ModSecurity Breach

ModSecurity v2.5 is now available. Some of the new features include: parallel text matching, Geo IP resolution, credit card number detection, support for content injection, automated rule updates, scripting, as well as many others.
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News and Updates

Trustwave Acquires Breach Security
(June 22, 2010)
Trustwave has acquired Breach Security, the company behind ModSecurity. Please see the press release for more information.

ModSecurity v2.5.12
(Feb 4, 2010)
ModSecurity v2.5.12 (change log) has been released. This release fixes several important issues to help prevent a detection bypass and denial of service attacks against ModSecurity. Many thanks to the Sogeti/ESEC R&D team for sending us the results of their code review. In addition, this release fixes quite a few small but notable bugs and includes the latest Core Ruleset (v2.0.5).

ModSecurity v2.5.11
(Nov 6, 2009)
ModSecurity v2.5.11 (change log) has been released. This release fixes a multipart parsing issue that has the potential to allow bypassing the rules engine. This bypass can be avoided via some simple rules, however. Other changes include a rules update (CRS 2.0.3) and some minor cleanup in build, mlogc, persistence and the output filter ordering.

ModSecurity v2.5.10
(Sep 24, 2009)
ModSecurity v2.5.10 (change log) has been released. This release fixes a number of small issues. Notable issues that have been fixed are a cleaner build process, fixes to mlogc to build on Windows and allow more reliable SSL neg. to the console, less verbose logging when using anomaly scoring with CRS v2.x and a feature to allow easier use with Apache mpm-itk.


Books from the ModSecurity Contributors

ModSecurity Handbook cover

ModSecurity Handbook is "The definitive guide to the popular open source web application firewall", written by Ivan Ristic (original author of ModSecurity). The book is available from Feisty Duck in hardcopy or with immediate access to the digital version which is continually updated.

Apache Security cover

Apache Security is a comprehensive Apache Security resource, written by Ivan Ristic for O'Reilly. Two chapters (Apache Installation and Configuration and PHP) are available as free download, as are the Apache security tools created for the book.

Preventing Web Attacks with Apache cover

Preventing Web Attacks with Apache. Building on his groundbreaking SANS presentations on Apache security, Ryan C. Barnett reveals why your Web servers represent such a compelling target, how significant exploits are performed, and how they can be defended against.

What Is ModSecurity?

ModSecurity is a web application firewall that can work either embedded or as a reverse proxy. It provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring, logging and real-time analysis.

It is also an open source project that aims to make the web application firewall technology available to everyone.

Support/Mailing lists

Community support is available on the mod-security-users/lists.sourceforge.net mailing list. You must subscribe first (by clicking here) in order to post. The list archives are available as News (NNTP), Threaded HTTP, Bloggy HTTP, and RSS.

Commercial support and appliances based on ModSecurity can be obtained from Breach Security.

Breach

Getting Started

 ModSecurity FAQ
Web Intrusion Detection with ModSecurity (ApacheCon Europe 2008)
Introducing ModSecurity
Introducing Core Rules
ModSecurity 2 Deployment
ModSecurity 2 Rule Language
Securing Web Services with ModSecurity 2
Ajax Fingerprinting and Filtering with ModSecurity 2

External Links

ModSecurity 2.0 with Ivan Ristic
ModSecurity is an open source web application firewall that runs as an Apache module, and version 2.0 offers many new features and improvements. Federico Biancuzzi interviewed Ivan Ristic to discuss the new logging system, events tracking and correlation, filtering AJAX or AFLAX applications, and just-in-time patching for closed source applications.

Web Application Firewalls Primer
Introduction to Web Application Firewalls, published in INSECURE Magazine 1.5.

Talks

Our talks are available for download following the links below:

Web Application Firewalls:
When Are They Useful?
(May 31, 2006)
ModSecurity Elevator Pitch
(February 20, 2006)
Threat Modelling for Web Applications
(January 27, 2006)
Apache Security Training
(October 27, 2005)
Web Intrusion Detection with ModSecurity
(October 27, 2005)
ModSecurity Status
Stable: 2.5.12 (4 Feb 2010)
Development: -

ModSecurity Blog

Jul 23, 2010
ModSecurity Has a New Home
As many of you already know, about a month ago Trustwave acquired Breach Security, the then owner and sponsor of the ModSecurity project. Trustwave's Spider Labs will now be leading the project. Within Spider Labs and the highly capable people...

Jul 21, 2010
ModSecurity Happy Hour @ Black Hat USA
We will be hosting a ModSecurity happy hour during Black Hat USA. It is open to anyone who contributes, uses or wants to learned more about the project. You'll also get a chance to meet the members of the Trustwave's SpiderLabs team that will be supporting ModSecurity moving forward.

Apr 22, 2010
Impedance Mismatch and Base64
There was a recent blog article stating that ModSecurity can be bypassed by adding invalid characters to Base64 encoded data. Well, this is somewhat correct, but I am not sure I'd call it a bypass. It is really "Impedance Mismatch"...

Mar 9, 2010
WAF Virtual Patching Workshop at Blackhat USA 2010
Just wanted to let everyone know that if you are headed to Blackhat USA 2010 this summer in Las Vegas, we have just added a 1-day workshop on the day before the Briefings start -http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-us-10/training/bh-us-10-training_RB-WAFVirtPatch.html In the workshop, we will...

Nov 13, 2009
OWASP AppSec DC Update
I presented on the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) Project yesterday here at the AppSec DC conf. The reception was good and there were a lot of great questions. For those interested, the PPT has been posted to the...