F5 Distributed Cloud Web Application Firewall

The F5 Distributed Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) delivers Layer 7 application security across multi-cloud and hybrid edge environments. Powered by the F5 Advanced WAF engine, it protects web applications and REST APIs against the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, zero-day exploits, and malicious request patterns.

Architecture & Inspection Flow

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                    F5 Distributed Cloud Global Edge                     |
|                                                                         |
|  Client Request                                                         |
|        |                                                                |
|        v                                                                |
|  +-------------------------------------------------------------------+  |
|  | Protocol & Parsing: HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, JSON, XML, Multipart Forms  |  |
|  +---------------------------------+---------------------------------+  |
|                                    |                                    |
|                                    v                                    |
|  +-------------------------------------------------------------------+  |
|  | Threat Campaign Inspection: High-confidence active exploit feeds  |  |
|  +---------------------------------+---------------------------------+  |
|                                    |                                    |
|                                    v                                    |
|  +-------------------------------------------------------------------+  |
|  | Signature Engine: SQLi, XSS, RFI/LFI, Command Injection, SSRF     |  |
|  +---------------------------------+---------------------------------+  |
|                                    |                                    |
|                                    v                                    |
|  +-------------------------------------------------------------------+  |
|  | Policy Enforcement: Monitoring (Staging) vs Blocking Actions     |  |
|  +---------------------------------+---------------------------------+  |
|                                    |                                    |
|         +--------------------------+--------------------------+         |
|         | Pass                                                | Block   |
|         v                                                     v         |
|  +-----------------------------+               +---------------------+  |
|  | Forward to Protected Origin |               | Custom Block Page   |  |
|  | Server Workload             |               | (HTTP 403 Forbidden)|  |
|  +-----------------------------+               +---------------------+  |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Core Capabilities

Threat Campaigns

Immediate mitigation of newly published high-profile CVE exploits without generating false positives.

Signature Inspection

Comprehensive coverage across SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), command injection, and traversal attacks.

Staging & Safe Rollout

Validate rule accuracy in monitoring mode before transitioning to active blocking enforcement.

Declarative Automation

Manage WAF policies via Terraform (xcsh_app_firewall), xcsh CLI, or OpenAPI endpoints.

Policy Modes

Mode	Behavior	Telemetry Generated	Recommended Use Case
Monitoring (Staging)	Requests matching attack signatures are logged with full violation details but allowed to pass to the origin.	Violation event with action: monitor.	Initial policy baseline and rule tuning.
Blocking	Requests matching attack signatures are immediately rejected with a customizable HTTP 403 Forbidden response.	Violation event with action: block.	Active production protection.

Declarative Configuration Example

resource "xcsh_app_firewall" "production_waf" {
  name      = "production-waf-policy"
  namespace = "production"

  # Enforcement Mode
  blocking = true

  # Threat Campaigns
  threat_campaigns {
    enabled = true
  }

  # Default Bot Protection
  default_bot_setting = true

  # Default Attack Signatures
  default_anonymization = true
}