AWS Web Application Firewall for Magento Store Security
Magento has become a important player in the e-commerce industry.
The platform works well with all business sizes, from single-product stores to online retailers and marketplaces. Magento offers all the capabilities to build a successful store. You get a wide range of out-of-the-box solutions to create and manage product categories.
However, so many features and consumer traction gives rise to malicious attacks. Attackers can infect your store and get access to sensitive consumer data. Unprepared Magento stores are prone to security threats. Even the data collected by small stores is worth a lot to cyber thieves.
One of the major attacks for Magento is web exploits and web application threats. To fight these threats, you will need a Web Application Firewall. A WAF detects harmful traffic before it damages your store.
This article focuses on AWS Web Application Firewall.
Categories of Attacks on Magento
Let’s look at some of the common types of Magento web security threats.
1. SQL Injections
SQL injections execute malicious SQL statements behind a web application. These injections can infect and control a database server. The code gives unauthorized access to the database of your store.
Hackers with access to the database can steal all data. They can also change or destroy data on your system. These attacks bypass application security. They can also add and delete records in the database using SQL queries.
2. DDoS Attacks
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) is a malicious attack that disrupts web servers by flooding them with requests.
As a result, it slows down the website so that visitors cannot access it. It prevents customers from using your Magento website, thereby negatively affecting your business.
You will notice the bot traffic is arriving from a single IP address or IP range. Or the traffic might have patterns such as the exact geo-location, device type, and web browser versions. Traffic spikes at odd hours or unexpected surges can also indicate such attacks. DDoS attacks make it nearly impossible for your store to be accessible to customers.
Such attacks result in revenue loss, site crashes, and excessive use of resources.
3. Cross-Site Scripting
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack is a type of code injection.
Attackers run or inject malicious scripts on your Magento store. The code is generally in the form of a browser-side script. The code is sent to the users that visit your Magento store.
These scripts can rewrite the content of the HTML page and can be used for phishing attacks. According to Astra’s hacking report, 53.1% share of attacks on a Magento store was XSS.
Overview of Web Application Firewall
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects your store from web attacks. The WAF is used to monitor, filter, and block inbound HTTP traffic. WAF acts as a shield between the incoming web traffic and your servers.
The firewall is comes with a set of rules to detect and eliminate threats. A proxy server protects a user’s machine identity. WAF is a type of reverse proxy that protects your servers from harmful bots.
A WAF is generally installed in three ways:
- Network-based: installed locally and based on hardware
- Host-based: integrated into the application software.
- Cloud-based: installed using cloud WAF solutions.
Learn about Web Application Firewall and its installation in this article.
Overview of AWS Web Application Firewall
AWS WAF is a web application firewall that monitors HTTP and HTTPS requests. Using AWS WAF, the developers can set rules that prohibit bad traffic from accessing your websites. The security rules control bot traffic and prevent common attacks such as SQL injections and cross-site scripting.
You can also customize the rules to filter out specific patterns to reduce Magento security risks. To get started quickly, opt for AWS WAF Managed rules. These are pre-set rules managed by AWS to address central security issues.
You can also take a look at OWASP’s Top 10 security risks. These are the Open Web Application Security Projects (OWASP) top web application security issues. AWS WAF protects your Magento store from common web exploits that consume excessive resources, disrupt security, and cause downtime.
The cost is based on how many rules you deploy and the volume of web requests.
Features of AWS WAF
1. AWS WAF Bot Control
AWS WAF Bot Control gives you visibility and control over bot traffic.
Bot Control is also a managed rule group maintained and improved by the AWS team. This feature blocks unwanted bot traffic at the edge before it can impact your servers.
Some of the benefits of AWS WAF Bot Control include:
- Easy deployment
- Reducing costs on the scraper and crawler web traffic
- Flexible bot protection
- Deliver alternate content in response to bot traffic
With Bot Control, you get real-time, detailed, and request-level visibility into bot activities. The Bot Control managed rule group is used with the other Managed Rules for WAF.
2. Web traffic filtering
With the AWS WAF, you can create rules to filter out web traffic. The rules can be based on IP addresses, HTTP headers, body, custom URI strings, and more. You can enable a single set of rules on many Magento sites.
