An Irule for Client Ssl Profile that Allows Unassigned TLS Extension Values (17516)
Hello Community, I have a requirement to allow enriched https header enrichment. The SSL negotiation (I'm doing ssl termination on F5) fails because the enriched header from client contains reserved tls extension values. (https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-extensiontype-values/tls-extensiontype-values.xhtmltls-extensiontype-values-1). The Client Hello request in the SSL Handshake was captured and contained an Extensions list, which included a reserved TLS Extension value (17156), which the F5 isn't presenting in Server Hello. I need an irule that can allow that Extension to be added on the client ssl profile so the ssl handshake doesn't fail.Automatic Certificate Management with ACMEv2 in F5 BIG-IP
One of the most anticipated features of F5 BIG-IP is integration with ACMEv2. With the General Availability of BIG-IP 21.1.0 on May/26, this feature came into being. In this tutorial, we are going to configure it, using Let's Encrypt as the CA. The domain for which we are generating/renewing certificates is carlosf5lab.lat. The official docs for this feature are located in SSL Certificate Management | BIG-IP Documentation. Pre-requisite 1: DNS Resolver that can reach the internet (at least the CA endpoints). In this case, we are using the native DNS Resolver that comes with BIG-IP. Pre-requisite 2: The internal proxy that will make the connection with the CA. Pre-requisite 3: a self signed SSL certificate that the ACMEv2 protocol uses as the identifier for a device account. You don't have to fill the Subject Alternative Name. For the Common Name, an e-mail contact is advised. Now, we are going to create the ACME Provider object. Give it a name, and select the internal proxy previously created. For the CA Certificate to enable the secure connection with the Directory URL, you can use the default ca-bundle.crt. The Directory URL is the endpoint for the ACMEv2 protocol. In Let's Encrypt case, it is https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory For the Account Key, choose the previously created self-signed certificate. For the trickier part of all, the field "Contacts" is mandatory, and it must be an URL. That’s why you must use the format mailto:email_address. Check the Terms and Conditions, and the Create Account boxes. After a while, the Account Status must read as "Valid". To prove you own the domain whose certificate Let's Encrypt is going to create/renew, it must be pointing to an IP (A Record) where you must have your Virtual Server listening on Port 80 configured to respond to the ACMEv2 Challenge. (In this specific lab, the domain carlosf5lab.lat points to a Public IP mapped to an internal IP). Now you can order your first certificate via ACMEv2 on BIG-IP: After a while, the Key tab should read something like: Which means your certificate was generated: To track the ACME Provider, you can check its statistics: That's it, my friend! If it helped you, give a thumbs up to this post!PKI Today 2026: Three Horses, Five Carts, Zero Slack
Everyone wants to tell you the post-quantum story as one horse, one cart, one tidy road to 2030. It isn't. There are three horses, they're all pulling at once, they're hitched to five different carts, and at least two of them are dragging the same cart in slightly different directions. That's why Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), from management to planning for future efforts feels heavier now even though nothing in your environment technically broke. The horses are our deadlines, and they don't coordinate. One is certificate validity collapsing from 398 days toward 47. One is Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) mandates, every major regulator setting its own pace around the year 2030. One is the FIPS-140-2 sunset, quietly invalidating cryptographic modules you're still running (I'm also going to lean in on this horse analogy way too much, you're welcome). Survivable, any one of them. But none of them checked the other two's calendar. Ballot: The 47-day Certificate Countdown The first horse is named Ballot, and it's the one already at a gallop. In April 2025 the CA/Browser Forum passed ballot SC-081v3, scheduling a reduction in maximum certificate lifetime from 398 days down to 47 by 2029 [1]. The schedule: 200 days as of March 15, 2026 (done) 100 days in 2027 47 days in 2029, with domain-validation reuse collapsing to 10 days That last step is the one that bites: a certificate you touched once a year becomes one you touch roughly eight times a year, multiplied by every public or regulated certificate in an inventory you haven't finished counting. Treat 2029 as the deadline and you've misread the schedule. The 2027 step to 100 days is where manual renewal breaks for most enterprises [2], and the market isn't waiting for the mandate either: Let's Encrypt has committed to a 45-day default by 2028, ahead of the industry timeline [3]. This is a now problem wearing a 2029 disguise. Reckoning: The Global Post-Quantum Cryptographic Timeline The second horse, called Reckoning, broke out running this year. US Executive Order 14412, signed June 22 2026, turned years of post-quantum draft guidance into enforceable federal deadlines [4]. High-value and high-impact systems