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<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Reference Manual</h1>
<div id="bodyContent">
<h3 id="siteSub">From mod-security</h3>
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<div id="jump-to-nav">Jump to: <a href="#column-one">navigation</a>,
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<table id="toc" class="toc" summary="Contents"><tbody><tr><td><div
id="toctitle"><h2>Contents</h2> <span class="toctoggle">[<a
href="javascript:toggleToc()" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>]</span></div>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#ModSecurity.C2.AE_Reference_Manual"><span
class="tocnumber">1</span> <span class="toctext">ModSecurity® Reference
Manual</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Current_as_of_v2.5.13_and_v2.6"><span
class="tocnumber">1.1</span> <span class="toctext">Current as of v2.5.13
and v2.6</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a
href="#Copyright_.C2.A9_2004-2011_Trustwave_Holdings.2C_Inc."><span
class="tocnumber">1.1.1</span> <span class="toctext">Copyright ©
2004-2011 Trustwave Holdings, Inc.</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Table_of_Contents"><span
class="tocnumber">2</span> <span class="toctext">Table of Contents</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Introduction"><span class="tocnumber">3</span>
<span class="toctext">Introduction</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#HTTP_Traffic_Logging"><span
class="tocnumber">3.1</span> <span class="toctext">HTTP Traffic Logging</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a
href="#Real-Time_Monitoring_and_Attack_Detection"><span
class="tocnumber">3.2</span> <span class="toctext">Real-Time Monitoring
and Attack Detection</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Attack_Prevention_and_Virtual_Patching"><span
class="tocnumber">3.3</span> <span class="toctext">Attack Prevention
and Virtual Patching</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Flexible_Rule_Engine"><span
class="tocnumber">3.4</span> <span class="toctext">Flexible Rule Engine</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Embedded-mode_Deployment"><span
class="tocnumber">3.5</span> <span class="toctext">Embedded-mode
Deployment</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Network-based_Deployment"><span
class="tocnumber">3.6</span> <span class="toctext">Network-based
Deployment</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Portability"><span class="tocnumber">3.7</span>
<span class="toctext">Portability</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Licensing"><span class="tocnumber">3.8</span>
<span class="toctext">Licensing</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a
href="#OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_.28CRS.29_Project"><span
class="tocnumber">4</span> <span class="toctext">OWASP ModSecurity Core
Rule Set (CRS) Project</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Overview"><span class="tocnumber">4.1</span>
<span class="toctext">Overview</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Core_Rules_Content"><span
class="tocnumber">4.2</span> <span class="toctext">Core Rules Content</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Installation"><span class="tocnumber">5</span>
<span class="toctext">Installation</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Prerequisites"><span class="tocnumber">5.1</span>
<span class="toctext">Prerequisites</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a
href="#ModSecurity_2.x_works_only_with_Apache_2.0.x_or_higher"><span
class="tocnumber">5.1.1</span> <span class="toctext">ModSecurity 2.x
works only with Apache 2.0.x or higher</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#mod_uniqueid"><span class="tocnumber">5.1.2</span>
<span class="toctext">mod_uniqueid</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#libapr_and_libapr-util"><span
class="tocnumber">5.1.3</span> <span class="toctext">libapr and
libapr-util</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#libpcre"><span class="tocnumber">5.1.4</span>
<span class="toctext">libpcre</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#libxml2"><span class="tocnumber">5.1.5</span>
<span class="toctext">libxml2</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#liblua_v5.1.x"><span class="tocnumber">5.1.6</span>
<span class="toctext">liblua v5.1.x</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#libcurl_v7.15.1_or_higher"><span
class="tocnumber">5.1.7</span> <span class="toctext">libcurl v7.15.1 or
higher</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Installation_Methods"><span
class="tocnumber">5.2</span> <span class="toctext">Installation Methods</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SVN_Access"><span class="tocnumber">5.3</span>
<span class="toctext">SVN Access</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Stable_Release_Download"><span
class="tocnumber">5.4</span> <span class="toctext">Stable Release
Download</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Installation_Steps"><span
class="tocnumber">5.5</span> <span class="toctext">Installation Steps</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#UNIX"><span class="tocnumber">5.5.1</span>
<span class="toctext">UNIX</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#Windows_.28MS_VC.2B.2B_8.29"><span
class="tocnumber">5.5.2</span> <span class="toctext">Windows (MS VC++ 8)</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a
href="#Edit_the_main_Apache_httpd_config_file_.28usually_httpd.conf.29"><span
class="tocnumber">5.5.3</span> <span class="toctext">Edit the main
Apache httpd config file (usually httpd.conf)</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#Configure_ModSecurity"><span
class="tocnumber">5.5.4</span> <span class="toctext">Configure
ModSecurity</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#Start_Apache_httpd"><span
class="tocnumber">5.5.5</span> <span class="toctext">Start Apache httpd</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Configuration_Directives"><span
class="tocnumber">6</span> <span class="toctext">Configuration
Directives</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAction"><span class="tocnumber">6.1</span>
<span class="toctext">SecAction</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecArgumentSeparator"><span
class="tocnumber">6.2</span> <span class="toctext">SecArgumentSeparator</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditEngine"><span class="tocnumber">6.3</span>
<span class="toctext">SecAuditEngine</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLog"><span class="tocnumber">6.4</span>
<span class="toctext">SecAuditLog</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLog2"><span class="tocnumber">6.5</span>
<span class="toctext">SecAuditLog2</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLogDirMode"><span
class="tocnumber">6.6</span> <span class="toctext">SecAuditLogDirMode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLogFileMode"><span
class="tocnumber">6.7</span> <span class="toctext">SecAuditLogFileMode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLogParts"><span
class="tocnumber">6.8</span> <span class="toctext">SecAuditLogParts</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLogRelevantStatus"><span
class="tocnumber">6.9</span> <span class="toctext">SecAuditLogRelevantStatus</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLogStorageDir"><span
class="tocnumber">6.10</span> <span class="toctext">SecAuditLogStorageDir</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecAuditLogType"><span
class="tocnumber">6.11</span> <span class="toctext">SecAuditLogType</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecCacheTransformations"><span
class="tocnumber">6.12</span> <span class="toctext">SecCacheTransformations</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecChrootDir"><span class="tocnumber">6.13</span>
<span class="toctext">SecChrootDir</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecComponentSignature"><span
class="tocnumber">6.14</span> <span class="toctext">SecComponentSignature</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecContentInjection"><span
class="tocnumber">6.15</span> <span class="toctext">SecContentInjection</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecCookieFormat"><span
class="tocnumber">6.16</span> <span class="toctext">SecCookieFormat</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecDataDir"><span class="tocnumber">6.17</span>
<span class="toctext">SecDataDir</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecDebugLog"><span class="tocnumber">6.18</span>
<span class="toctext">SecDebugLog</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecDebugLogLevel"><span
class="tocnumber">6.19</span> <span class="toctext">SecDebugLogLevel</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecDefaultAction"><span
class="tocnumber">6.20</span> <span class="toctext">SecDefaultAction</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecDisableBackendCompression"><span
class="tocnumber">6.21</span> <span class="toctext">SecDisableBackendCompression</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecGeoLookupDb"><span class="tocnumber">6.22</span>
<span class="toctext">SecGeoLookupDb</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecGsbLookupDb"><span class="tocnumber">6.23</span>
<span class="toctext">SecGsbLookupDb</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecGuardianLog"><span class="tocnumber">6.24</span>
<span class="toctext">SecGuardianLog</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecHttpBlKey"><span class="tocnumber">6.25</span>
<span class="toctext">SecHttpBlKey</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecInterceptOnError"><span
class="tocnumber">6.26</span> <span class="toctext">SecInterceptOnError</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecMarker"><span class="tocnumber">6.27</span>
<span class="toctext">SecMarker</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPcreMatchLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.28</span> <span class="toctext">SecPcreMatchLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion"><span
class="tocnumber">6.29</span> <span class="toctext">SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPdfProtect"><span class="tocnumber">6.30</span>
<span class="toctext">SecPdfProtect</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPdfProtectMethod"><span
class="tocnumber">6.31</span> <span class="toctext">SecPdfProtectMethod</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPdfProtectSecret"><span
class="tocnumber">6.32</span> <span class="toctext">SecPdfProtectSecret</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPdfProtectTimeout"><span
class="tocnumber">6.33</span> <span class="toctext">SecPdfProtectTimeout</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecPdfProtectTokenName"><span
class="tocnumber">6.34</span> <span class="toctext">SecPdfProtectTokenName</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecReadStateLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.35</span> <span class="toctext">SecReadStateLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecWriteStateLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.36</span> <span class="toctext">SecWriteStateLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRequestBodyAccess"><span
class="tocnumber">6.37</span> <span class="toctext">SecRequestBodyAccess</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.38</span> <span class="toctext">SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRequestBodyLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.39</span> <span class="toctext">SecRequestBodyLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.40</span> <span class="toctext">SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRequestBodyLimitAction"><span
class="tocnumber">6.41</span> <span class="toctext">SecRequestBodyLimitAction</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecResponseBodyLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.42</span> <span class="toctext">SecResponseBodyLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecResponseBodyLimitAction"><span
class="tocnumber">6.43</span> <span class="toctext">SecResponseBodyLimitAction</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecResponseBodyMimeType"><span
class="tocnumber">6.44</span> <span class="toctext">SecResponseBodyMimeType</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear"><span
class="tocnumber">6.45</span> <span class="toctext">SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecResponseBodyAccess"><span
class="tocnumber">6.46</span> <span class="toctext">SecResponseBodyAccess</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRule"><span class="tocnumber">6.47</span>
<span class="toctext">SecRule</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleInheritance"><span
class="tocnumber">6.48</span> <span class="toctext">SecRuleInheritance</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleEngine"><span class="tocnumber">6.49</span>
<span class="toctext">SecRuleEngine</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleRemoveById"><span
class="tocnumber">6.50</span> <span class="toctext">SecRuleRemoveById</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleRemoveByMsg"><span
class="tocnumber">6.51</span> <span class="toctext">SecRuleRemoveByMsg</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleRemoveByTag"><span
class="tocnumber">6.52</span> <span class="toctext">SecRuleRemoveByTag</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleScript"><span class="tocnumber">6.53</span>
<span class="toctext">SecRuleScript</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleUpdateActionById"><span
class="tocnumber">6.54</span> <span class="toctext">SecRuleUpdateActionById</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecRuleUpdateTargetById"><span
class="tocnumber">6.55</span> <span class="toctext">SecRuleUpdateTargetById</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecServerSignature"><span
class="tocnumber">6.56</span> <span class="toctext">SecServerSignature</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecStreamInBodyInspection"><span
class="tocnumber">6.57</span> <span class="toctext">SecStreamInBodyInspection</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecStreamOutBodyInspection"><span
class="tocnumber">6.58</span> <span class="toctext">SecStreamOutBodyInspection</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecTmpDir"><span class="tocnumber">6.59</span>
<span class="toctext">SecTmpDir</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecUnicodeMapFile"><span
class="tocnumber">6.60</span> <span class="toctext">SecUnicodeMapFile</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecUnicodeCodePage"><span
class="tocnumber">6.61</span> <span class="toctext">SecUnicodeCodePage</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecUploadDir"><span class="tocnumber">6.62</span>
<span class="toctext">SecUploadDir</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecUploadFileLimit"><span
class="tocnumber">6.63</span> <span class="toctext">SecUploadFileLimit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecUploadFileMode"><span
class="tocnumber">6.64</span> <span class="toctext">SecUploadFileMode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecUploadKeepFiles"><span
class="tocnumber">6.65</span> <span class="toctext">SecUploadKeepFiles</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecWebAppId"><span class="tocnumber">6.66</span>
<span class="toctext">SecWebAppId</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SecCollectionTimeout"><span
class="tocnumber">6.67</span> <span class="toctext">SecCollectionTimeout</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Processing_Phases"><span
class="tocnumber">7</span> <span class="toctext">Processing Phases</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Phase_Request_Headers"><span
class="tocnumber">7.1</span> <span class="toctext">Phase Request Headers</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Phase_Request_Body"><span
class="tocnumber">7.2</span> <span class="toctext">Phase Request Body</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Phase_Response_Headers"><span
class="tocnumber">7.3</span> <span class="toctext">Phase Response
Headers</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Phase_Response_Body"><span
class="tocnumber">7.4</span> <span class="toctext">Phase Response Body</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Phase_Logging"><span class="tocnumber">7.5</span>
<span class="toctext">Phase Logging</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Variables"><span class="tocnumber">8</span>
<span class="toctext">Variables</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS"><span class="tocnumber">8.1</span>
<span class="toctext">ARGS</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS_COMBINED_SIZE"><span
class="tocnumber">8.2</span> <span class="toctext">ARGS_COMBINED_SIZE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS_GET"><span class="tocnumber">8.3</span>
<span class="toctext">ARGS_GET</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS_GET_NAMES"><span class="tocnumber">8.4</span>
<span class="toctext">ARGS_GET_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS_NAMES"><span class="tocnumber">8.5</span>
<span class="toctext">ARGS_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS_POST"><span class="tocnumber">8.6</span>
<span class="toctext">ARGS_POST</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ARGS_POST_NAMES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.7</span> <span class="toctext">ARGS_POST_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#AUTH_TYPE"><span class="tocnumber">8.8</span>
<span class="toctext">AUTH_TYPE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#DURATION"><span class="tocnumber">8.9</span>
<span class="toctext">DURATION</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ENV"><span class="tocnumber">8.10</span>
<span class="toctext">ENV</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#FILES"><span class="tocnumber">8.11</span>
<span class="toctext">FILES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#FILES_COMBINED_SIZE"><span
class="tocnumber">8.12</span> <span class="toctext">FILES_COMBINED_SIZE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#FILES_NAMES"><span class="tocnumber">8.13</span>
<span class="toctext">FILES_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#FILES_SIZES"><span class="tocnumber">8.14</span>
<span class="toctext">FILES_SIZES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#FILES_TMPNAMES"><span class="tocnumber">8.15</span>
<span class="toctext">FILES_TMPNAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#GEO"><span class="tocnumber">8.16</span>
<span class="toctext">GEO</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#HIGHEST_SEVERITY"><span
class="tocnumber">8.17</span> <span class="toctext">HIGHEST_SEVERITY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#INBOUND_ERROR_DATA"><span
class="tocnumber">8.18</span> <span class="toctext">INBOUND_ERROR_DATA</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MATCHED_VAR"><span class="tocnumber">8.19</span>
<span class="toctext">MATCHED_VAR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MATCHED_VARS"><span class="tocnumber">8.20</span>
<span class="toctext">MATCHED_VARS</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MATCHED_VAR_NAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.21</span> <span class="toctext">MATCHED_VAR_NAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MATCHED_VARS_NAMES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.22</span> <span class="toctext">MATCHED_VARS_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MODSEC_BUILD"><span class="tocnumber">8.23</span>
<span class="toctext">MODSEC_BUILD</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MULTIPART_CRLF_LF_LINES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.24</span> <span class="toctext">MULTIPART_CRLF_LF_LINES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR"><span
class="tocnumber">8.25</span> <span class="toctext">MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY"><span
class="tocnumber">8.26</span> <span class="toctext">MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PATH_INFO"><span class="tocnumber">8.27</span>
<span class="toctext">PATH_INFO</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_COMBINED"><span class="tocnumber">8.28</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_COMBINED</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_GC"><span class="tocnumber">8.29</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_GC</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_LOGGING"><span class="tocnumber">8.30</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_LOGGING</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_PHASE1"><span class="tocnumber">8.31</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_PHASE1</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_PHASE2"><span class="tocnumber">8.32</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_PHASE2</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_PHASE3"><span class="tocnumber">8.33</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_PHASE3</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_PHASE4"><span class="tocnumber">8.34</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_PHASE4</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_PHASE5"><span class="tocnumber">8.35</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_PHASE5</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_SREAD"><span class="tocnumber">8.36</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_SREAD</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#PERF_SWRITE"><span class="tocnumber">8.37</span>
<span class="toctext">PERF_SWRITE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#QUERY_STRING"><span class="tocnumber">8.38</span>
<span class="toctext">QUERY_STRING</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REMOTE_ADDR"><span class="tocnumber">8.39</span>
<span class="toctext">REMOTE_ADDR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REMOTE_HOST"><span class="tocnumber">8.40</span>
<span class="toctext">REMOTE_HOST</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REMOTE_PORT"><span class="tocnumber">8.41</span>
<span class="toctext">REMOTE_PORT</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REMOTE_USER"><span class="tocnumber">8.42</span>
<span class="toctext">REMOTE_USER</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQBODY_ERROR"><span class="tocnumber">8.43</span>
<span class="toctext">REQBODY_ERROR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQBODY_ERROR_MSG"><span
class="tocnumber">8.44</span> <span class="toctext">REQBODY_ERROR_MSG</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQBODY_PROCESSOR"><span
class="tocnumber">8.45</span> <span class="toctext">REQBODY_PROCESSOR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_BASENAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.46</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_BASENAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_BODY"><span class="tocnumber">8.47</span>
<span class="toctext">REQUEST_BODY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_BODY_LENGTH"><span