There is no need to recreate rules for every Magento site. These rules are easily reused on all sites. AWS WAF allows you to create a centralized set of deployed rules.
3. Full feature API
AWS WAF is fully managed and administered with APIs. Users can create and maintain rules automatically. These rules are directly added to the development and design process. You can create security rules while you develop applications. Use the API feature to update rules among the Magento application and security teams.
AWS WAF can also be provisioned automatically with AWS CloudFormation. You can use the sample templates from AWS CloudFormation to specify all security rules.
4. Real-time visibility
AWS WAF provides real-time visibility on metrics such as IP addresses, geo-locations, referrers, and more. You can also set up alerts when a threshold is exceeded. You will get notified when an attack is detected. The AWS WAF is fully integrated with Amazon CloudWatch.
You can use the visibility dashboard to analyze your security risks. Create new rules to protect your web applications. Users also gain full access to events logging and inbound traffic networks. You can investigate the data for auditing.
You can set up WAF rules across multiple AWS accounts using the AWS Firewall Manager. The Firewall Manager automatically informs you when there is a policy violation.
Benefits of AWS WAF for Magento
1. Protection against web attacks
AWS WAS supports hundreds of managed rules which can be configured and updated within minutes. These rules inspect web requests without causing any latency.
Protect your site from bot traffic based on the specified rules. Actively filter and block web exploitation. Threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and others are prevented with AWS WAF. You can filter any part of the web request.
Tools such as Amazon CloudWatch help monitor and analyze network traffic. AWS WAF blocks attacks from reaching your Magento store.
2. Improved web traffic visibility
AWS WAF offers near real-time visibility on your Magento site traffic. Get granular-level control over metrics. You can create new rules and alerts using CloudWatch. It helps you monitor the inbound traffic on every rule.
AWS WAF also provides logging metrics. You can capture a web request's complete header data. You can analyze the data for security and auditing processes.
3. Managed Rules
AWS WAF allows you to create and customize rules based on the attacks you usually witness for your Magento site. You can select many rule types. Managed rules are also automatically updated. You don’t have to keep track of maintaining the rules and save time.
Some of the benefits of Managed Rules are:
- AWS security experts manage rules
- Pay-as-you-go services
- Get pre-configured security rules
4. Monitor and block bots
You can monitor incoming traffic using the AWS WAF console. Get detailed visibility into the category and other metrics on the bot traffic. You can also block and rate-limit bots such as scrapers and crawlers.
AWS WAF reduces costs on bot control. There is no need for additional software or managing SSL/TLS certificates.
5. Easy deployment and maintenance
AWS WAF is easy to deploy on Amazon CloudFront or your CDN solution. Bot protection is easily added to Application Load Balancer and Amazon API Gateway. You can do that by adding an AWS Managed rule group to a Web Access Control List.
The rules are centralized and deployed on all web apps. The deployment takes no time and does not alert you to false positives. AWS WAF helps you save time updating the rules on Magento. You get added security while deploying Magento applications and new releases.
Additional Magento security with MGT WAF
In addition to AWS WAF, MGT Commerce offers the MGT Web Application Firewall. The firewall is designed explicitly for Magento stores web attacks.
MGT WAF detects bots that compromise security or consume excessive resources. You can add it as a web security layer that works along with AWS WAF.
Some of the top features of MGT WAF include:
- DDoS Attack Mitigation
- SQL-Injection Protection
- Cross-Site Scripting Protection
- Linux Attack Protection
- Near Real-time visibility
- Bot and IP Blocking
- Automatic WAF updates
The MGT-Commerce team will set up all WAF rules for you. We will install and configure the Magento 2 Module for your store.
Conclusion
AWS WAF gives you agile protection against web attacks.
Web and application-layer exploits affect site performance and availability. Attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, DDoS damages your business. The custom rules block or allow HTTP requests before they reach your store.
You can use the Access Control Lists to define acceptable requests or IP addresses. AWS WAF comes with easy setup and automated updates. It helps you save time maintaining the rules. You can add new security rules within minutes across all Magento websites.
The AWS WAF gives clear visibility on bot control and other metrics. You can configure advanced custom rules that match your security requirements.
If you have questions about Magento security, feel free to contact us.
