployment). The F5 XC Load Balancer does more than just balance packets. It offers a set of SAAS security services that are easy to use. Customers can have a globally redundant layer of security while serving content from private K8’s clusters. This write-up covers two distinct service discovery architecture options available with XC. Secure K8s Gateway (VE CE) Kubernetes Sitetype Customer Edge (K8s sitetype CE) Depending on your service discovery use-case you may end up with one of these two options or both as they are not mutually exclusive. The first option of using the CE as a Secure K8s Gateway, may be the easier option for folks not particularly versed with the nuances of Kubernetes. Architecture 1:Virtual Edition Customer Edge (VE CE) If a picture is worth a thousand words then a working lab environment is worth a million. This repo walks through an entire Secure K8s GW setup and will leave you with a config that could easily be expanded upon. You can quickly build a PoC and start getting familiar with these modern app capabilities by using these tools. The readme includes details on how to use everything and what functions the various tools provide. It's all shell script and yaml so it's very easy to read through these and understand what's going on. https://github.com/dober-man/ve-ce-secure-k8s-gw This repo is designed to automate the deployment and configuration of a secure Kubernetes Gateway in the F5 Distributed Cloud (F5 XC) environment. It provides scripts and YAML configurations to set up secure communication, networking policies, and infrastructure components required to establish a secure gateway in a Kubernetes cluster. The readme file also documents the pre-reqs but you will at a minimum need an XC tenant, an XC Virtual Edition CE and an Ubuntu 22.04 server. If you do not have an XC tenant or VE CE, reach out to your local F5 Account team. Please use the issues feature of Github to report any discrepancies with the builds or documentation. Architecture 2:Kubernetes Sitetype Customer Edge (K8s sitetype CE) In this architecture, the entire CE runs as a service within the cluster. This model is going to require a bit more fundamental knowledge of Kubernetes and more tightly integrates with the cluster. You can quickly build a PoC and start getting familiar with these modern app capabilities by using this repo. https://github.com/dober-man/k8s-sitetype-ce This repo is focused on automating the deployment of the k8s-sitetype CE in a Kubernetes cluster. It provides scripts to simplify the process of setting up a secure site gateway for handling network traffic between cloud environments, on-premises infrastructure, and edge locations. The readme file documents the pre-reqs, but you will at a minimum need an XC tenant and an Ubuntu 22.04 server. If you do not have an XC tenant, reach out to your local F5 Account team. Please use the issues feature of Github to report any discrepancies with the builds or documentation. Summary - F5 Distributed Cloud offers a number of Kubernetes integration options for service discovery but also offers several other capabilities including Virtual K8s (Namespace as a Service) and Managed K8s which will be covered in future articles. Please feel free to drop a like or leave a comment below.
