🛡️ Web Application Firewall (WAF)

🚀 Introduction

The Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a security solution designed to protect web applications from malicious attacks such as SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and DDoS attacks. This firewall inspects, filters, and monitors incoming HTTP/HTTPS requests to ensure only legitimate traffic reaches the server.

🎯 Features

1. Request Filtering

• Filters incoming requests based on IP addresses, URLs, and User-Agent headers.
• Maintains a blacklist and whitelist for access control.

2. Signature-Based Detection

• Detects and blocks SQL Injection (SQLi) and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks using predefined patterns and regex-based detection.

3. Anomaly-Based Detection

• Identifies unusual request patterns and potential zero-day attacks by analyzing request frequency, payload size, and behavior.

4. Rate Limiting & DDoS Protection

• Implements rate limiting to restrict excessive requests from a single IP.
• Mitigates Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks by monitoring and blocking suspicious traffic.

5. IP Blacklisting & Whitelisting

• Stores and enforces a list of blocked and allowed IPs to control access dynamically.

6. HTTP Protocol Validation

• Ensures incoming requests follow proper HTTP/HTTPS standards.
• Blocks malformed requests, unexpected HTTP methods, and protocol violations.

7. Content Inspection & Data Leak Prevention

• Scans request bodies and responses for sensitive data exposure.
• Prevents leakage of critical information such as credit card numbers, passwords, and PII.

8. Logging & Monitoring

• Captures detailed logs of all incoming requests and blocked attacks.
• Provides real-time monitoring through a dashboard.

9. SSL/TLS Support

• Ensures encrypted communication between clients and the server using HTTPS.
• Can be integrated with Nginx as a reverse proxy for SSL termination.

🏗️ Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16+)
• MongoDB (for logging and blacklisting features)
• Nginx (for optional reverse proxy & SSL termination)

Installation Steps

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/SagarMaddela/Web-Application-Firewall.git
cd waf

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Configure environment variables
cp .env.example .env
# Update .env with MongoDB credentials and JWT secret

# Start the server
npm start

🛠️ Usage

Testing SQL Injection & XSS

Use Postman or CURL to send malicious payloads:

curl -X GET "http://localhost:5000/?search=SELECT * FROM users"
curl -X POST "http://localhost:5000/submit" -d "<script>alert('XSS')</script>"

Expected Result: The WAF should block the request and return a 403 Forbidden response.

Testing Rate Limiting

for i in {1..20}; do curl -X GET "http://localhost:5000/api/resource"; done

Expected Result: Requests exceeding the threshold should be blocked with 429 Too Many Requests.

🔐 Security Measures Implemented

✅ Protection against SQL Injection & XSS attacks
✅ Rate limiting to prevent API abuse & DDoS
✅ Logging & monitoring for real-time threat detection
✅ IP whitelisting/blacklisting for access control
✅ SSL/TLS support for secure communication

📌 Roadmap & Future Enhancements

• 🔍 Machine Learning-based Threat Detection (AI-driven anomaly detection)
• 📊 Admin Dashboard for managing security rules & logs
• 🏢 Multi-Tenant Support for cloud-based WAF deployment

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Feel free to submit pull requests or open issues.

📧 Contact

For inquiries or support, contact us at mrsunday0708.23@gmail.com.