must complete key-establishment migration to NIST-approved algorithms by the end of 2030, with digital-signature migration following by the end of 2031, and contractors are pulled to a 2030 line through the acquisition rules [4]. This isn't an American story alone. Every major regulatory bloc is running its own version of the same clock, non-exhaustively: EU: national roadmaps due end of 2026, high-risk systems migrated by 2030, full transition by 2035 [5] Australia: classical asymmetric cryptography retired entirely by end of 2030 [6] Canada: CCCS is running its own migration guidance on a parallel track, distinct from the NIST/CNSA baseline The mandates differ in mechanism and pace, but they converge on the same decade. Sunset: FIPS 140-2's Expiration Date The third horse is the quietest, which is exactly why it catches people. On September 21 2026, NIST's Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) moves FIPS 140-2 validations to its historical list, and a module on that list can no longer be procured to satisfy a federal cryptographic requirement [7]. Nothing about the module changes on that date. What changes is whether you are allowed to keep buying it. If your compliance story rests on a 140-2 certificate, that validation expires before either of the other two horses finishes its run. The replacement path runs through 140-3, and through providers that haven't finished validating their post-quantum primitives. We name this horse Sunset. The Pale Horse: CRQC's Unscheduled Arrival There is a fourth horse, and it's the reason the other three feel so urgent. Ballot's window collapse has the CA/Browser Forum cracking the whip; the Reckoning has regulators on different continents setting the pace; Sunset has a time window stamped on it by the CMVP. Somebody scheduled all three. Nobody scheduled the fourth. It rides last, and you already know the verse. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was CRQC. Note: I'm pretty sure that's how the passage goes. The cryptographic relevant quantum computer (CRQC), it's the only thing on this page that never filed a transition timeline. You can't plan against its arrival date because it does not have one, which is exactly why the move is to start now instead of when it becomes obvious: by the time it is obvious, the broken thing is the math underneath everything you already shipped. Name the three and you have named the horses. The carts are the actual work efforts they tow behind them: Discovery: Finding the cryptography you can't currently see Automation: Issuance because manual renewal will be a death sentence Multi-CA: Running more than one certificate authority (CA) whether you wanted to or not PQC Deployment (including Hybrid): Deploying new quantum-resistant algorithms defined by your federal mandates PQC Cost: Surviving what those algorithms do to revocation and certificate size The trouble is that the horses don't line up one per cart. Ballot drags both discovery and automation. Reckoning is hitched to our PQC algorithm choices and our CA strategy and your deployment sequencing all at once. Sunset pulls on the same algorithm cart from the other side, because the modules you're forced onto are the ones still validating the new primitives. Pull hard on any one rein and you'll tighten three other traces you weren't watching. Note: A harness trace is what connects the horse to the cart. So this isn't a roadmap in the do-these-seven-things-in-order sense, because the work does not queue that cleanly. It's a map of which force is pulling which part of your estate, where they overlap, and what you can do about it, one dependency harness at a time. And every harness shares a single starting line. The horses do not agree on a deadline, and none of the work they demand is even possible until we know where our cryptography actually lives. Which is the part almost nobody has done. That's where this article series starts: not with algorithms or ballots, but with the unglamorous inventory every regulator quietly assumes you've already finished. From there we follow the path forward, one horse and one cart at a time. Analogy over. But we're just getting started with this article series. References [1] CA/Browser Forum. Ballot SC-081v3 (TLS certificate lifetime reduction), passed April 2025. Maximum validity 398 → 200 days (15 March 2026) → 100 days (2027) → 47 days (2029); DCV reuse window to 10 days. [2] Understanding the Risk Scale: 6-month SSL/TLS Validity Starts March 15, 2026. [3] Let's Encrypt. Decreasing Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days. [4] Executive Order 14412, signed June 22, 2026. whitehouse.gov. Key-establishment migration end-2030, digital-signature migration end-2031; contractor pull-forward via acquisition rules. (FR Doc 2026-12909, Vol. 91 No. 121, 25 June 2026.) [5] EU NIS Cooperation Group. A Coordinated Implementation Roadmap for the Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography, June 2025. National plans end-2026, high-risk systems 2030, full transition 2035. [6] Australian Signals Directorate. Information Security Manual (ISM): ceasing traditional asymmetric cryptography targeted for end of 2030. [7] NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). FIPS 140-2 validations moved to the historical list effective September 21, 2026.