class="tocnumber">8.48</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_BODY_LENGTH</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_COOKIES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.49</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_COOKIES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.50</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_FILENAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.51</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_FILENAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_HEADERS"><span
class="tocnumber">8.52</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_HEADERS</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.53</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_LINE"><span class="tocnumber">8.54</span>
<span class="toctext">REQUEST_LINE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_METHOD"><span class="tocnumber">8.55</span>
<span class="toctext">REQUEST_METHOD</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_PROTOCOL"><span
class="tocnumber">8.56</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_PROTOCOL</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_URI"><span class="tocnumber">8.57</span>
<span class="toctext">REQUEST_URI</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#REQUEST_URI_RAW"><span
class="tocnumber">8.58</span> <span class="toctext">REQUEST_URI_RAW</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_BODY"><span class="tocnumber">8.59</span>
<span class="toctext">RESPONSE_BODY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_CONTENT_LENGTH"><span
class="tocnumber">8.60</span> <span class="toctext">RESPONSE_CONTENT_LENGTH</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE"><span
class="tocnumber">8.61</span> <span class="toctext">RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_HEADERS"><span
class="tocnumber">8.62</span> <span class="toctext">RESPONSE_HEADERS</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_HEADERS_NAMES"><span
class="tocnumber">8.63</span> <span class="toctext">RESPONSE_HEADERS_NAMES</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_PROTOCOL"><span
class="tocnumber">8.64</span> <span class="toctext">RESPONSE_PROTOCOL</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RESPONSE_STATUS"><span
class="tocnumber">8.65</span> <span class="toctext">RESPONSE_STATUS</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#RULE"><span class="tocnumber">8.66</span>
<span class="toctext">RULE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_BASENAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.67</span> <span class="toctext">SCRIPT_BASENAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_FILENAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.68</span> <span class="toctext">SCRIPT_FILENAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_GID"><span class="tocnumber">8.69</span>
<span class="toctext">SCRIPT_GID</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_GROUPNAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.70</span> <span class="toctext">SCRIPT_GROUPNAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_MODE"><span class="tocnumber">8.71</span>
<span class="toctext">SCRIPT_MODE</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_UID"><span class="tocnumber">8.72</span>
<span class="toctext">SCRIPT_UID</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SCRIPT_USERNAME"><span
class="tocnumber">8.73</span> <span class="toctext">SCRIPT_USERNAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SERVER_ADDR"><span class="tocnumber">8.74</span>
<span class="toctext">SERVER_ADDR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SERVER_NAME"><span class="tocnumber">8.75</span>
<span class="toctext">SERVER_NAME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SERVER_PORT"><span class="tocnumber">8.76</span>
<span class="toctext">SERVER_PORT</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SESSION"><span class="tocnumber">8.77</span>
<span class="toctext">SESSION</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#SESSIONID"><span class="tocnumber">8.78</span>
<span class="toctext">SESSIONID</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#STREAM_INPUT_BODY"><span
class="tocnumber">8.79</span> <span class="toctext">STREAM_INPUT_BODY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY"><span
class="tocnumber">8.80</span> <span class="toctext">STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME"><span class="tocnumber">8.81</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_DAY"><span class="tocnumber">8.82</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_DAY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_EPOCH"><span class="tocnumber">8.83</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_EPOCH</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_HOUR"><span class="tocnumber">8.84</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_HOUR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_MIN"><span class="tocnumber">8.85</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_MIN</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_MON"><span class="tocnumber">8.86</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_MON</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_SEC"><span class="tocnumber">8.87</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_SEC</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_WDAY"><span class="tocnumber">8.88</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_WDAY</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TIME_YEAR"><span class="tocnumber">8.89</span>
<span class="toctext">TIME_YEAR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#TX"><span class="tocnumber">8.90</span>
<span class="toctext">TX</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#UNIQUE_ID"><span class="tocnumber">8.91</span>
<span class="toctext">UNIQUE_ID</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#URLENCODED_ERROR"><span
class="tocnumber">8.92</span> <span class="toctext">URLENCODED_ERROR</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#USERID"><span class="tocnumber">8.93</span>
<span class="toctext">USERID</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#WEBAPPID"><span class="tocnumber">8.94</span>
<span class="toctext">WEBAPPID</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#WEBSERVER_ERROR_LOG"><span
class="tocnumber">8.95</span> <span class="toctext">WEBSERVER_ERROR_LOG</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#XML"><span class="tocnumber">8.96</span>
<span class="toctext">XML</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Transformation_functions"><span
class="tocnumber">9</span> <span class="toctext">Transformation
functions</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#base64Decode"><span class="tocnumber">9.1</span>
<span class="toctext">base64Decode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sqlHexDecode"><span class="tocnumber">9.2</span>
<span class="toctext">sqlHexDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#base64DecodeExt"><span
class="tocnumber">9.3</span> <span class="toctext">base64DecodeExt</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#base64Encode"><span class="tocnumber">9.4</span>
<span class="toctext">base64Encode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#cmdLine"><span class="tocnumber">9.5</span>
<span class="toctext">cmdLine</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#compressWhitespace"><span
class="tocnumber">9.6</span> <span class="toctext">compressWhitespace</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#cssDecode"><span class="tocnumber">9.7</span>
<span class="toctext">cssDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#escapeSeqDecode"><span
class="tocnumber">9.8</span> <span class="toctext">escapeSeqDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#hexDecode"><span class="tocnumber">9.9</span>
<span class="toctext">hexDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#hexEncode"><span class="tocnumber">9.10</span>
<span class="toctext">hexEncode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#htmlEntityDecode"><span
class="tocnumber">9.11</span> <span class="toctext">htmlEntityDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#jsDecode"><span class="tocnumber">9.12</span>
<span class="toctext">jsDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#length"><span class="tocnumber">9.13</span>
<span class="toctext">length</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#lowercase"><span class="tocnumber">9.14</span>
<span class="toctext">lowercase</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#md5"><span class="tocnumber">9.15</span>
<span class="toctext">md5</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#none"><span class="tocnumber">9.16</span>
<span class="toctext">none</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#normalisePath"><span class="tocnumber">9.17</span>
<span class="toctext">normalisePath</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#normalisePathWin"><span
class="tocnumber">9.18</span> <span class="toctext">normalisePathWin</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#parityEven7bit"><span class="tocnumber">9.19</span>
<span class="toctext">parityEven7bit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#parityOdd7bit"><span class="tocnumber">9.20</span>
<span class="toctext">parityOdd7bit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#parityZero7bit"><span class="tocnumber">9.21</span>
<span class="toctext">parityZero7bit</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#removeNulls"><span class="tocnumber">9.22</span>
<span class="toctext">removeNulls</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#removeWhitespace"><span
class="tocnumber">9.23</span> <span class="toctext">removeWhitespace</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#replaceComments"><span
class="tocnumber">9.24</span> <span class="toctext">replaceComments</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#removeCommentsChar"><span
class="tocnumber">9.25</span> <span class="toctext">removeCommentsChar</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#removeComments"><span class="tocnumber">9.26</span>
<span class="toctext">removeComments</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#replaceNulls"><span class="tocnumber">9.27</span>
<span class="toctext">replaceNulls</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#urlDecode"><span class="tocnumber">9.28</span>
<span class="toctext">urlDecode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#urlDecodeUni"><span class="tocnumber">9.29</span>
<span class="toctext">urlDecodeUni</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#urlEncode"><span class="tocnumber">9.30</span>
<span class="toctext">urlEncode</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sha1"><span class="tocnumber">9.31</span>
<span class="toctext">sha1</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#trimLeft"><span class="tocnumber">9.32</span>
<span class="toctext">trimLeft</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#trimRight"><span class="tocnumber">9.33</span>
<span class="toctext">trimRight</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#trim"><span class="tocnumber">9.34</span>
<span class="toctext">trim</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Actions"><span class="tocnumber">10</span>
<span class="toctext">Actions</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#allow"><span class="tocnumber">10.1</span>
<span class="toctext">allow</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#append"><span class="tocnumber">10.2</span>
<span class="toctext">append</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#auditlog"><span class="tocnumber">10.3</span>
<span class="toctext">auditlog</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#block"><span class="tocnumber">10.4</span>
<span class="toctext">block</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#capture"><span class="tocnumber">10.5</span>
<span class="toctext">capture</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#chain"><span class="tocnumber">10.6</span>
<span class="toctext">chain</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ctl"><span class="tocnumber">10.7</span>
<span class="toctext">ctl</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#deny"><span class="tocnumber">10.8</span>
<span class="toctext">deny</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#deprecatevar"><span class="tocnumber">10.9</span>
<span class="toctext">deprecatevar</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#drop"><span class="tocnumber">10.10</span>
<span class="toctext">drop</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#exec"><span class="tocnumber">10.11</span>
<span class="toctext">exec</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#expirevar"><span class="tocnumber">10.12</span>
<span class="toctext">expirevar</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#id"><span class="tocnumber">10.13</span>
<span class="toctext">id</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#initcol"><span class="tocnumber">10.14</span>
<span class="toctext">initcol</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#log"><span class="tocnumber">10.15</span>
<span class="toctext">log</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#logdata"><span class="tocnumber">10.16</span>
<span class="toctext">logdata</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#msg"><span class="tocnumber">10.17</span>
<span class="toctext">msg</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#multiMatch"><span class="tocnumber">10.18</span>
<span class="toctext">multiMatch</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#noauditlog"><span class="tocnumber">10.19</span>
<span class="toctext">noauditlog</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#nolog"><span class="tocnumber">10.20</span>
<span class="toctext">nolog</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#pass"><span class="tocnumber">10.21</span>
<span class="toctext">pass</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#pause"><span class="tocnumber">10.22</span>
<span class="toctext">pause</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#phase"><span class="tocnumber">10.23</span>
<span class="toctext">phase</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#prepend"><span class="tocnumber">10.24</span>
<span class="toctext">prepend</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#proxy"><span class="tocnumber">10.25</span>
<span class="toctext">proxy</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#redirect"><span class="tocnumber">10.26</span>
<span class="toctext">redirect</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#rev"><span class="tocnumber">10.27</span>
<span class="toctext">rev</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sanitiseArg"><span class="tocnumber">10.28</span>
<span class="toctext">sanitiseArg</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sanitiseMatched"><span
class="tocnumber">10.29</span> <span class="toctext">sanitiseMatched</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sanitiseMatchedBytes"><span
class="tocnumber">10.30</span> <span class="toctext">sanitiseMatchedBytes</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sanitiseRequestHeader"><span
class="tocnumber">10.31</span> <span class="toctext">sanitiseRequestHeader</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#sanitiseResponseHeader"><span
class="tocnumber">10.32</span> <span class="toctext">sanitiseResponseHeader</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#severity"><span class="tocnumber">10.33</span>
<span class="toctext">severity</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#setuid"><span class="tocnumber">10.34</span>
<span class="toctext">setuid</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#setsid"><span class="tocnumber">10.35</span>
<span class="toctext">setsid</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#setenv"><span class="tocnumber">10.36</span>
<span class="toctext">setenv</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#setvar"><span class="tocnumber">10.37</span>
<span class="toctext">setvar</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#skip"><span class="tocnumber">10.38</span>
<span class="toctext">skip</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#skipAfter"><span class="tocnumber">10.39</span>
<span class="toctext">skipAfter</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#status"><span class="tocnumber">10.40</span>
<span class="toctext">status</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#t"><span class="tocnumber">10.41</span>
<span class="toctext">t</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#tag"><span class="tocnumber">10.42</span>
<span class="toctext">tag</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#xmlns"><span class="tocnumber">10.43</span>
<span class="toctext">xmlns</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Operators"><span class="tocnumber">11</span>
<span class="toctext">Operators</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#beginsWith"><span class="tocnumber">11.1</span>
<span class="toctext">beginsWith</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#contains"><span class="tocnumber">11.2</span>
<span class="toctext">contains</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#endsWith"><span class="tocnumber">11.3</span>
<span class="toctext">endsWith</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#eq"><span class="tocnumber">11.4</span>
<span class="toctext">eq</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ge"><span class="tocnumber">11.5</span>
<span class="toctext">ge</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#geoLookup"><span class="tocnumber">11.6</span>
<span class="toctext">geoLookup</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#gsbLookup"><span class="tocnumber">11.7</span>
<span class="toctext">gsbLookup</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#gt"><span class="tocnumber">11.8</span>
<span class="toctext">gt</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#inspectFile"><span class="tocnumber">11.9</span>
<span class="toctext">inspectFile</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#ipMatch"><span class="tocnumber">11.10</span>
<span class="toctext">ipMatch</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#le"><span class="tocnumber">11.11</span>
<span class="toctext">le</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#lt"><span class="tocnumber">11.12</span>
<span class="toctext">lt</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#pm"><span class="tocnumber">11.13</span>
<span class="toctext">pm</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#pmf"><span class="tocnumber">11.14</span>
<span class="toctext">pmf</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#pmFromFile"><span class="tocnumber">11.15</span>
<span class="toctext">pmFromFile</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#rbl"><span class="tocnumber">11.16</span>
<span class="toctext">rbl</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#rsub"><span class="tocnumber">11.17</span>
<span class="toctext">rsub</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#rx"><span class="tocnumber">11.18</span>
<span class="toctext">rx</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#streq"><span class="tocnumber">11.19</span>
<span class="toctext">streq</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#strmatch"><span class="tocnumber">11.20</span>
<span class="toctext">strmatch</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#validateByteRange"><span
class="tocnumber">11.21</span> <span class="toctext">validateByteRange</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#validateDTD"><span class="tocnumber">11.22</span>
<span class="toctext">validateDTD</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#validateSchema"><span class="tocnumber">11.23</span>
<span class="toctext">validateSchema</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#validateUrlEncoding"><span
class="tocnumber">11.24</span> <span class="toctext">validateUrlEncoding</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#validateUtf8Encoding"><span
class="tocnumber">11.25</span> <span class="toctext">validateUtf8Encoding</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#verifyCC"><span class="tocnumber">11.26</span>
<span class="toctext">verifyCC</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#verifyCPF"><span class="tocnumber">11.27</span>
<span class="toctext">verifyCPF</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#verifySSN"><span class="tocnumber">11.28</span>
<span class="toctext">verifySSN</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#within"><span class="tocnumber">11.29</span>
<span class="toctext">within</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Macro_Expansion"><span
class="tocnumber">12</span> <span class="toctext">Macro Expansion</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Persistant_Storage"><span
class="tocnumber">13</span> <span class="toctext">Persistant Storage</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#Miscellaneous_Topics"><span
class="tocnumber">14</span> <span class="toctext">Miscellaneous Topics</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="#Impedance_Mismatch"><span
class="tocnumber">14.1</span> <span class="toctext">Impedance Mismatch</span></a>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-3"><a href="#Impedance_Mismatch_with_PHP_Apps"><span
class="tocnumber">14.1.1</span> <span class="toctext">Impedance
Mismatch with PHP Apps</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#A_Recommended_Base_Configuration"><span
class="tocnumber">15</span> <span class="toctext">A Recommended Base
Configuration</span></a></li>
</ul>
</td></tr></tbody></table><script type="text/javascript"> if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } </script>
<a name="ModSecurity.C2.AE_Reference_Manual"
id="ModSecurity.C2.AE_Reference_Manual"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> ModSecurity® Reference Manual </span></h1>
<a name="Current_as_of_v2.5.13_and_v2.6"
id="Current_as_of_v2.5.13_and_v2.6"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
Current as of v2.5.13 and v2.6 </span></h2>
<a name="Copyright_.C2.A9_2004-2011_Trustwave_Holdings.2C_Inc."
id="Copyright_.C2.A9_2004-2011_Trustwave_Holdings.2C_Inc."></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> Copyright © 2004-2011 <a
href="https://www.trustwave.com/" class="external text"
title="https://www.trustwave.com/" rel="nofollow">Trustwave Holdings,
Inc.</a> </span></h3>
<a name="Table_of_Contents" id="Table_of_Contents"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Table of Contents </span></h1>
<a name="Introduction" id="Introduction"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Introduction </span></h1>
<p>ModSecurity is a web application firewall (WAF). With over 70% of
attacks now carried out over the web application level, organisations
need all the help they can get in making their systems secure. WAFs are
deployed to establish an increased external security layer to detect
and/or prevent attacks before they reach web applications. ModSecurity
provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and
allows for HTTP traffic monitoring and real-time analysis with little
or no changes to existing infrastructure.
</p>
<a name="HTTP_Traffic_Logging" id="HTTP_Traffic_Logging"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> HTTP Traffic Logging </span></h2>
<p>Web servers are typically well-equipped to log traffic in a form
useful for marketing analyses, but fall short logging traffic to web
applications. In particular, most are not capable of logging the request
bodies. Your adversaries know this, and that is why most attacks are
now carried out via POST requests, rendering your systems blind.
ModSecurity makes full HTTP transaction logging possible, allowing
complete requests and responses to be logged. Its logging facilities
also allow fine-grained decisions to be made about exactly what is
logged and when, ensuring only the relevant data is recorded. As some of
the request and/or response may contain sensitive data in certain
fields, ModSecurity can be configured to mask these fields before they
are written to the audit log.
</p>
<a name="Real-Time_Monitoring_and_Attack_Detection"
id="Real-Time_Monitoring_and_Attack_Detection"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Real-Time Monitoring and Attack Detection </span></h2>
<p>In addition to providing logging facilities, ModSecurity can monitor
the HTTP traffic in real time in order to detect attacks. In this case,
ModSecurity operates as a web intrusion detection tool, allowing you to
react to suspicious events that take place at your web systems.
</p>
<a name="Attack_Prevention_and_Virtual_Patching"
id="Attack_Prevention_and_Virtual_Patching"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Attack Prevention and Virtual Patching </span></h2>
<p>ModSecurity can also act immediately to prevent attacks from reaching
your web applications. There are three commonly used approaches:
</p>
<ol><li>Negative security model. A negative security model monitors
requests for anomalies, unusual behaviour, and common web application
attacks. It keeps anomaly scores for each request, IP addresses,
application sessions, and user accounts. Requests with high anomaly
scores are either logged or rejected altogether.
</li><li>Positive security model. When a positive security model is
deployed, only requests that are known to be valid are accepted, with
everything else rejected. This model requires knownledge of the web
applications you are protecting. Therefore a positive security model
works best with applications that are heavily used but rarely updated so
that maintenance of the model is minimized.
</li><li>Known weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Its rule language makes
ModSecurity an ideal external patching tool. External patching
(sometimes referred to as Virtual Patching) is about reducing the window
of opportunity. Time needed to patch application vulnerabilities often
runs to weeks in many organisations. With ModSecurity, applications can
be patched from the outside, without touching the application source
code (and even without any access to it), making your systems secure
until a proper patch is applied to the application.
</li></ol>
<a name="Flexible_Rule_Engine" id="Flexible_Rule_Engine"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Flexible Rule Engine </span></h2>
<p>A flexible rule engine sits in the heart of ModSecurity. It
implements the ModSecurity Rule Language, which is a specialised
programming language designed to work with HTTP transaction data. The
ModSecurity Rule Language is designed to be easy to use, yet flexible:
common operations are simple while complex operations are possible.
Certified ModSecurity Rules, included with ModSecurity, contain a
comprehensive set of rules that implement general-purpose hardening,
protocol validation and detection of common web application security
issues. Heavily commented, these rules can be used as a learning tool.
</p>
<a name="Embedded-mode_Deployment" id="Embedded-mode_Deployment"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> Embedded-mode Deployment </span></h2>
<p>ModSecurity is an embeddable web application firewall, which means it
can be deployed as part of your existing web server infrastructure
provided your web servers are Apache-based. This deployment method has
certain advantages:
</p>
<ol><li>No changes to existing network. It only takes a few minutes to
add ModSecurity to your existing web servers. And because it was
designed to be completely passive by default, you are free to deploy it
incrementally and only use the features you need. It is equally easy to
remove or deactivate it if required.
</li><li>No single point of failure. Unlike with network-based
deployments, you will not be introducing a new point of failure to your
system.
</li><li>Implicit load balancing and scaling. Because it works embedded
in web servers, ModSecurity will automatically take advantage of the
additional load balancing and scalability features. You will not need to
think of load balancing and scaling unless your existing system needs
them.
</li><li>Minimal overhead. Because it works from inside the web server
process there is no overhead for network communication and minimal
overhead in parsing and data exchange.
</li><li>No problem with encrypted or compressed content. Many IDS
systems have difficulties analysing SSL traffic. This is not a problem
for ModSecurity because it is positioned to work when the traffic is
decrypted and decompressed.
</li></ol>
<a name="Network-based_Deployment" id="Network-based_Deployment"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> Network-based Deployment </span></h2>
<p>ModSecurity works equally well when deployed as part of an
Apache-based reverse proxy server, and many of our customers choose to
do so. In this scenario, one installation of ModSecurity can protect any
number of web servers (even the non-Apache ones).
</p>
<a name="Portability" id="Portability"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Portability </span></h2>
<p>ModSecurity is known to work well on a wide range of operating
systems. Our customers are successfully running it on Linux, Windows,
Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, AIX, Mac OS X, and HP-UX.
</p>
<a name="Licensing" id="Licensing"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
Licensing </span></h2>
<p>ModSecurity is available under the Apache Software License v2 <a
href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt" class="external
autonumber" title="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt"
rel="nofollow">[1]</a>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> ModSecurity, mod_security, ModSecurity Pro,
and ModSecurity Core Rules are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Trustwave Holdings, Inc.
</dd></dl>
<a name="OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_.28CRS.29_Project"
id="OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_.28CRS.29_Project"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) Project </span></h1>
<a name="Overview" id="Overview"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
Overview </span></h2>
<p>ModSecurity is a web application firewall engine that provides very
little protection on its own. In order to become useful, ModSecurity
must be configured with rules. In order to enable users to take full
advantage of ModSecurity out of the box, Trustwave's SpiderLabs created
the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) Project. Unlike intrusion
detection and prevention systems, which rely on signatures specific to
known vulnerabilities, the CRS provide generic protection from unknown
vulnerabilities often found in web applications, which are in most cases
custom coded. The CRS is heavily commented to allow it to be used as a
step-by-step deployment guide for ModSecurity. The latest rules packages
can be found at the <a
href="http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_Project"
class="external text"
title="http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_Project"
rel="nofollow">OWASP ModSecurity CRS Project Site</a>.
</p>
<a name="Core_Rules_Content" id="Core_Rules_Content"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Core Rules Content </span></h2>
<p>In order to provide generic web applications protection, the CRS use
some of the following example techniques:
</p>
<ul><li>HTTP protection - detecting violations of the HTTP protocol and a
locally defined usage policy.
</li><li>Common Web Attacks Protection - detecting common web
application security attack.
</li><li>Automation detection - Detecting bots, crawlers, scanners and
other surface malicious activity.
</li><li>Trojan Protection - Detecting access to Trojans horses.
</li><li>Error Hiding - Disguising error messages sent by the server.
</li></ul>
<a name="Installation" id="Installation"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Installation </span></h1>
<a name="Prerequisites" id="Prerequisites"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Prerequisites </span></h2>
<a name="ModSecurity_2.x_works_only_with_Apache_2.0.x_or_higher"
id="ModSecurity_2.x_works_only_with_Apache_2.0.x_or_higher"></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> ModSecurity 2.x works only with Apache 2.0.x or
higher </span></h3>
<p>Version 2.2.x is highly recommended.
</p>
<a name="mod_uniqueid" id="mod_uniqueid"></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> mod_uniqueid </span></h3>
<p>Make sure you have <code>mod_unique_id</code> installed.
mod_unique_id is packaged with Apache httpd.
</p>
<a name="libapr_and_libapr-util" id="libapr_and_libapr-util"></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> libapr and libapr-util </span></h3>
<p>libapr and libapr-util - <a href="http://apr.apache.org/"
class="external free" title="http://apr.apache.org/" rel="nofollow">http://apr.apache.org/</a>
</p>
<a name="libpcre" id="libpcre"></a><h3> <span class="mw-headline">
libpcre </span></h3>
<p><a href="http://www.pcre.org/" class="external free"
title="http://www.pcre.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pcre.org/</a>
</p>
<a name="libxml2" id="libxml2"></a><h3> <span class="mw-headline">
libxml2 </span></h3>
<p><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html" class="external free"
title="http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html" rel="nofollow">http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html</a>
</p>
<a name="liblua_v5.1.x" id="liblua_v5.1.x"></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> liblua v5.1.x </span></h3>
<p>This library is optional and only needed if you will be using the new
Lua engine - <a href="http://www.lua.org/download.html" class="external
free" title="http://www.lua.org/download.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lua.org/download.html</a>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> that ModSecurity requires the dynamic
libraries. These are not built by default in the source distribution, so
the binary distribution is recommended.
</dd></dl>
<a name="libcurl_v7.15.1_or_higher" id="libcurl_v7.15.1_or_higher"></a><h3>
<span class="mw-headline"> libcurl v7.15.1 or higher </span></h3>
<p>If you will be using the ModSecurity Log Collector (mlogc) to send
audit logs to a central repository, then you will also need the curl
library.
</p><p><a href="http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/" class="external free"
title="http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/" rel="nofollow">http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/</a>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Many have had issues with libcurl linked
with the GnuTLS library for SSL/TLS support. It is recommended that the
openssl library be used for SSL/TLS support in libcurl.
</dd></dl>
<a name="Installation_Methods" id="Installation_Methods"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Installation Methods </span></h2>
<p>Before you begin with installation you will need to choose your
preferred installation method. First you need to choose whether to
install the latest version of ModSecurity directly from CVS (best
features, but possibly unstable) or use the latest stable release
(recommended). If you choose a stable release, it might be possible to
install ModSecurity from binary. It is always possible to compile it
from source code.
</p><p>The following few pages will give you more information on
benefits of choosing one method over another.
</p>
<a name="SVN_Access" id="SVN_Access"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SVN Access </span></h2>
<p>If you want to access the latest version of the module you need to
get it from the svn repository. The list of changes made since the last
stable release is normally available on the web site (and in the file
CHANGES). The SVN repository for ModSecurity is hosted by SourceForge (<a
href="http://www.sf.net/" class="external free"
title="http://www.sf.net" rel="nofollow">http://www.sf.net</a>). You can
access it directly or view if through web using this address: <a
href="http://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mod-security/"
class="external free"
title="http://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mod-security/"
rel="nofollow">http://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mod-security/</a>
</p><p>To download the lastest TRUNK source code to your computer you
need to execute the following command:
</p><p><b>git</b>
</p>
<pre>$git svn clone --prefix=svn/ https://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mod-security/m2/trunk
</pre>
<p><b>svn</b>
</p>
<pre>svn co https://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mod-security/m2/trunk modsecurity
</pre>
<p>For v2.6.0 and above, the installation process has changed. Follow
these steps:
</p>
<ol><li>cd into the directory - <code>$cd modsecurity</code>
</li><li>Run autogen.sh script - <code>$./autogen.sh</code>
</li><li>Run configure script - <code>$./configure</code>
</li><li>Run make - <code>$make</code>
</li><li>Run make install - <code>$make install</code>
</li><li>Copy the new mod_security2.so file into the proper Apache
modules directory - <code>$cp
/usr/local/modsecurity/lib/mod_security2.so /usr/local/apache/modules/</code>
</li></ol>
<a name="Stable_Release_Download" id="Stable_Release_Download"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Stable Release Download </span></h2>
<p>To download the stable release go to <a
href="http://www.modsecurity.org/download/" class="external free"
title="http://www.modsecurity.org/download/" rel="nofollow">http://www.modsecurity.org/download/</a>.
Binary distributions are sometimes available. If they are, they are
listed on the download page. If not download the source code
distribution.
</p>
<a name="Installation_Steps" id="Installation_Steps"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Installation Steps </span></h2>
<ul><li>Stop Apache httpd
</li><li>Unpack the ModSecurity archive
</li><li>Build
</li></ul>
<p>Building differs for UNIX (or UNIX-like) operating systems and
Windows.
</p>
<a name="UNIX" id="UNIX"></a><h3> <span class="mw-headline"> UNIX </span></h3>
<p>Run the configure script to generate a Makefile. Typically no options
are needed.
</p>
<pre>./configure</pre>
<p>Options are available for more customization (use ./configure --help
for a full list), but typically you will only need to specify the
location of the apxs command installed by Apache httpd with the
--with-apxs option.
</p>
<pre>./configure --with-apxs=/path/to/httpd-2.x.y/bin/apxs</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> There are certain configure options that
are meant for debugging an other development use. If enabled, these
options can substantially impact performance. These options include all
--debug-* options as well as the --enable-performance-measurements
options.
</dd></dl>
<p>Compile with:
</p>
<pre>make</pre>
<p>Optionally test with:
</p>
<pre>make CFLAGS=-DMSC_TEST test</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This is step is still a bit experimental.
If you have problems, please send the full output and error from the
build to the support list. Most common issues are related to not finding
the required headers and/or libraries.
</dd></dl>
<p>Optionally build the ModSecurity Log Collector with:
</p>
<pre>make mlogc</pre>
<p>Optionally install mlogc: Review the INSTALL file included in the
apache2/mlogc-src directory in the distribution.
Install the ModSecurity module with:
</p>
<pre>make install</pre>
<a name="Windows_.28MS_VC.2B.2B_8.29" id="Windows_.28MS_VC.2B.2B_8.29"></a><h3>
<span class="mw-headline"> Windows (MS VC++ 8) </span></h3>
<p>Edit Makefile.win to configure the Apache base and library paths.
Compile with: <code>nmake -f Makefile.win</code>
Install the ModSecurity module with: <code>nmake -f Makefile.win install</code>
Copy the libxml2.dll and lua5.1.dll to the Apache bin directory.
Alternatively you can follow the step below for using LoadFile to load
these libraries.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Users should follow the steps present in
README_WINDOWS.txt into ModSecurity tarball.
</dd></dl>
<a
name="Edit_the_main_Apache_httpd_config_file_.28usually_httpd.conf.29"
id="Edit_the_main_Apache_httpd_config_file_.28usually_httpd.conf.29"></a><h3>
<span class="mw-headline"> Edit the main Apache httpd config file
(usually httpd.conf) </span></h3>
<p>On UNIX (and Windows if you did not copy the DLLs as stated above)
you must load libxml2 and lua5.1 before ModSecurity with something like
this:
</p>
<pre>LoadFile /usr/lib/libxml2.so
LoadFile /usr/lib/liblua5.1.so
</pre>
<p>Load the ModSecurity module with:
</p>
<pre>LoadModule security2_module modules/mod_security2.so
</pre>
<a name="Configure_ModSecurity" id="Configure_ModSecurity"></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> Configure ModSecurity </span></h3>
<a name="Start_Apache_httpd" id="Start_Apache_httpd"></a><h3> <span
class="mw-headline"> Start Apache httpd </span></h3>
<p>You should now have ModSecurity 2.x up and running.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> If you have compiled Apache yourself you
might experience problems compiling ModSecurity against PCRE. This is
because Apache bundles PCRE but this library is also typically provided
by the operating system. I would expect most (all) vendor-packaged
Apache distributions to be configured to use an external PCRE library
(so this should not be a problem).