ADC08 – Lack of Security & Regulatory Compliance
As data-driven applications become integral to the digital economy, industries such as Finance, Healthcare, Insurance, Telecommunications, Hi-Tech, Energy, Government, Retail & E-commerce, Automotive, and Manufacturing face increasing pressure to comply with strict data security and regulatory compliance frameworks. Global regulations regarding data sovereignty, privacy, and security are intensifying, requiring organizations to design their systems to adhere to these mandates while maintaining performance, scalability, and operational efficiency. F5 provides critical infrastructure for secure and compliant application delivery through solutions like Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Management Control Protocol (MCP). By leveraging these technologies, applications across industries can effectively mitigate risks while enhancing performance, availability, and scalability amidst continuously evolving compliance challenges. Although this article uses a Finance example to illustrate these concepts, the principles discussed are broadly applicable to all industries. AI Reference Architecture Use Case example: Financial App Security via F5 WAF and MCP The diagram (above) outlines the process flow of a financial application employing F5 WAF and MCP to bolster security and meet compliance requirements. Here's a breakdown of the use case flow: Client/AI Agent Initiates Request A user or an AI system generates a request to the financial application. F5 BIG-IP ADC Layer: The traffic flows through the F5 Application Delivery Controller (ADC), where critical security and compliance measures are applied: SSL/TLS Encryption & Offloading: Protects sensitive data during transmission by encrypting it using industry-standard protocols. SSL/TLS offloading reduces server overhead and ensures seamless performance. Web Application Firewall (WAF): Detects and blocks malicious traffic, including threats like injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. FIPS Compliance Checkpoint: Enforces adherence to Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) for applications handling sensitive financial and government data. Central Logging & Automated Compliance Enforcement All activities are captured through centralized logging and monitored for compliance violations. Automated tools ensure real-time enforcement of regulatory policies. F5 BIG-IP LTM Load Balancing Optimizes traffic distribution across backend servers, ensuring performance and high availability. MCP Server Processing Data is processed and stored within the MCP server infrastructure, maintaining data sovereignty by adhering to local jurisdiction and privacy laws. Observability & Regulatory Reporting Continuous monitoring enhances visibility into application performance and security. Comprehensive reporting ensures regulatory compliance is documented at every layer. How Compliance Impacts Financial Applications Performance: Regulations like data localization laws introduce performance challenges by requiring data to be stored and processed within specific regions. Encryption processes, such as SSL/TLS, add to computational overhead, and inefficient encryption management can create bottlenecks, particularly in latency sensitive AI driven financial applications. Availability: Lack of compliance with security regulations leads to greater exposure to breaches and downtime. For example, noncompliance with GDPR in the European Union can result in forced system outages and expensive remedial actions to meet regional requirements. Scalability: Data sovereignty regulations limit scalability by requiring organizations to duplicate infrastructure in multiple regions. This can lead to higher operational costs and hinder AI financial applications from leveraging centralized data for model training and transactions. Operational Efficiency: Addressing compliance failures often demands significant manual intervention, diverting IT resources away from strategic projects. Moreover, regulatory violations expose organizations to costly fines, legal penalties, and reputational harm, further affecting profitability and trustworthiness. Best Practices for Ensuring Security and Compliance Financial institutions can enhance application delivery by implementing a suite of measures targeted at addressing compliance and security risks: Encryption with FIPS-Compliant Devices: Utilize advanced encryption protocols to protect sensitive data in transit and at rest. Deploy FIPS-compliant devices to meet federal standards for handling regulated data, ensuring robust security and regulatory adherence. Web Application Firewall (WAF): Secure applications against common vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with industry standard frameworks like PCI DSS. This is critical for financial applications handling transaction data. Automated Compliance Checks and Centralized Logging: Automate compliance validation and real-time monitoring to streamline operations. Centralized logging aids in regulatory audits and ensures transparency while maintaining operational efficiency. Geolocation-Based Traffic Routing: Use application delivery infrastructure to enforce data residency requirements via geolocation based routing, ensuring compliance with regional data sovereignty laws. Scalable and Redundant Infrastructure: Design scalable architectures with redundant systems in compliance with specific jurisdictions, reducing downtime and ensuring reliability across regions. Conclusion The intersection of security, regulatory compliance, and application delivery is critical across all industries, as failure to meet these standards can have financial, operational, and reputational consequences. While this article focused on the financial services sector as an example, the principles and strategies discussed, such as leveraging F5 solutions like WAF and MCP to enhance security, ensure compliance, and optimize performance, are equally applicable to other industries including Healthcare, Retail, Telecommunications, and more. By prioritizing encryption, automation, and scalability, organizations across sectors can navigate regulatory challenges and deliver secure, scalable, and efficient services in today’s increasingly regulated and data driven landscape. Reference Articles Industry-leading application delivery and security services The Application Delivery Top 10 ADSP Platform overview AI reference architecture Mitigating OWASP API Security Risk: Mass Assignment using F5 BIG-IP F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust with BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator
feedService: Automate Threat Feed and Blocklist Ingestion on BIG-IP (iApp + Python)
feedService is an iApp- and Python-based automation solution for F5 BIG-IP that automatically downloads, validates, normalizes, and imports feed data into native BIG-IP constructs — with intelligent data classification, change detection, and scheduled updates via iCall.Service Extensions with SSL Orchestrator: Microsoft 365 Tenant Restrictions
Introduction F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator centralizes & manages decryption of SSL/TLS traffic. This enables security and monitoring tools to view the decrypted content and analyze it for threats and other anomalies. SSL Orchestrator removes the burden of decrypting content from your security tools, so they perform better and are more scalable. SSL Orchestrator is a key component of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). This use case allows you to access Company Microsoft 365 resources while blocking access to personal/non-company Microsoft 365 resources. Demo Video Service Extensions Service Extensions are a programmable capability in the SSL Orchestrator Service Chain (as of BIG-IP 17.0) that allow for customizable behaviors on decrypted HTTP traffic directly from within the Service Chain. Service Extensions invoke a new internal service type in SSL Orchestrator that performs its functions directly within an iRule. This iRule can reasonably do anything from inject HTTP headers, return a coaching/blocking page, and also communicate with external services. https://github.com/f5devcentral/sslo-service-extensions Microsoft(Office) 365 Tenant Restrictions This use case allows you to access Company Microsoft 365 resources while blocking access to personal/non-company Microsoft 365 resources. In this scenario, SSL Orchestrator injects Microsoft "Tenant-Restriction" HTTP headers into outbound HTTP flows. The concept of Tenant Restrictions provides a mechanism to allow or deny access to Office 365 resources based on organizational requirements. For example, you may wish to allow access to Company Microsoft 365 Outlook mail but deny access to the same resource when using a personal account. Detailed information from Microsoft on Tenant Restrictions is available here. To configure Tenant Restrictions, you need your company’s ‘Restrict-Access-To-Tenants’ and ‘Restrict-Access-Context’ values. You can obtain these from the Microsoft Azure portal by signing in as the Administrator here. Detailed information from Microsoft on Tenant Restrictions https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/manage-apps/tenant-restrictions Microsoft Azure portal https://portal.azure.com/ After logging in select View under Azure Active Directory. Your Tenant ID and Primary Domain will be shown like in the image below. Restrict Access To Tenants – a value of permitted tenant lists, which is a comma-separated list of tenant domains that users are allowed to access. Any domain that is registered with a tenant can be used to identify the tenant in this list. For example, to permit access to both Contoso and Fabrikam tenants, the name/value pair would look like this: Restrict Access To Tenants: contoso.onmicrosoft.com,fabrikam.onmicrosoft.com Restrict Access Context - a value of a single directory ID, declaring which tenant is setting the Tenant Restrictions. For example, to declare Contoso as the tenant that sets the Tenant Restrictions policy, the name/value pair would look like this: Restrict Access Context: 456ff232-35l2-5h23-b3b3-3236w0826f3d. This article assumes you have a working SSL Orchestrator Deployment configured and wish to add Office 365 Outlook Tenant Restrictions. Steps Configure the Office 365 URL Updater Create the Office 365 Tenant Restrictions Service Test the Tenant Restrictions Step #1 Configure the Office 365 URL Updater From the SSL Orchestrator configuration screen click the Office icon on the top right. Select the box next to Fetch Now Scroll down and click Save You should now see Run Information above Save NOTE: It’s recommended that you configure weekly checks for updates Step #2 Create the Office 365 Tenant Restrictions Service From the configuration screen click Services then Add Select the F5 tab then double-click on Office 365 Tenant Restrictions Give it a name, “Microsoft365” in this example Enter the values for “Restrict Access To Tenants” and “Restrict Access Context” It should look something like this: Click Save & Next Click the name of the Service Chain you want to add it to Move the Microsoft365 Service from Available to Selected Click Save Click OK Click Save & Next Click Deploy Click OK It should look like this when done Step #3 Test the Tenant Restrictions Attempt to login to https://outlook.office.com with a non-company domain. NOTE: you must attempt to login with an email address and password in order to see the following error page: Conclusion F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator simplifies and accelerates the deployment of SSL visibility and orchestration services. Whether for modern, custom, or classic apps, and regardless of their location—be it on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge—F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator is built to handle today’s dynamic app landscape. Related Content Introduction to BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator Integrating Security Solutions with F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator Addressing Shadow AI with F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator Layer 2 Services with rSeries & VELOS What's new in BIG-IP v21.1?