</dd></dl>
<dl><dd> You want to avoid Apache using the bundled PCRE library and
ModSecurity linking against the one provided by the operating system.
The easiest way to do this is to compile Apache against the PCRE library
provided by the operating system (or you can compile it against the
latest PCRE version you downloaded from the main PCRE distribution
site). You can do this at configure time using the --with-pcre switch.
If you are not in a position to recompile Apache, then, to compile
ModSecurity successfully, you'd still need to have access to the bundled
PCRE headers (they are available only in the Apache source code) and
change the include path for ModSecurity (as you did in step 7 above) to
point to them (via the --with-pcre ModSecurity configure option).
</dd></dl>
<dl><dd> Do note that if your Apache is using an external PCRE library
you can compile ModSecurity with WITH_PCRE_STUDY defined,which would
possibly give you a slight performance edge in regular expression
processing.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dd> Non-gcc compilers may have problems running out-of-the-box as
the current build system was designed around the gcc compiler and some
compiler/linker flags may differ. To use a non-gcc compiler you may need
some manual Makefile tweaks if issues cannot be solved by exporting
custom CFLAGS and CPPFLAGS environment variables.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dd> If you are upgrading from ModSecurity 1.x, please refer to the
migration matrix at <a
href="http://www.modsecurity.org/documentation/ModSecurity-Migration-Matrix.pdf"
class="external free"
title="http://www.modsecurity.org/documentation/ModSecurity-Migration-Matrix.pdf"
rel="nofollow">http://www.modsecurity.org/documentation/ModSecurity-Migration-Matrix.pdf</a>
</dd></dl>
<a name="Configuration_Directives" id="Configuration_Directives"></a><h1>
<span class="mw-headline"> Configuration Directives </span></h1>
<p>The following section outlines all of the ModSecurity directives.
Most of the ModSecurity directives can be used inside the various Apache
Scope Directives such as VirtualHost, Location, LocationMatch,
Directory, etc... There are others, however, that can only be used once
in the main configuration file. This information is specified in the
Scope sections below. The first version to use a given directive is
given in the Version sections below.
</p><p>These rules, along with the Core rules files, should be contained
is files outside of the httpd.conf file and called up with Apache
"Include" directives. This allows for easier updating/migration of the
rules. If you create your own custom rules that you would like to use
with the Core rules, you should create a file called -
modsecurity_crs_15_customrules.conf and place it in the same directory
as the Core rules files. By using this file name, your custom rules will
be called up after the standard ModSecurity Core rules configuration
file but before the other Core rules. This allows your rules to be
evaluated first which can be useful if you need to implement specific
"allow" rules or to correct any false positives in the Core rules as
they are applied to your site.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> It is highly encouraged that you do not
edit the Core rules files themselves but rather place all changes (such
as SecRuleRemoveByID, etc...) in your custom rules file. This will allow
for easier upgrading as newer Core rules are released by Breach
Security on the ModSecurity website.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecAction" id="SecAction"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SecAction </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Unconditionally processes the action list it
receives as the first and only parameter. The syntax of the parameter is
identical to that of the third parameter of <code>SecRule</code>.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAction "action1,action2,action3,...“</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive is commonly used to set variables and initialize
persistent collections using the initcol action. For example:
</p>
<pre>SecAction nolog,phase:1,initcol:RESOURCE=%{REQUEST_FILENAME}</pre>
<a name="SecArgumentSeparator" id="SecArgumentSeparator"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecArgumentSeparator </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Specifies which character to use as the separator
for application/x-www-form- urlencoded content.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecArgumentSeparator character</code>
</p><p><b>Default:</b> &
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive is needed if a backend web application is using a
nonstandard argument separator. Applications are sometimes (very rarely)
written to use a semicolon separator. You should not change the default
setting unless you establish that the application you are working with
requires a different separator. If this directive is not set properly
for each web application, then ModSecurity will not be able to parse the
arguments appropriately and the effectiveness of the rule matching will
be significantly decreased.
</p>
<a name="SecAuditEngine" id="SecAuditEngine"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditEngine </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the audit logging engine.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditEngine RelevantOnly</code>
</p><p><b>Default:</b> Off
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>The SecAuditEngine directive is used to configure the audit
engine, which logs complete transactions. ModSecurity is currently able
to log most, but not all transactions. Transactions involving errors
(e.g., 400 and 404 transactions) use a different execution path, which
ModSecurity does not support.
</p><p>The possible values for the audit log engine are as follows:
</p>
<ul><li><b>On</b>: log all transactions
</li><li><b>Off</b>: do not log any transactions
</li><li><b>RelevantOnly</b>: only the log transactions that have
triggered a warning or an error, or have a status code that is
considered to be relevant (as determined by the
SecAuditLogRelevantStatus directive)
</li></ul>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> If you need to change the audit log engine
configuration on a per-transaction basis (e.g., in response to some
transaction data), use the ctl action.
</dd></dl>
<p>The following example demonstrates how SecAuditEngine is used:
</p>
<pre>SecAuditEngine RelevantOnly
SecAuditLog logs/audit/audit.log
SecAuditLogParts ABCFHZ
SecAuditLogType concurrent
SecAuditLogStorageDir logs/audit
SecAuditLogRelevantStatus ^(?:5|4(?!04))
</pre>
<a name="SecAuditLog" id="SecAuditLog"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLog </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Defines the path to the main audit log file
(serial logging format) or the concurrent logging index file (concurrent
logging format). When used in combination with mlogc (only possible
with concurrent logging), this directive defines the mlogc location and
command line.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLog /path/to/audit.log</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any Version: 2.0.0
</p><p>This file will be used to store the audit log entries if serial
audit logging format is used. If concurrent audit logging format is used
this file will be used as an index, and contain a record of all audit
log files created. If you are planning to use concurrent audit logging
to send your audit log data off to a remote server you will need to
deploy the ModSecurity Log Collector (mlogc), like this:
</p>
<pre>SecAuditLog "|/path/to/mlogc /path/to/mlogc.conf"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This audit log file is opened on startup
when the server typically still runs as root. You should not allow
non-root users to have write privileges for this file or for the
directory.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecAuditLog2" id="SecAuditLog2"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLog2 </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Defines the path to the secondary audit log index
file when concurrent logging is enabled. See SecAuditLog for more
details.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLog2 /path/to/audit.log</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.1.2
</p><p>The purpose of SecAuditLog2 is to make logging to two remote
servers possible, which is typically achieved by running two instances
of the mlogc tool, each with a different configuration (in addition, one
of the instances will need to be instructed not to delete the files it
submits). This directive can be used only if SecAuditLog was previously
configured and only if concurrent logging format is used.
</p>
<a name="SecAuditLogDirMode" id="SecAuditLogDirMode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLogDirMode</span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the mode (permissions) of any
directories created for the concurrent audit logs, using an octal mode
value as parameter (as used in chmod).
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLogDirMode octal_mode|"default"</code>
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 0600
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.10
</p><p>The default mode for new audit log directories (0600) only grants
read/write access to the owner (typically the account under which
Apache is running, for example apache). If access from other accounts is
needed (e.g., for use with mpm-itk), then you may use this directive to
grant additional read and/or write privileges. You should use this
directive with caution to avoid exposing potentially sensitive data to
unauthorized users. Using the value default as parameter reverts the
configuration back to the default setting. This feature is not available
on operating systems not supporting octal file modes.
</p><p>Example:
</p>
<pre>SecAuditLogDirMode 02750</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The process umask may still limit the mode
if it is being more restrictive than the mode set using this directive.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecAuditLogFileMode" id="SecAuditLogFileMode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLogFileMode </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the mode (permissions) of any files
created for concurrent audit logs using an octal mode (as used in
chmod). See SecAuditLogDirMode for controlling the mode of created audit
log directories.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLogFileMode octal_mode|"default"</code>
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 0600
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.10
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecAuditLogFileMode 00640</code>
</p><p>This feature is not available on operating systems not supporting
octal file modes. The default mode (0600) only grants read/write access
to the account writing the file. If access from another account is
needed (using mpm-itk is a good example), then this directive may be
required. However, use this directive with caution to avoid exposing
potentially sensitive data to unauthorized users. Using the value
“default” will revert back to the default setting.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The process umask may still limit the mode
if it is being more restrictive than the mode set using this directive.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecAuditLogParts" id="SecAuditLogParts"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLogParts </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Defines which parts of each transaction are going
to be recorded in the audit log. Each part is assigned a single letter;
when a letter appears in the list then the equivalent part will be
recorded. See below for the list of all parts.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLogParts PARTLETTERS</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecAuditLogParts ABCFHZ</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any Version: 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> ABCFHZ Note
</p><p>The format of the audit log format is documented in detail in the
Audit Log Data Format Documentation.
</p><p>Available audit log parts:
</p>
<ul><li>A: Audit log header (mandatory).
</li><li>B: Request headers.
</li><li>C: Request body (present only if the request body exists and
ModSecurity is configured to intercept it).
</li><li>D: Reserved for intermediary response headers; not implemented
yet.
</li><li>E: Intermediary response body (present only if ModSecurity is
configured to intercept response bodies, and if the audit log engine is
configured to record it). Intermediary response body is the same as the
actual response body unless ModSecurity intercepts the intermediary
response body, in which case the actual response body will contain the
error message (either the Apache default error message, or the
ErrorDocument page).
</li><li>F: Final response headers (excluding the Date and Server
headers, which are always added by Apache in the late stage of content
delivery).
</li><li>G: Reserved for the actual response body; not implemented yet.
</li><li>H: Audit log trailer.
</li><li>I: This part is a replacement for part C. It will log the same
data as C in all cases except when multipart/form-data encoding in used.
In this case, it will log a fake application/x-www-form-urlencoded body
that contains the information about parameters but not about the files.
This is handy if you don’t want to have (often large) files stored in
your audit logs.
</li><li>J: This part contains information about the files uploaded
using multipart/form-data encoding.
</li><li>K: This part contains a full list of every rule that matched
(one per line) in the order they were matched. The rules are fully
qualified and will thus show inherited actions and default operators.
Supported as of v2.5.0.
</li><li>Z: Final boundary, signifies the end of the entry (mandatory).
</li></ul>
<a name="SecAuditLogRelevantStatus" id="SecAuditLogRelevantStatus"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLogRelevantStatus </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures which response status code is to be
considered relevant for the purpose of audit logging.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLogRelevantStatus REGEX</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecAuditLogRelevantStatus
"^(?:5|4(?!04))"</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Dependencies/Notes:</b> Must have SecAuditEngine set to
RelevantOnly.
</p><p>The main purpose of this directive is to allow you to configure
audit logging for only the transactions that have the status code that
matches the supplied regular expression. The example provided would log
all 5xx and 4xx level status codes, except for 404s. Although you could
achieve the same effect with a rule in phase 5,
SecAuditLogRelevantStatus is sometimes better, because it continues to
work even when SecRuleEngine is disabled.
</p>
<a name="SecAuditLogStorageDir" id="SecAuditLogStorageDir"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLogStorageDir </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the directory where concurrent audit
log entries are to be stored.
</p><p><b>Syntax</b>: <code>SecAuditLogStorageDir /path/to/storage/dir</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecAuditLogStorageDir
/usr/local/apache/logs/audit </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive is only needed when concurrent audit logging is
used. The directory must already exist and must be writable by the web
server user. Audit log entries are created at runtime, after Apache
switches to a non-root account.
As with all logging mechanisms, ensure that you specify a file system
location that has adequate disk space and is not on the main system
partition.
</p>
<a name="SecAuditLogType" id="SecAuditLogType"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecAuditLogType </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the type of audit logging mechanism to
be used.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecAuditLogType Serial|Concurrent </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecAuditLogType Serial</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>The possible values are:
</p>
<dl><dt> Serial </dt><dd> Audit log entries will be stored in a
single file, specified by SecAuditLog. This is conve- nient for casual
use, but it can slow down the server, because only one audit log entry
can be written to the file at any one time.
</dd><dt> Concurrent </dt><dd> One file per transaction is used for
audit logging. This approach is more scalable when heavy logging is
required (multiple transactions can be recorded in parallel). It is also
the only choice if you need to use remote logging.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecCacheTransformations" id="SecCacheTransformations"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecCacheTransformations </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Controls the caching of transformations, which
may speed up the processing of complex rule sets. Caching is off by
default starting with 2.5.6, when it was deprecated and downgraded back
to experimental.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecCacheTransformations On|Off [options] </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecCacheTransformations On
"minlen:64,maxlen:0" </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0; deprecated in 2.5.6.
</p><p>The first directive parameter can be one of the following:
</p>
<ul><li><b>On</b>: Cache transformations (per transaction, per phase)
allowing identical transforma- tions to be performed only once.
</li><li><b>Off</b>: Do not cache any transformations, leaving all
transformations to be performed every time they are needed.
</li></ul>
<p>The following options are allowed (multiple options must be
comma-separated):
</p>
<ul><li><b>incremental:on|off</b>: Enabling this option will cache every
transformation instead of just the final transformation. The default is
off.
</li><li><b>maxitems:N</b>: Do not allow more than N transformations to
be cached. Cache will be disabled once this number is reached. A zero
value is interpreted as unlimited. This option may be useful to limit
caching for a form with a large number of variables. The default value
is 512.
</li><li><b>minlen:N</b>: Do not cache the transformation if the
variable’s length is less than N bytes. The default setting is 32.
</li><li><b>maxlen:N</b>: Do not cache the transformation if the
variable’s length is more than N bytes. A zero value is interpreted as
unlimited. The default setting is 1024.
</li></ul>
<a name="SecChrootDir" id="SecChrootDir"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecChrootDir </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the directory path that will be used
to jail the web server process.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecChrootDir /path/to/chroot/dir </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecChrootDir /chroot </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This feature is not available on Windows builds. The internal
chroot functionality provided by ModSecurity works great for simple
setups. One example of a simple setup is Apache serving only static
files, or running applications using built-in modules. Some problems you
might encounter with more complex setups:
</p>
<ol><li>DNS lookups do not work (this is because this feature requires a
shared library that is loaded on demand, after chroot takes place).
</li><li>You cannot send email from PHP, because it wants to use
sendmail and sendmail re- sides outside the jail.
</li><li>In some cases, when you separate Apache from its configuration,
restarts and graceful reloads no longer work.
</li></ol>
<p>The best way to use SecChrootDir is the following:
</p>
<ol><li>Create /chroot to be your main jail directory.
</li><li>Create /chroot/opt/apache inside jail.
</li><li>Create a symlink from /opt/apache to /chroot/opt/apache.
</li><li>Now install Apache into /chroot/opt/apache.
</li></ol>
<p>You should be aware that the internal chroot feature might not be
100% reliable. Due to the large number of default and third-party
modules available for the Apache web server, it is not possible to
verify the internal chroot works reliably with all of them. A module,
working from within Apache, can do things that make it easy to break out
of the jail. In particular, if you are using any of the modules that
fork in the module initialisation phase (e.g., mod_fastcgi, mod_fcgid,
mod_cgid), you are advised to examine each Apache process and observe
its current working directory, process root, and the list of open files.
Consider what your options are and make your own decision.
</p>
<a name="SecComponentSignature" id="SecComponentSignature"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecComponentSignature </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Appends component signature to the ModSecurity
signature.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecComponentSignature "COMPONENT_NAME/X.Y.Z
(COMMENT)" </code>
</p><p><b>Example usage</b>: <code>SecComponentSignature "core
ruleset/2.1.3"</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0
</p><p>This directive should be used to make the presence of significant
rule sets known. The entire signature will be recorded in the
transaction audit log.
</p>
<a name="SecContentInjection" id="SecContentInjection"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecContentInjection </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Enables content injection using actions append
and prepend.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecContentInjection On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecContentInjection On </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0
</p><p>This directive provides an easy way to control content injection,
no matter what the rules want to do. It is not necessary to have
response body buffering enabled in order to use content injection.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This directive must ben enabled if you want
to use @rsub + the STREAM_ variables to manipulate live transactional
data.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecCookieFormat" id="SecCookieFormat"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecCookieFormat </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Selects the cookie format that will be used in
the current configuration context.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecCookieFormat 0|1 </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecCookieFormat 0 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>The possible values are:
</p>
<ul><li><b>0</b>: Use version 0 (Netscape) cookies. This is what most
applications use. It is the default value.
</li><li><b>1</b>: Use version 1 cookies.
</li></ul>
<a name="SecDataDir" id="SecDataDir"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SecDataDir </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Path where persistent data (e.g., IP address
data, session data, and so on) is to be stored.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecDataDir /path/to/dir </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecDataDir
/usr/local/apache/logs/data </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive must be provided before initcol, setsid, and
setuid can be used. The directory to which the directive points must be
writable by the web server user.
</p>
<a name="SecDebugLog" id="SecDebugLog"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecDebugLog </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Path to the ModSecurity debug log file.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecDebugLog /path/to/modsec-debug.log </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecDebugLog
/usr/local/apache/logs/modsec-debug.log </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p>
<a name="SecDebugLogLevel" id="SecDebugLogLevel"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecDebugLogLevel </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the verboseness of the debug log data.
</p><p><b>Syntax</b>: <code>SecDebugLogLevel 0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecDebugLogLevel 4 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>Messages at levels 1–3 are always copied to the Apache error log.
Therefore you can always use level 0 as the default logging level in
production if you are very concerned with performance. Having said that,
the best value to use is 3. Higher logging levels are not recommended
in production, because the heavy logging affects performance adversely.
</p><p>The possible values for the debug log level are:
</p>
<ul><li>0: no logging
</li><li>1: errors (intercepted requests) only
</li><li>2: warnings
</li><li>3: notices
</li><li>4: details of how transactions are handled
</li><li>5: as above, but including information about each piece of
information handled
</li><li>9: log everything, including very detailed debugging
information
</li></ul>
<a name="SecDefaultAction" id="SecDefaultAction"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecDefaultAction </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Defines the default list of actions, which will
be inherited by the rules in the same configuration context.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecDefaultAction "action1,action2,action3“ </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecDefaultAction
"phase:2,log,auditlog,deny,status:403“ </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> phase:2,log,auditlog,pass
</p><p>Every rule following a previous <code>SecDefaultAction</code>
directive in the same configuration context will inherit its settings
unless more specific actions are used. Every <code>SecDefaultAction</code>
directive must specify a disruptive action and a processing phase and
cannot contain metadata actions.
</p>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> <code>SecDefaultAction</code> is not
inherited across configuration contexts. (For an example of why this may
be a problem, read the following ModSecurity Blog entry <a
href="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2008/07/three-modsecurity-rule-language-annoyances.html"
class="external free"
title="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2008/07/three-modsecurity-rule-language-annoyances.html"
rel="nofollow">http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2008/07/three-modsecurity-rule-language-annoyances.html</a>.)
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecDisableBackendCompression" id="SecDisableBackendCompression"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecDisableBackendCompression </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Disables backend compression while leaving the
frontend compression enabled.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecDisableBackendCompression On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> Development trunk
</p><p><b>Default:</b> Off
</p><p>This directive is necessary in reverse proxy mode when the
backend servers support response compression, but you wish to inspect
response bodies. Unless you disable backend compression, ModSecurity
will only see compressed content, which is not very useful. This
directive is not necessary in embedded mode, because ModSecurity
performs inspection before response compression takes place.
</p>
<a name="SecGeoLookupDb" id="SecGeoLookupDb"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecGeoLookupDb </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Defines the path to the database that will be
used for geolocation lookups.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecGeoLookupDb /path/to/db </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecGeoLookupDb
/path/to/GeoLiteCity.dat</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0
</p><p>ModSecurity relies on the free geolocation databases (GeoLite
City and GeoLite Country) that can be obtained from MaxMind <a
href="http://www.maxmind.com/" class="external autonumber"
title="http://www.maxmind.com" rel="nofollow">[2]</a>.
</p>
<a name="SecGsbLookupDb" id="SecGsbLookupDb"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecGsbLookupDb </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Defines the path to the database that will be
used for Google Safe Browsing (GSB) lookups.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecGsbLookupDb /path/to/db </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecGsbLookupDb
/path/to/GsbMalware.dat</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.0
</p><p>ModSecurity relies on the free Google Safe Browsing database that
can be obtained from the Google GSB API <a
href="http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/" class="external
autonumber" title="http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/"
rel="nofollow">[3]</a>.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> After registering and obtaining a Safe
Browsing API key, you can automatically download the GSB using a tool
like wget (where <i><b>KEY</b></i> is your own API key):
</dd></dl>
<p><code>wget <a
href="http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/update?client=api&apikey=KEY&version=goog-malware-hash:1:-1"
class="external free"
title="http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/update?client=api&apikey=KEY&version=goog-malware-hash:1:-1"
rel="nofollow">http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/update?client=api&apikey=KEY&version=goog-malware-hash:1:-1</a></code>
</p>
<a name="SecGuardianLog" id="SecGuardianLog"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecGuardianLog </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures an external program that will receive
the information about every transaction via piped logging.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecGuardianLog |/path/to/httpd-guardian </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecGuardianLog
|/usr/local/apache/bin/httpd-guardian </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>Guardian logging is designed to send the information about every
request to an external program. Because Apache is typically deployed in a
multiprocess fashion, which makes information sharing between processes
difficult, the idea is to deploy a single external process to observe
all requests in a stateful manner, providing additional protection.
</p><p>Currently the only tool known to work with guardian logging is
httpd-guardian, which is part of the Apache httpd tools project <a
href="http://apache-tools.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/apache-tools/apache-tools/"
class="external autonumber"
title="http://apache-tools.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/apache-tools/apache-tools/"
rel="nofollow">[4]</a>. The httpd-guardian tool is designed to defend
against denial of service attacks. It uses the blacklist tool (from the
same project) to interact with an iptables-based (on a Linux system) or
pf-based (on a BSD system) firewall, dynamically blacklisting the
offending IP addresses. It can also interact with SnortSam <a
href="http://www.snortsam.net/" class="external autonumber"
title="http://www.snortsam.net" rel="nofollow">[5]</a>. Assuming
httpd-guardian is already configured (look into the source code for the
detailed instructions), you only need to add one line to your Apache
configuration to deploy it:
</p>
<pre>SecGuardianLog |/path/to/httpd-guardian</pre>
<a name="SecHttpBlKey" id="SecHttpBlKey"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecHttpBlKey </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the user's registered Honeypot Project
HTTP BL API Key to use with @rbl.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecHttpBlKey [12 char access key] </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecHttpBlKey whdkfieyhtnf </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.7.0
</p><p>If the @rbl operator uses the dnsbl.httpbl.org RBL (<a
href="http://www.projecthoneypot.org/httpbl_api.php" class="external
free" title="http://www.projecthoneypot.org/httpbl_api.php"
rel="nofollow">http://www.projecthoneypot.org/httpbl_api.php</a>) you
must provide an API key. This key is registered to individual users and
is included within the RBL DNS requests.
</p>
<a name="SecInterceptOnError" id="SecInterceptOnError"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecInterceptOnError </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures how to respond when rule processing
fails.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecInterceptOnError On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecInterceptOnError On </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6
</p><p>When an operator execution fails (ie returns <0), this
directive configures how to react. When set to "Off", the rule is just
ignored and the engine will continue executing the rules in phase. When
set to "On", the rule will be just dropped and no more rules will be
executed in the same phase, also no interception is made.
</p>
<a name="SecMarker" id="SecMarker"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SecMarker </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Adds a fixed rule marker that can be used as a
target in a skipAfter action. A SecMarker directive essentially creates a
rule that does nothing and whose only purpose is to carry the given ID.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecMarker ID|TEXT </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecMarker 9999 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0
</p><p>The value can be either a number or a text string. The SecMarker
directive is available to allow you to choose the best way to implement
a skip-over. Here is an example used from the Core Rule Set:
</p>
<pre>SecMarker BEGIN_HOST_CHECK
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "@eq 0" \
"skipAfter:END_HOST_CHECK,phase:2,rev:'2.1.1',t:none,block,msg:'Request Missing a Host Header',id:'960008',tag:'PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER_HOST',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-21',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A7',tag:'PCI/6.5.10',severity:'5',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.protocol_violation_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER-%{matched_var_name}=%{matched_var}"
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "^$" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.1',t:none,block,msg:'Request Missing a Host Header',id:'960008',tag:'PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER_HOST',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-21',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A7',tag:'PCI/6.5.10',severity:'5',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.protocol_violation_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER-%{matched_var_name}=%{matched_var}"
SecMarker END_HOST_CHECK
</pre>
<a name="SecPcreMatchLimit" id="SecPcreMatchLimit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecPcreMatchLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Sets the match limit in the PCRE library.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecPcreMatchLimit value </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecPcreMatchLimit 1500 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version</b>: 2.5.12
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 1500
</p><p>The default can be changed when ModSecurity is prepared for
compilation: the --enable-pcre-match-limit=val configure option will set
a custom default and the --disable-pcre-match-limit option will revert
back to the default of the PCRE library.
For more information, refer to the pcre_extra field in the pcreapi man
page.
</p>
<a name="SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion" id="SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Sets the match limit recursion in the PCRE
library.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion value </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion 1500 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.12
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 1500
</p><p>The default can be changed when ModSecurity is prepared for
compilation: the --enable-pcre-match-limit-recursion=val configure
option will set a custom default and the
--disable-pcre-match-limit-recursion option will revert back to the
default of the PCRE library.
For more information, refer to the pcre_extra field in the pcreapi man
page.
</p>
<a name="SecPdfProtect" id="SecPdfProtect"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecPdfProtect </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Enables the PDF XSS protection functionality.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecPdfProtect On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecPdfProtect On </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0; removed from trunk
</p><p>Once enabled access to PDF files is tracked. Direct access
attempts are redirected to links that contain one-time tokens. Requests
with valid tokens are allowed through, unmodified. Requests with invalid
tokens are also allowed through, but with forced download of the PDF
files. This implementation uses response headers to detect PDF files and
thus can be used with dynamically generated PDF files that do not have
the .pdf extension in the request URI.
</p>
<a name="SecPdfProtectMethod" id="SecPdfProtectMethod"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecPdfProtectMethod </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Configure desired protection method to be used
when requests for PDF files are detected.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecPdfProtectMethod method </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecPdfProtectMethod TokenRedirection </code>
</p><p><b>Scope</b>: Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0; removed from trunk
</p><p><b>Default:</b> TokenRedirection
</p><p>Possible values are TokenRedirection and ForcedDownload. The
token redirection approach will attempt to redirect with tokens where
possible. This allows PDF files to continue to be opened inline but
works only for GET requests. Forced download always causes PDF files to
be delivered as opaque binaries and attachments. The latter will always
be used for non-GET requests. Forced download is considered to be more
secure but may cause usability problems for users (“This PDF won’t open
anymore!”).
</p>
<a name="SecPdfProtectSecret" id="SecPdfProtectSecret"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecPdfProtectSecret </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Defines the secret that will be used to construct
one-time tokens.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecPdfProtectSecret secret </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecPdfProtectSecret
MyRandomSecretString</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0; removed from trunk
</p><p>You should use a reasonably long value for the secret (e.g., 16
characters is good). Once selected, the secret should not be changed, as
it will break the tokens that were sent prior to change. But it’s not a
big deal even if you change it. It will just force download of PDF
files with tokens that were issued in the last few seconds.
</p>
<a name="SecPdfProtectTimeout" id="SecPdfProtectTimeout"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecPdfProtectTimeout </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Defines the token timeout.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecPdfProtectTimeout timeout </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecPdfProtectTimeout 10 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0; removed from trunk
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 10
</p><p>After token expires, it can no longer be used to allow access to a
PDF file. Request will be allowed through but the PDF will be delivered
as an attachment.
</p>
<a name="SecPdfProtectTokenName" id="SecPdfProtectTokenName"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecPdfProtectTokenName </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Defines the name of the token.
</p><p><b>Syntax</b>: <code>SecPdfProtectTokenName name </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecPdfProtectTokenName PDFTOKEN </code>
</p><p><b>Scope</b>: Any
</p><p><b>Version</b>: 2.5.0; removed from trunk
</p><p><b>Default:</b> PDFTOKEN
</p><p>The only reason you would want to change the name of the token is
if you wanted to hide the fact that you are running ModSecurity. It’s a
good reason, but it won’t really help, as the adversary can look into
the algorithm used for PDF protection and figure it out anyway. It does
raise the bar slightly, so go ahead if you want to.
</p>
<a name="SecReadStateLimit" id="SecReadStateLimit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecReadStateLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Establishes a per-IP address limit of how many
connections are allowed to be in SERVER_BUSY_READ state.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecReadStateLimit LIMIT </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecReadStateLimit 50 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope</b>: Main
</p><p><b>Version</b>: 2.5.13
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 0 (no limit)
</p><p>This measure is effective against Slowloris-style attacks from a
single IP address, but it may not be as good against modified attacks
that work by slowly sending request body content. This is because Apache
to switches state to SERVER_BUSY_WRITE once request headers have been
read. As an alternative, consider mod_reqtimeout (part of Apache as of
2.2.15), which is expected be effective against both attack types. See
Blog post on mitigating slow DoS attacks - <a
href="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/11/advanced-topic-of-the-week-mitigating-slow-http-dos-attacks.html"
class="external free"
title="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/11/advanced-topic-of-the-week-mitigating-slow-http-dos-attacks.html"
rel="nofollow">http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/11/advanced-topic-of-the-week-mitigating-slow-http-dos-attacks.html</a>
</p>
<a name="SecWriteStateLimit" id="SecWriteStateLimit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecWriteStateLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Establishes a per-IP address limit of how many
connections are allowed to be in SERVER_BUSY_WRITE state.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecWriteStateLimit LIMIT </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecWriteStateLimit 50 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope</b>: Main
</p><p><b>Version</b>: 2.6.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 0 (no limit)
</p><p>This measure is effective against Slow DoS request body attacks.
</p>
<a name="SecRequestBodyAccess" id="SecRequestBodyAccess"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRequestBodyAccess </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Configures whether request bodies will be
buffered and processed by ModSecurity.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyAccess On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecRequestBodyAccess On</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive is required if you want to inspect the data
transported request bodies (e.g., POST parameters). Request buffering is
also required in order to make reliable blocking possible. The
possible values are:
</p>
<ul><li>On: buffer request bodies
</li><li>Off: do not buffer request bodies
</li></ul>
<a name="SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit" id="SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Configures the maximum request body size that
ModSecurity will store in mem- ory.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit LIMIT_IN_BYTES </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit 131072 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 131072 (128 KB)
</p><p>When a multipart/form-data request is being processed, once the
in-memory limit is reached, the request body will start to be streamed
into a temporary file on disk.
</p>
<a name="SecRequestBodyLimit" id="SecRequestBodyLimit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRequestBodyLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the maximum request body size
ModSecurity will accept for buffering.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyLimit LIMIT_IN_BYTES </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyLimit 134217728 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 134217728 (131072 KB)
</p><p>Anything over the limit will be rejected with status code 413
(Request Entity Too Large). There is a hard limit of 1 GB.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> In ModSecurity 2.5.x and earlier,
SecRequestBodyLimit works only when used in the main server
configuration, or a VirtualHost container. In these versions, request
body limit is enforced immediately after phase 1, but before phase 2
configuration (i.e. whatever is placed in a Location container) is
resolved. You can work around this limitation by using a phase 1 rule
that changes the request body limit dynamically, using the
ctl:requestBodyLimit action. ModSecurity 2.6.x (currently in the trunk
only) and better do not have this limitation.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit" id="SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Configures the maximum request body size
ModSecurity will accept for buffering, excluding the size of any files
being transported in the request. This directive is useful to reduce
susceptibility to DoS attacks when someone is sending request bodies of
very large sizes. Web applications that require file uploads must
configure SecRequestBodyLimit to a high value, but because large files
are streamed to disk, file uploads will not increase memory consumption.