Protecting Your MCP Server From Secret Exposure With F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF's Data Guard
The Threat of Token Mismanagement in MCP Servers Tokens and credentials serve as the backbone for authentication and authorization in MCP servers, yet their mishandling presents a significant security risk. Developers sometimes store these secrets insecurely, embedding them in configuration files or leaving them easily accessible. The inherent features of MCP—such as long-lived sessions, stateful agents, and persistent context—add complexity to this risk. Tokens can inadvertently be stored, retrieved, or indexed through user prompts, system recalls, or log inspections. This introduces a new vulnerability: contextual secret leakage, where the model or protocol layer unknowingly becomes a repository for sensitive information. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to extract and misuse these exposed credentials, gaining unauthorized access production systems. Mitigating OWASP MCP01 with F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF Data Guard Recognizing the gravity of this issue, OWASP has officially categorized Token Mismanagement and Secret Exposure in MCP servers under the MCP01 vulnerability class. This classification highlights the widespread nature of the threat and underscores the urgent need for tools like F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF’s Data Guard. Although the long term solution is to correct token mismanagement at the backend servers, the F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF’s Data Guard offers a quick and easy way to mitigate this vulnerability. By sanitizing server responses, Data Guard ensures that sensitive data—such as tokens—is never inadvertently exposed to unprivileged users. In the following video, we will see how token mismanagement can result in system error logs containing sensitive data. Subsequently, we demonstrate how we can utilize BIG-IP Advanced WAF Data Guard to sanitize these responses, thus mitigating OWASP MCP 01: Token Mismanagement & Secret Exposure. For more information on F5 Data Guard, click here. For a list of OWASP MCP Top 10 vulnerabilities, click here
F5 LTM logs and application access logs
Hi, I would like to ask for guidance, as I do not have the access to test on this kind of scenario. When using LTM to route the application traffic to the application server hosted in LTM virtual server. Meaning every time the requests from client will first reach the LTM before being forwarded/routed to the respective virtual server. (In case there isn't AWAF enabled) In DFIR/SOC analyst's point of view, we would expect LTM logs would log the time slightly earlier for each requests than the access logs found in the server itself. However, if there were SQLi with payload containing "sleep", which would potentially delay the responses, how would these two different logs record the timestamp of the requests? Will the timestamps recorded in the access logs in the server itself would have delay if the payload is working?F5 BIG-IP Certificate API Control for Non-Admin Users
There's a common request we often hear: how to automate PKI objects (certs and keys) to the BIG-IP...without requiring an admin role. As it turns out, the limitation is not in the non-admin user's ability to employ certificate operations, but simply in their ability to get the cert/key objects to the BIG-IP. Object upload to a BIG-IP is, by design, very restrictive. In this article, I'm going to show you how to do end-to-end cert/key API control with a non-admin user.restore the BIG-IP to its previous state (where server.csr displays No CSR) without impact
Hello, I made same mistake and filled in the CSR file (server.csr) under: System > Certificate Management > Device Certificate Management > Device Certificate Signing Request Before this change, the server.csr entry already existed in the GUI and its status was: No Certificate Signing Request After I filled in the CSR parameters, I would like to restore the BIG-IP to its previous state, where server.csr appears with the message: No Certificate Signing Request I would like to remove the CSR information safely without impacting the existing configuration. I performed the following checks: tmsh list sys crypto csr tmsh list sys crypto csr one-line tmsh list sys crypto csr server.csr None of the above commands return any output. I also found that the file exists only at: /config/ssl/ssl.csr/server.csr Furthermore, searching for server.csr under /config did not show any reference to it in the BIG-IP configuration files. If not, what would be the recommended and safest procedure to remove the CSR information and restore the BIG-IP to its previous state (where server.csr displays No Certificate Signing Request) without impacting the current Device , i want to remove it from cli using this command: rm /config/ssl/ssl.csr/server.csr Thank you in advance