However, it’s still possible for someone to take advantage of a large
request body limit and send non-upload requests with large body sizes.
This directive eliminates that loophole.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit NUMBER_IN_BYTES </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyLimit 131072 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version</b>: 2.5.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 1048576 (1 MB)
</p><p>Generally speaking, the default value is not small enough. For
most applications, you should be able to reduce it down to 128 KB or
lower. Anything over the limit will be rejected with status code 413
(Request Entity Too Large). There is a hard limit of 1 GB.
</p>
<a name="SecRequestBodyLimitAction" id="SecRequestBodyLimitAction"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecRequestBodyLimitAction </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Controls what happens once a request body limit,
configured with SecRequestBodyLimit, is encountered
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyLimitAction
Reject|ProcessPartial </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRequestBodyLimitAction
ProcessPartial</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version</b>: 2.6.0
</p><p>By default, ModSecurity will reject a request body that is longer
than specified. This is problematic especially when ModSecurity is
being run in DetectionOnly mode and the intent is to be totally passive
and not take any disruptive actions against the transaction. With the
ability to choose what happens once a limit is reached, site
administrators can choose to inspect only the first part of the request,
the part that can fit into the desired limit, and let the rest through.
This is not ideal from a possible evasion issue perspective, however
it may be acceptable under certain circumstances.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> When the SecRuleEngine is set to
DetectionOnly, SecRequestBodyLimitAction is automatically set to
ProcessPartial in order to not cause any disruptions. If you want to
know if/when a request body size is over your limit, you can create a
rule to check for the existence of the INBOUND_ERROR_DATA variable.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecResponseBodyLimit" id="SecResponseBodyLimit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecResponseBodyLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the maximum response body size that
will be accepted for buffering.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyLimit LIMIT_IN_BYTES </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyLimit 524228 </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default</b>: 524288 (512 KB)
</p><p>Anything over this limit will be rejected with status code 500
(Internal Server Error). This setting will not affect the responses with
MIME types that are not selected for buffering. There is a hard limit
of 1 GB.
</p>
<a name="SecResponseBodyLimitAction" id="SecResponseBodyLimitAction"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecResponseBodyLimitAction </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Controls what happens once a response body limit,
configured with SecResponseBodyLimit, is encountered.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyLimitAction
Reject|ProcessPartial </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyLimitAction
ProcessPartial </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0
</p><p>By default, ModSecurity will reject a response body that is
longer than specified. Some web sites, however, will produce very long
responses, making it difficult to come up with a reasonable limit. Such
sites would have to raise the limit significantly to function properly,
defying the purpose of having the limit in the first place (to control
memory consumption). With the ability to choose what happens once a
limit is reached, site administrators can choose to inspect only the
first part of the response, the part that can fit into the desired
limit, and let the rest through. Some could argue that allowing parts of
responses to go uninspected is a weakness. This is true in theory, but
applies only to cases in which the attacker controls the output (e.g.,
can make it arbitrary long). In such cases, however, it is not possible
to prevent leakage anyway. The attacker could compress, obfuscate, or
even encrypt data before it is sent back, and therefore bypass any
monitoring device.
</p>
<a name="SecResponseBodyMimeType" id="SecResponseBodyMimeType"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecResponseBodyMimeType </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures which MIME types are to be considered
for response body buffering.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyMimeType MIMETYPE MIMETYPE
... </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage</b>: <code>SecResponseBodyMimeType text/plain
text/html text/xml</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> text/plain text/html
</p><p>Multiple SecResponseBodyMimeType directives can be used to add
MIME types. Use SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear to clear previously
configured MIME types and start over.
</p>
<a name="SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear"
id="SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Clears the list of MIME types considered for
response body buffering, allowing you to start populating the list from
scratch.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyMimeTypesClear </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p>
<a name="SecResponseBodyAccess" id="SecResponseBodyAccess"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecResponseBodyAccess </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures whether response bodies are to be
buffered.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyAccess On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecResponseBodyAccess On </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> Off
</p><p>This directive is required if you plan to inspect HTML responses
and implement response blocking. Possible values are:
</p>
<ul><li>On: buffer response bodies (but only if the response MIME type
matches the list configured with SecResponseBodyMimeType).
</li><li>Off: do not buffer response bodies.
</li></ul>
<a name="SecRule" id="SecRule"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SecRule </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Creates a rule that will analyze the selected
variables using the selected operator.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRule VARIABLES OPERATOR [ACTIONS] </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRule ARGS "@rx attack"
"phase:1,log,deny" </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>Every rule must provide one or more variables along with the
operator that should be used to inspect them. If no actions are
provided, the default list will be used. (There is always a default
list, even if one was not explicitly set with SecDefaultAction.) If
there are actions specified in a rule, they will be merged with the
default list to form the final actions that will be used. (The actions
in the rule will overwrite those in the default list.) Refer to
SecDefaultAction for more information.
</p>
<a name="SecRuleInheritance" id="SecRuleInheritance"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleInheritance </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures whether the current context will
inherit the rules from the parent context.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleInheritance On|Off </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleInheritance Off </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> On
</p><p>Sometimes when you create a more specific configuration context
(for example using the <Location> container), you may wish to use a
different set of rules than those used in the parent context. By
setting SecRuleInheritance to Off, you prevent the parent rules to be
inherited, which allows you to start from scratch. In ModSecurity 2.5.x
it is not possible to override phase 1 rules from a <Location>
configuration context. There are no limitations in that respect in the
current development version (and there won’t be in the next major
version).
</p><p>The possible values are:
</p>
<ul><li>On: inherit rules from the parent context
</li><li>Off: do not inherit rules from the parent context
</li></ul>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Configuration contexts are an Apache
concept. Directives <Directory>, <Files>, <Location>,
and <VirtualHost> are all used to create configuration contexts.
For more information, please go to the Apache documentation, under
Configuration Sections <a
href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/sections.html" class="external
autonumber" title="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/sections.html"
rel="nofollow">[6]</a>. This directive does not affect how configuration
options are inherited.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRuleEngine" id="SecRuleEngine"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleEngine </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the rules engine.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleEngine On|Off|DetectionOnly</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleEngine On </code>
</p><p><b>Scope</b>: Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> Off
</p><p>The possible values are:
</p>
<ul><li><b>On</b>: process rules
</li><li><b>Off</b>: do not process rules
</li><li><b>DetectionOnly</b>: process rules but never executes any
disruptive actions (block, deny, drop, allow, proxy and redirect)
</li></ul>
<a name="SecRuleRemoveById" id="SecRuleRemoveById"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleRemoveById </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Removes the matching rules from the current
configuration context.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleRemoveById ID ID RANGE ... </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleRemoveByID 1 2 "9000-9010" </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive supports multiple parameters, each of which can be
a rule ID or a range. Parameters that contain spaces must be delimited
using double quotes.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> <b>This directive must be specified after
the rule in which it is disabling</b>. This should be used within local
custom rule files that are processed after third party rule sets.
Example file - modsecurity_crs_60_customrules.conf.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRuleRemoveByMsg" id="SecRuleRemoveByMsg"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleRemoveByMsg </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Removes the matching rules from the current
configuration context.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleRemoveByMsg REGEX </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleRemoveByMsg "FAIL" </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>Normally, you would use SecRuleRemoveById to remove rules, but
that requires the rules to have IDs defined. If they don’t, then you can
remove them with SecRuleRemoveByMsg, which matches a regular expression
against rule messages.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This directive must be specified after the
rule in which it is disabling. This should be used within local custom
rule files that are processed after third party rule sets. Example file -
modsecurity_crs_60_customrules.conf.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRuleRemoveByTag" id="SecRuleRemoveByTag"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleRemoveByTag </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Removes the matching rules from the current
configuration context.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleRemoveByTab REGEX </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleRemoveByTag "WEB_ATTACK/XSS" </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6
</p><p>Normally, you would use SecRuleRemoveById to remove rules, but
that requires the rules to have IDs defined. If they don’t, then you can
remove them with SecRuleRemoveByTag, which matches a regular expression
against rule tag data. This is useful if you want to disable entire
groups of rules based on tag data. Example tags used in the OWASP
ModSecurity CRS include:
</p>
<ul><li>AUTOMATION/MALICIOUS
</li><li>AUTOMATION/MISC
</li><li>AUTOMATION/SECURITY_SCANNER
</li><li>LEAKAGE/SOURCE_CODE_ASP_JSP
</li><li>LEAKAGE/SOURCE_CODE_CF
</li><li>LEAKAGE/SOURCE_CODE_PHP
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/CF_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/FILE_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/HTTP_RESPONSE_SPLITTING
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/LDAP_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/PHP_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/REQUEST_SMUGGLING
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/SESSION_FIXATION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/SQL_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/SSI_INJECTION
</li><li>WEB_ATTACK/XSS
</li></ul>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This directive must be specified after the
rule in which it is disabling. This should be used within local custom
rule files that are processed after third party rule sets. Example file -
modsecurity_crs_60_customrules.conf.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRuleScript" id="SecRuleScript"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleScript </span></h2>
<p>Description: This directive creates a special rule that executes a
Lua script to decide whether to match or not. The main difference from
SecRule is that there are no targets nor operators. The script can fetch
any variable from the ModSecurity context and use any (Lua) operator to
test them. The second optional parameter is the list of actions whose
meaning is identical to that of SecRule.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleScript /path/to/script.lua [ACTIONS]</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleScript "/path/to/file.lua"
"block"</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.0
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> All Lua scripts are compiled at
configuration time and cached in memory. To reload scripts you must
reload the entire ModSecurity configuration by restarting Apache.
</dd></dl>
<p>Example script:
</p>
<pre>-- Your script must define the main entry
-- point, as below.
function main()
-- Log something at level 1. Normally you shouldn't be
-- logging anything, especially not at level 1, but this is
-- just to show you can. Useful for debugging.
m.log(1, "Hello world!");
-- Retrieve one variable.
local var1 = m.getvar("REMOTE_ADDR");
-- Retrieve one variable, applying one transformation function.
-- The second parameter is a string.
local var2 = m.getvar("ARGS", "lowercase");
-- Retrieve one variable, applying several transformation functions.
-- The second parameter is now a list. You should note that m.getvar()
-- requires the use of comma to separate collection names from
-- variable names. This is because only one variable is returned.
local var3 = m.getvar("ARGS.p", { "lowercase", "compressWhitespace" } );
-- If you want this rule to match return a string
-- containing the error message. The message must contain the name
-- of the variable where the problem is located.
-- return "Variable ARGS:p looks suspicious!"
-- Otherwise, simply return nil.
return nil;
end
</pre>
<p>In this first example we were only retrieving one variable at the
time. In this case the name of the variable is known to you. In many
cases, however, you will want to examine variables whose names you won't
know in advance, for example script parameters.
</p><p>Example showing use of m.getvars() to retrieve many variables at
once:
</p>
<pre>function main()
-- Retrieve script parameters.
local d = m.getvars("ARGS", { "lowercase", "htmlEntityDecode" } );
-- Loop through the paramters.
for i = 1, #d do
-- Examine parameter value.
if (string.find(d[i].value, "<script")) then
-- Always specify the name of the variable where the
-- problem is located in the error message.
return ("Suspected XSS in variable " .. d[i].name .. ".");
end
end
-- Nothing wrong found.
return nil;
end
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Go to <a href="http://www.lua.org/"
class="external free" title="http://www.lua.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lua.org/</a>
to find more about the Lua programming language. The reference manual
too is available online, at <a href="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/"
class="external free" title="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/"
rel="nofollow">http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/</a>.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Lua support is marked as experimental as
the way the progamming interface may continue to evolve while we are
working for the best implementation style. Any user input into the
programming interface is appreciated.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRuleUpdateActionById" id="SecRuleUpdateActionById"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleUpdateActionById </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Updates the action list of the specified rule.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleUpdateActionById RULEID[:offset]
ACTIONLIST</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleUpdateActionById 12345
"deny,status:403"</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.0
</p><p>This directive will overwrite the action list of the specified
rule with the actions provided in the second parameter. It has two
limitations: it cannot be used to change the ID or phase of a rule. Only
the actions that can appear only once are overwritten. The actions that
are allowed to appear multiple times in a list, will be appended to the
end of the list.
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS attack "phase:2,id:12345,t:lowercase,log,pass,msg:'Message text'"
SecRuleUpdateActionById 12345 "t:none,t:compressWhitespace,deny,status:403,msg:'New message text'"
</pre>
<p>The effective resulting rule in the previous example will be as
follows:
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS attack "phase:2,id:12345,t:lowercase,t:none,t:compressWhitespace,deny,status:403,msg:'New Message text'"
</pre>
<p>The addition of t:none will neutralize any previous transformation
functions specified (t:lowercase, in the example).
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> If the target rule is a chained rule, you
must currently specify chain in the SecRuleUpdateActionById action list
as well. This will be fixed in a future version.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecRuleUpdateTargetById" id="SecRuleUpdateTargetById"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecRuleUpdateTargetById </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Updates the target (variable) list of the
specified rule.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRuleUpdateTargetById RULEID
TARGET1[,TARGET2,TARGET3] REPLACED_TARGET</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecRuleUpdateTargetById 12345
"!ARGS:foo"</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6
</p><p>This directive will append (or replace) variables to the current
target list of the specified rule with the targets provided in the
second parameter.
</p><p><b>Explicitly Appending Targets</b>
</p><p>This is useful for implementing exceptions where you want to
externally update a target list to exclude inspection of specific
variable(s).
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/* "[\;\|\`]\W*?\bmail\b" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.1',capture,t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:compressWhitespace,t:lowercase,ctl:auditLogParts=+E,block,msg:'System Command Injection',id:'958895',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-31',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A1',tag:'PCI/6.5.2',logdata:'%{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.command_injection_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION-%{matched_var_name}=%
{tx.0}"
SecRuleUpdateTargetById 958895 !ARGS:email
</pre>
<p>The effective resulting rule in the previous example will append the
target to the end of the variable list as follows:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/*|!ARGS:email "[\;\|\`]\W*?\bmail\b" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.1',capture,t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:compressWhitespace,t:lowercase,ctl:auditLogParts=+E,block,msg:'System Command Injection',id:'958895',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-31',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A1',tag:'PCI/6.5.2',logdata:'%{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.command_injection_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION-%{matched_var_name}=%
{tx.0}""
</pre>
<p><b>Explicitly Replacing Targets</b>
</p><p>You can also entirely replace the target list to something more
appropriate for your environment. For example, lets say you want to
inspect REQUEST_URI instead of REQUEST_FILENAME, you could do this:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/* "[\;\|\`]\W*?\bmail\b" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.1',capture,t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:compressWhitespace,t:lowercase,ctl:auditLogParts=+E,block,msg:'System Command Injection',id:'958895',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-31',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A1',tag:'PCI/6.5.2',logdata:'%{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.command_injection_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION-%{matched_var_name}=%
{tx.0}"
SecRuleUpdateTargetById 958895 REQUEST_URI REQUEST_FILENAME
</pre>
<p>The effective resulting rule in the previous example will append the
target to the end of the variable list as follows:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_URI|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/* "[\;\|\`]\W*?\bmail\b" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.1',capture,t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:compressWhitespace,t:lowercase,ctl:auditLogParts=+E,block,msg:'System Command Injection',id:'958895',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-31',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A1',tag:'PCI/6.5.2',logdata:'%{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.command_injection_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION-%{matched_var_name}=%
{tx.0}""
</pre>
<p><b>Conditionally Appending Targets</b>
</p><p>You could also do the same by using the ctl action. This is
useful if you want to only update the targets for a particular URL
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME "@streq /path/to/file.php" "phase:1,t:none,nolog,pass,ctl:ruleUpdateTargetById=958895;!ARGS:email"
</pre>
<p><b>Conditionally Replacing Targets</b>
</p><p>You could also replace targets using the ctl action. For
example, lets say you want to only inspect ARGS for a particular URL:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME "@streq /path/to/file.php" "phase:1,t:none,nolog,pass,ctl:ruleUpdateTargetById=958895;REQUEST_URI;REQUEST_FILENAME"
</pre>
<a name="SecServerSignature" id="SecServerSignature"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecServerSignature </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Instructs ModSecurity to change the data
presented in the "Server:" response header token.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecServerSignature "WEB SERVER SOFTWARE"</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecServerSignature
"Microsoft-IIS/6.0"</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Main
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>In order for this directive to work, you must set the Apache
ServerTokens directive to Full. ModSecurity will overwrite the server
signature data held in this memory space with the data set in this
directive. If ServerTokens is not set to Full, then the memory space is
most likely not large enough to hold the new data we are looking to
insert.
</p>
<a name="SecStreamInBodyInspection" id="SecStreamInBodyInspection"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecStreamInBodyInspection </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the ability to use stream inspection
for inbound request data in a re-allocable buffer. For security reasons
we are still buffering the stream.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecStreamInBodyInspection On|Off</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecStreamInBodyInspection On</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> Off
</p><p>This feature enables the creation of the STREAM_INPUT_BODY
variable and is useful for data modification or to match data in raw
data for any content-types.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This directive provides full access to
REQUEST_BODY payload data. It does not include REQUEST_URI or
REQUEST_HEADER data. Also it provides data to all kind of content types,
different than REQUEST_BODY.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecStreamOutBodyInspection" id="SecStreamOutBodyInspection"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> SecStreamOutBodyInspection </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the ability to use stream inspection
for outbound request data in a re-allocable buffer. For security
reasons we are still buffering the stream.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecStreamOutBodyInspection On|Off</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecStreamOutBodyInspection On</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> Off
</p><p>This feature enables the creation of the STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY
variable and is useful when you need to do data modification into
response body.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This directive provides access to
RESPONSE_BODY payload data. It does not include RESPONSE_HEADER data.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecTmpDir" id="SecTmpDir"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SecTmpDir </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the directory where temporary files
will be created.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecTmpDir /path/to/dir</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecTmpDir /tmp</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>The location specified needs to be writable by the Apache user
process. This is the directory location where ModSecurity will swap data
to disk if it runs out of memory (more data than what was specified in
the SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit directive) during inspection.
</p>
<a name="SecUnicodeMapFile" id="SecUnicodeMapFile"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecUnicodeMapFile </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Defines the path to the file that will be used by
the urlDecodeUni transformation function to map Unicode code points
during normalization.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecUnicodeMapFile /path/to/unicode.mapping</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecUnicodeMapFile
/usr/local/apache/conf/crs/unicode.mapping</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.1
</p>
<a name="SecUnicodeCodePage" id="SecUnicodeCodePage"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecUnicodeCodePage </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Defines which Unicode code point will be used by
the urlDecodeUni transformation function during normalization.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecUnicodeCodePage XXXXX</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecUnicodeCodePage 20127</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.1
</p>
<a name="SecUploadDir" id="SecUploadDir"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecUploadDir </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the directory where intercepted files
will be stored.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecUploadDir /path/to/dir</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecUploadDir /tmp</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directory must be on the same filesystem as the temporary
directory defined with SecTmpDir. This directive is used with
SecUploadKeepFiles.
</p>
<a name="SecUploadFileLimit" id="SecUploadFileLimit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecUploadFileLimit </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the maximum number of file uploads
processed in a multipart POST.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecUploadFileLimit number</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecUploadFileLimit 10</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.5.12
</p><p>The default is set to 100 files, but you are encouraged to reduce
this value. Any file over the limit will not be extracted and the
MULTIPART_FILE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED and MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR flags will be
set. To prevent bypassing any file checks, you must check for one of
these flags.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> If the limit is exceeded, the part name and
file name will still be recorded in FILES_NAME and FILES, the file size
will be recorded in FILES_SIZES, but there will be no record in
FILES_TMPNAMES as a temporary file was not created.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecUploadFileMode" id="SecUploadFileMode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecUploadFileMode </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures the mode (permissions) of any uploaded
files using an octal mode (as used in chmod).
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecUploadFileMode octal_mode|"default"</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecUploadFileMode 0640</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.1.6
</p><p>This feature is not available on operating systems not supporting
octal file modes. The default mode (0600) only grants read/write access
to the account writing the file. If access from another account is
needed (using clamd is a good example), then this directive may be
required. However, use this directive with caution to avoid exposing
potentially sensitive data to unauthorized users. Using the value
"default" will revert back to the default setting.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The process umask may still limit the mode
if it is being more restrictive than the mode set using this directive.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SecUploadKeepFiles" id="SecUploadKeepFiles"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecUploadKeepFiles </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures whether or not the intercepted files
will be kept after transaction is processed.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecUploadKeepFiles On|Off|RelevantOnly</code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecUploadKeepFiles On</code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p>This directive requires the storage directory to be defined
(using SecUploadDir).
</p><p>Possible values are:
</p>
<ul><li><b>On</b> - Keep uploaded files.
</li><li><b>Off</b> - Do not keep uploaded files.
</li><li><b>RelevantOnly</b> - This will keep only those files that
belong to requests that are deemed relevant.
</li></ul>
<a name="SecWebAppId" id="SecWebAppId"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecWebAppId </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Creates an application namespace, allowing for
separate persistent session and user storage.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecWebAppId "NAME" </code>
</p><p><b>Example Usage:</b> <code>SecWebAppId "WebApp1" </code>
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.0.0
</p><p><b>Default:</b> default
</p><p>Application namespaces are used to avoid collisions between
session IDs and user IDs when multiple applications are deployed on the
same server. If it isn’t used, a collision between session IDs might
occur.
</p>
<pre><VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName app1.example.com
SecWebAppId "App1" ...
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName app2.example.com
SecWebAppId "App2" ...
</VirtualHost>
</pre>
<p>In the two examples configurations shown, SecWebAppId is being used
in conjunction with the Apache VirtualHost directives. Applications
namespace information is also recorded in the audit logs (using the
WebApp-Info header of the H part).
</p><p>This directive is used to set collections timeout. For example:
</p>
<pre>SecCollectionTimeout 500</pre>
<a name="SecCollectionTimeout" id="SecCollectionTimeout"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SecCollectionTimeout </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Specifies the collections timeout. Default is
3600 seconds.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecCollectionTimeout seconds</code>
</p><p><b>Default:</b> 3600
</p><p><b>Scope:</b> Any
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6.3
</p>
<a name="Processing_Phases" id="Processing_Phases"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Processing Phases </span></h1>
<p>ModSecurity 2.x allows rules to be placed in one of the following
five phases of the Apache request cycle:
</p>
<ul><li>Request headers (REQUEST_HEADERS)
</li><li>Request body (REQUEST_BODY)
</li><li>Response headers (RESPONSE_HEADERS)
</li><li>Response body (RESPONSE_BODY)
</li><li>Logging (LOGGING)
</li></ul>
<p>Below is a diagram of the standard Apache Request Cycle. In the
diagram, the 5 ModSecurity processing phases are shown.
</p><p><a
href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/mod-security/index.php?title=File:Apache_request_cycle-modsecurity.jpg"
class="image" title="Apache request cycle-modsecurity.jpg"><img alt=""
src="Reference_Manual_files/600px-Apache_request_cycle-modsecurity.jpg"
height="459" width="600" border="0"></a>
</p><p>In order to select the phase a rule executes during, use the
phase action either directly in the rule or in using the
SecDefaultAction directive:
</p>
<pre>SecDefaultAction "log,pass,phase:2"
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "!^$" "deny,phase:1"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The data available in each phase is
cumulative. This means that as you move onto later phases, you have
access to more and more data from the transaction.
</dd><dt> Note </dt><dd> Keep in mind that rules are executed
according to phases, so even if two rules are adjacent in a
configuration file, but are set to execute in different phases, they
would not happen one after the other. The order of rules in the
configuration file is important only within the rules of each phase.
This is especially important when using the skip and skipAfter actions.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The LOGGING phase is special. It is
executed at the end of each transaction no matter what happened in the
previous phases. This means it will be processed even if the request was
intercepted or the allow action was used to pass the transaction
through.
</dd></dl>
<a name="Phase_Request_Headers" id="Phase_Request_Headers"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Phase Request Headers </span></h2>
<p>Rules in this phase are processed immediately after Apache completes
reading the request headers (post-read-request phase). At this point the
request body has not been read yet, meaning not all request arguments
are available. Rules should be placed in this phase if you need to have
them run early (before Apache does something with the request), to do
something before the request body has been read, determine whether or
not the request body should be buffered, or decide how you want the
request body to be processed (e.g. whether to parse it as XML or not).
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Rules in this phase can not leverage Apache
scope directives (Directory, Location, LocationMatch, etc...) as the
post-read-request hook does not have this information yet. The exception
here is the VirtualHost directive. If you want to use ModSecurity rules
inside Apache locations, then they should run in Phase 2. Refer to the
Apache Request Cycle/ModSecurity Processing Phases diagram.
</dd></dl>
<a name="Phase_Request_Body" id="Phase_Request_Body"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Phase Request Body </span></h2>
<p>This is the general-purpose input analysis phase. Most of the
application-oriented rules should go here. In this phase you are
guaranteed to have received the request arguments (provided the request
body has been read). ModSecurity supports three encoding types for the
request body phase:
</p>
<ul><li><b>application/x-www-form-urlencoded</b> - used to transfer form
data
</li><li><b>multipart/form-data</b> - used for file transfers
</li><li><b>text/xml</b> - used for passing XML data
</li></ul>
<p>Other encodings are not used by most web applications.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> In order to access the Request Body phase
data, you must have SecRequestBodyAccess set to On.
</dd></dl>
<a name="Phase_Response_Headers" id="Phase_Response_Headers"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Phase Response Headers </span></h2>
<p>This phase takes place just before response headers are sent back to
the client. Run here if you want to observe the response before that
happens, and if you want to use the response headers to determine if you
want to buffer the response body. Note that some response status codes
(such as 404) are handled earlier in the request cycle by Apache and my
not be able to be triggered as expected. Additionally, there are some
response headers that are added by Apache at a later hook (such as Date,
Server and Connection) that we would not be able to trigger on or
sanitize. This should work appropriately in a proxy setup or within
phase:5 (logging).
</p>
<a name="Phase_Response_Body" id="Phase_Response_Body"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Phase Response Body </span></h2>
<p>This is the general-purpose output analysis phase. At this point you
can run rules against the response body (provided it was buffered, of
course). This is the phase where you would want to inspect the outbound
HTML for information disclosure, error messages or failed authentication
text.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> In order to access the Response Body phase
data, you must have SecResponseBodyAccess set to On
</dd></dl>
<a name="Phase_Logging" id="Phase_Logging"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Phase Logging </span></h2>
<p>This phase is run just before logging takes place. The rules placed
into this phase can only affect how the logging is performed. This phase
can be used to inspect the error messages logged by Apache. You cannot
deny/block connections in this phase as it is too late. This phase also
allows for inspection of other response headers that weren't available
during phase:3 or phase:4. Note that you must be careful not to inherit a
disruptive action into a rule in this phase as this is a configuration
error in ModSecurity 2.5.0 and later versions
</p>
<a name="Variables" id="Variables"></a><h1> <span class="mw-headline">
Variables </span></h1>
<p>The following variables are supported in ModSecurity 2.x:
</p>
<a name="ARGS" id="ARGS"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> ARGS </span></h2>
<p>ARGS is a collection and can be used on its own (means all arguments
including the POST Payload), with a static parameter (matches arguments
with that name), or with a regular expression (matches all arguments
with name that matches the regular expression). To look at only the
query string or body arguments, see the ARGS_GET and ARGS_POST
collections.
</p><p>Some variables are actually collections, which are expanded into
more variables at runtime. The following example will examine all
request arguments:
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS dirty</code>
</p><p>Sometimes, however, you will want to look only at parts of a
collection. This can be achieved with the help of the selection
operator(colon). The following example will only look at the arguments
named p (do note that, in general, requests can contain multiple
arguments with the same name):
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS:p dirty</code>
</p><p>It is also possible to specify exclusions. The following will
examine all request arguments for the word dirty, except the ones named z
(again, there can be zero or more arguments named z):
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS|!ARGS:z dirty</code>
</p><p>There is a special operator that allows you to count how many
variables there are in a collection. The following rule will trigger if
there is more than zero arguments in the request (ignore the second
parameter for the time being):
</p><p><code>SecRule &ARGS !^0$</code>
</p><p>And sometimes you need to look at an array of parameters, each
with a slightly different name. In this case you can specify a regular
expression in the selection operator itself. The following rule will
look into all arguments whose names begin with id_:
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS:/^id_/ dirty</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Using ARGS:p will not result in any
invocations against the operator if argument p does not exist.
</dd></dl>
<p>In ModSecurity 1.X, the ARGS variable stood for QUERY_STRING +
POST_PAYLOAD, whereas now it expands to individual variables.
</p>
<a name="ARGS_COMBINED_SIZE" id="ARGS_COMBINED_SIZE"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> ARGS_COMBINED_SIZE </span></h2>
<p>Contains the combined size of all request parameters. Files are
excluded from the calculation. This variable can be useful, for example,
to create a rule to ensure that the total size of the argument data is
below a certain threshold. The following rule detects a request whose
para- meters are more than 2500 bytes long:
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS_COMBINED_SIZE "@gt 2500"</code>
</p>
<a name="ARGS_GET" id="ARGS_GET"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
ARGS_GET </span></h2>
<p>ARGS_GET is similar to ARGS, but contains only query string
parameters.
</p>
<a name="ARGS_GET_NAMES" id="ARGS_GET_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> ARGS_GET_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>ARGS_GET_NAMES is similar to ARGS_NAMES, but contains only the names
of query string parameters.
</p>
<a name="ARGS_NAMES" id="ARGS_NAMES"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
ARGS_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>Contains all request parameter names. You can search for specific
parameter names that you want to inspect. In a positive policy scenario,
you can also whitelist (using an inverted rule with the exclamation
mark) only the authorized argument names.
This example rule allows only two argument names: p and a:
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS_NAMES "!^(p|a)$"</code>
</p>
<a name="ARGS_POST" id="ARGS_POST"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
ARGS_POST </span></h2>
<p>ARGS_POST is similar to ARGS, but only contains arguments from the
POST body.
</p>
<a name="ARGS_POST_NAMES" id="ARGS_POST_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> ARGS_POST_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>ARGS_POST_NAMES is similar to ARGS_NAMES, but contains only the names
of request body parameters.
</p>
<a name="AUTH_TYPE" id="AUTH_TYPE"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
AUTH_TYPE </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the authentication method used to validate a
user, if any of the methods built into HTTP are used. In a reverse-proxy
deployment, this information will not be available if the
authentication is handled in the backend web server.
</p><p><code>SecRule AUTH_TYPE "Basic"</code>
</p>
<a name="DURATION" id="DURATION"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
DURATION </span></h2>
<p>Contains the number of milliseconds elapsed since the beginning of
the current transaction. Available starting with 2.6.0.
</p>
<a name="ENV" id="ENV"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> ENV </span></h2>
<p>Collection that provides access to environment variables set by
ModSecurity. Requires a single parameter to specify the name of the
desired variable.
</p>
<pre># Set environment variable
SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME "printenv" \
"phase:2,pass,setenv:tag=suspicious"
# Inspect environment variable
SecRule ENV:tag "suspicious"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Use setenv to set environment variables to
be accessed by Apache.
</dd></dl>
<a name="FILES" id="FILES"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> FILES </span></h2>
<p>Contains a collection of original file names (as they were called on
the remote user’s filesys- tem). Available only on inspected
multipart/form-data requests.
</p><p><code>SecRule FILES "@rx \.conf$"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Only available if files were extracted from
the request body.
</dd></dl>
<a name="FILES_COMBINED_SIZE" id="FILES_COMBINED_SIZE"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> FILES_COMBINED_SIZE </span></h2>
<p>Contains the total size of the files transported in request body.
Available only on inspected multipart/form-data requests.
</p><p><code>SecRule FILES_COMBINED_SIZE "@gt 100000"</code>
</p>
<a name="FILES_NAMES" id="FILES_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> FILES_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>Contains a list of form fields that were used for file upload.
Available only on inspected multipart/form-data requests.
</p><p><code>SecRule FILES_NAMES "^upfile$"</code>
</p>
<a name="FILES_SIZES" id="FILES_SIZES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> FILES_SIZES </span></h2>
<p>Contains a list of individual file sizes. Useful for implementing a
size limitation on individual uploaded files. Available only on
inspected multipart/form-data requests.
</p><p><code>SecRule FILES_SIZES "@gt 100"</code>
</p>
<a name="FILES_TMPNAMES" id="FILES_TMPNAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> FILES_TMPNAMES </span></h2>
<p>Contains a list of temporary files’ names on the disk. Useful when
used together with @inspectFile. Available only on inspected
multipart/form-data requests.
</p><p><code>SecRule FILES_TMPNAMES "@inspectFile
/path/to/inspect_script.pl"</code>
</p>
<a name="GEO" id="GEO"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> GEO </span></h2>
<p>GEO is a collection populated by the results of the last @geoLookup
operator. The collection can be used to match geographical fields looked
from an IP address or hostname.
</p><p>Available since ModSecurity 2.5.0.
</p><p>Fields:
</p>
<ul><li>COUNTRY_CODE: Two character country code. EX: US, GB, etc.
</li><li>COUNTRY_CODE3: Up to three character country code.
</li><li>COUNTRY_NAME: The full country name.
</li><li>COUNTRY_CONTINENT: The two character continent that the country
is located. EX: EU
</li><li>REGION: The two character region. For US, this is state. For
Canada, providence, etc.
</li><li>CITY: The city name if supported by the database.
</li><li>POSTAL_CODE: The postal code if supported by the database.
</li><li>LATITUDE: The latitude if supported by the database.
</li><li>LONGITUDE: The longitude if supported by the database.
</li><li>DMA_CODE: The metropolitan area code if supported by the
database. (US only)
</li><li>AREA_CODE: The phone system area code. (US only)
</li></ul>
<p>Example:
</p>
<pre>SecGeoLookupDb /usr/local/geo/data/GeoLiteCity.dat
...
SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "@geoLookup" "chain,drop,msg:'Non-GB IP address'"
SecRule GEO:COUNTRY_CODE "!@streq GB"
</pre>
<a name="HIGHEST_SEVERITY" id="HIGHEST_SEVERITY"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> HIGHEST_SEVERITY </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the highest severity of any rules that have
matched so far. Severities are numeric values and thus can be used with
comparison operators such as @lt, and so on. A value of 255 indicates
that no severity has been set.
</p><p><code>SecRule HIGHEST_SEVERITY "@le 2"
"phase:2,deny,status:500,msg:'severity %{HIGHEST_SEVERITY}'"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Higher severities have a lower numeric
value.
</dd></dl>
<a name="INBOUND_ERROR_DATA" id="INBOUND_ERROR_DATA"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> INBOUND_ERROR_DATA </span></h2>
<p>This variable will be set to 1 when the request body size is above
the setting configured by SecRequestBodyLimit directive. Your policies
should always contain a rule to check this variable. Depending on the
rate of false positives and your default policy you should decide
whether to block or just warn when the rule is triggered.
</p><p>The best way to use this variable is as in the example below:
</p><p><code>SecRule INBOUND_ERROR_DATA "@eq 1"
"phase:1,t:none,log,pass,msg:'Request Body Larger than
SecRequestBodyLimit Setting'"</code>
</p>
<a name="MATCHED_VAR" id="MATCHED_VAR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MATCHED_VAR </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the value of the most-recently matched variable.
It is similar to the TX:0, but it is automatically supported by all
operators and there is no need to specify the capture action.
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS pattern chain,deny
SecRule MATCHED_VAR "further scrutiny"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Be aware that this variable holds data for
the <i><b>last</b></i> operator match. This means that if there are
more than one matches, only the last one will be populated. Use
MATCHED_VARS variable if you want all matches.
</dd></dl>
<a name="MATCHED_VARS" id="MATCHED_VARS"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MATCHED_VARS </span></h2>
<p>Similar to MATCHED_VAR except that it is a collection of <i><b>all
matches</b></i> for the current operator check.
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS pattern "chain,deny"
SecRule MATCHED_VARS "@eq ARGS:param"
</pre>
<a name="MATCHED_VAR_NAME" id="MATCHED_VAR_NAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MATCHED_VAR_NAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the full name of the variable that was matched
against.
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS pattern "chain,deny"
SecRule MATCHED_VAR_NAME "@eq ARGS:param"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Be aware that this variable holds data for
the <i><b>last</b></i> operator match. This means that if there are
more than one matches, only the last one will be populated. Use
MATCHED_VARS_NAMES variable if you want all matches.
</dd></dl>
<a name="MATCHED_VARS_NAMES" id="MATCHED_VARS_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MATCHED_VARS_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>Similar to MATCHED_VAR_NAME except that it is a collection of <i><b>all
matches</b></i> for the current operator check.
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS pattern "chain,deny"
SecRule MATCHED_VARS_NAMES "@eq ARGS:param"
</pre>
<a name="MODSEC_BUILD" id="MODSEC_BUILD"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MODSEC_BUILD </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the ModSecurity build number. This variable is
intended to be used to check the build number prior to using a feature
that is available only in a certain build. Example:
</p>
<pre>SecRule MODSEC_BUILD "!@ge 02050102" "skipAfter:12345"
SecRule ARGS "@pm some key words" "id:12345,deny,status:500"
</pre>
<a name="MULTIPART_CRLF_LF_LINES" id="MULTIPART_CRLF_LF_LINES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MULTIPART_CRLF_LF_LINES </span></h2>
<p>This flag variable will be set to 1 whenever a multi-part request
uses mixed line terminators. The multipart/form-data RFC requires CRLF
sequence to be used to terminate lines. Since some client
implementations use only LF to terminate lines you might want to allow
them to proceed under certain circumstances (if you want to do this you
will need to stop using MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR and check each multi-part
flag variable individually, avoiding MULTIPART_LF_LINE). However,
mixing CRLF and LF line terminators is dangerous as it can allow for
evasion. Therefore, in such cases, you will have to add a check for
MULTIPART_CRLF_LF_LINES.
</p>
<a name="MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR" id="MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR </span></h2>
<p>MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR will be set to 1 when any of the following
variables is also set to 1: REQBODY_PROCESSOR_ERROR,
MULTIPART_BOUNDARY_QUOTED, MULTIPART_BOUNDARY_WHITESPACE,
MULTIPART_DATA_BEFORE, MULTIPART_DATA_AFTER, MULTIPART_HEADER_FOLDING,
MULTIPART_LF_LINE, MULTIPART_SEMICOLON_MISSING MULTIPART_INVALID_QUOTING
MULTIPART_INVALID_HEADER_FOLDING MULTIPART_FILE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED. Each of
these variables covers one unusual (although sometimes legal) aspect of
the request body in multipart/form-data format. Your policies should
always contain a rule to check either this variable (easier) or one or
more individual variables (if you know exactly what you want to
accomplish). Depending on the rate of false positives and your default
policy you should decide whether to block or just warn when the rule is
triggered.
</p><p>The best way to use this variable is as in the example below:
</p>
<pre>SecRule MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR "!@eq 0" \
"phase:2,t:none,log,deny,msg:'Multipart request body \
failed strict validation: \
PE %{REQBODY_PROCESSOR_ERROR}, \
BQ %{MULTIPART_BOUNDARY_QUOTED}, \
BW %{MULTIPART_BOUNDARY_WHITESPACE}, \
DB %{MULTIPART_DATA_BEFORE}, \
DA %{MULTIPART_DATA_AFTER}, \
HF %{MULTIPART_HEADER_FOLDING}, \
LF %{MULTIPART_LF_LINE}, \
SM %{MULTIPART_SEMICOLON_MISSING}, \
IQ %{MULTIPART_INVALID_QUOTING}, \
IQ %{MULTIPART_INVALID_HEADER_FOLDING}, \
FE %{MULTIPART_FILE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED}'"
</pre>
<p>The multipart/form-data parser was upgraded in ModSecurity v2.1.3 to
actively look for signs of evasion. Many variables (as listed above)
were added to expose various facts discovered during the parsing
process. The MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR variable is handy to check on all
abnormalities at once. The individual variables allow detection to be
fine-tuned according to your circumstances in order to reduce the number
of false positives.
</p>
<a name="MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY" id="MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY"></a><h2>
<span class="mw-headline"> MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY </span></h2>
<p>Set to 1 when, during the parsing phase of a multipart/request-body,
ModSecurity encounters what feels like a boundary but it is not. Such an
event may occur when evasion of ModSecurity is attempted.
</p><p>The best way to use this variable is as in the example below:
</p>
<pre>SecRule MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY "!@eq 0" \
"phase:2,t:none,log,deny,msg:'Multipart parser detected a possible unmatched boundary.'"
</pre>
<p>Change the rule from blocking to logging-only if many false positives
are encountered.
</p>
<a name="PATH_INFO" id="PATH_INFO"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
PATH_INFO </span></h2>
<p>Contains the extra request URI information, also known as path info.
(For example, in the URI /index.php/123, /123 is the path info.)
Available only in embedded deployments.
</p><p><code>SecRule PATH_INFO "^/(bin|etc|sbin|opt|usr)"</code>
</p>
<a name="PERF_COMBINED" id="PERF_COMBINED"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_COMBINED </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent in ModSecurity during the
current transaction. The value in this variable is arrived to by adding
all the performance variables except PERF_SREAD (the time spent reading
from persistent storage is already included in the phase measurements).
Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_GC" id="PERF_GC"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
PERF_GC </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent performing garbage
collection. Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_LOGGING" id="PERF_LOGGING"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_LOGGING </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent in audit logging. This
value is known only after the handling of a transaction is finalized,
which means that it can only be logged using mod_log_config and
the %{VARNAME}M syntax. Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_PHASE1" id="PERF_PHASE1"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_PHASE1 </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent processing phase 1.
Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_PHASE2" id="PERF_PHASE2"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_PHASE2 </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent processing phase 2.
Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_PHASE3" id="PERF_PHASE3"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_PHASE3 </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent processing phase 3.
Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_PHASE4" id="PERF_PHASE4"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_PHASE4 </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent processing phase 4.
Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_PHASE5" id="PERF_PHASE5"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_PHASE5 </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent processing phase 5.
Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_SREAD" id="PERF_SREAD"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
PERF_SREAD </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent reading from persistent
storage. Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="PERF_SWRITE" id="PERF_SWRITE"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> PERF_SWRITE </span></h2>
<p>Contains the time, in microseconds, spent writing to persistent
storage. Available starting with 2.6.
</p>
<a name="QUERY_STRING" id="QUERY_STRING"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> QUERY_STRING </span></h2>
<p>Contains the query string part of a request URI. The value in
QUERY_STRING is always provided raw, without URL decoding taking place.
</p><p><code>SecRule QUERY_STRING "attack"</code>
</p>
<a name="REMOTE_ADDR" id="REMOTE_ADDR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REMOTE_ADDR </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the IP address of the remote client.
</p><p><code>SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "@ipMatch 192.168.1.101"</code>
</p>
<a name="REMOTE_HOST" id="REMOTE_HOST"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REMOTE_HOST </span></h2>
<p>If the Apache directive HostnameLookups is set to On, then this
variable will hold the remote hostname resolved through DNS. If the
directive is set to Off, this variable it will hold the remote IP
address (same as REMOTE_ADDR). Possible uses for this variable would be
to deny known bad client hosts or network blocks, or conversely, to
allow in authorized hosts.
</p><p><code>SecRule REMOTE_HOST "\.evil\.network\org$"</code>
</p>
<a name="REMOTE_PORT" id="REMOTE_PORT"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REMOTE_PORT </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds information on the source port that the client
used when initiating the connection to our web server.
</p><p>In the following example, we are evaluating to see whether the
REMOTE_PORT is less than 1024, which would indicate that the user is a
privileged user:
</p><p><code>SecRule REMOTE_PORT "@lt 1024"</code>
</p>
<a name="REMOTE_USER" id="REMOTE_USER"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REMOTE_USER </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the username of the authenticated user. If there
are no password access controls in place (Basic or Digest
authentication), then this variable will be empty.
</p><p><code>SecRule REMOTE_USER "^admin$" </code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> In a reverse-proxy deployment, this
information will not be available if the authentication is
</dd></dl>
<p>handled in the backend web server.
</p>
<a name="REQBODY_ERROR" id="REQBODY_ERROR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQBODY_ERROR </span></h2>
<p>Contains the status of the request body processor used for request
body parsing. The values can be 0 (no error) or 1 (error). This variable
will be set by request body processors (typically the
multipart/request-data parser or the XML parser) when they fail to do
their work.
</p><p><code>SecRule REQBODY_ERROR "@eq 1" deny,phase:2 </code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Your policies must have a rule to check for
request body processor errors at the very beginning of phase 2. Failure
to do so will leave the door open for impedance mismatch attacks. It is
possible, for example, that a payload that cannot be parsed by
ModSecurity can be successfully parsed by more tolerant parser operating
in the application. If your policy dictates blocking, then you should
reject the request if error is detected. When operating in
detection-only mode, your rule should alert with high severity when
request body processing fails.
</dd></dl>
<a name="REQBODY_ERROR_MSG" id="REQBODY_ERROR_MSG"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQBODY_ERROR_MSG </span></h2>
<p>If there’s been an error during request body parsing, the variable
will contain the following error message:
</p><p><code>SecRule REQBODY_ERROR_MSG "failed to parse"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQBODY_PROCESSOR" id="REQBODY_PROCESSOR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQBODY_PROCESSOR </span></h2>
<p>Contains the name of the currently used request body processor. The
possible values are URLENCODED, MULTIPART, and XML.
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQBODY_PROCESSOR "^XML$ chain
SecRule XML "@validateDTD /opt/apache-frontend/conf/xml.dtd"
</pre>
<a name="REQUEST_BASENAME" id="REQUEST_BASENAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_BASENAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds just the filename part of REQUEST_FILENAME (e.g.,
index.php).
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_BASENAME "^login\.php$"
phase:2,t:none,t:lowercase</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Please note that anti-evasion
transformations are not applied to this variable by default.
REQUEST_BASENAME will recognise both / and \ as path separators. You
should understand that the value of this variable depends on what was
provided in request, and that it does not have to correspond to the
resource (on disk) that will be used by the web server.
</dd></dl>
<a name="REQUEST_BODY" id="REQUEST_BODY"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_BODY </span></h2>
<p>Holds the raw request body. This variable is available only if the
URLENCODED request body processor was used, which will occur by default
when the application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type is detected, or
if the use of the URLENCODED request body parser was forced.
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_BODY
"^username=\w{25,}\&password=\w{25,}\&Submit\=login$"</code>
</p><p>As of 2.5.7, it is possible to force the presence of the
REQUEST_BODY variable, but only when there is no request body processor
defined using the ctl:forceRequestBodyVariable option in the
REQUEST_HEADERS phase.
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_BODY_LENGTH" id="REQUEST_BODY_LENGTH"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_BODY_LENGTH </span></h2>
<p>Contains the number of bytes read from a request body. Available
starting with v2.6
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_COOKIES" id="REQUEST_COOKIES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_COOKIES </span></h2>
<p>This variable is a collection of all of request cookies (values
only). Example: the following example is using the Ampersand special
operator to count how many variables are in the collection. In this
rule, it would trigger if the request does not include any Cookie
headers.
</p><p><code>SecRule &REQUEST_COOKIES "@eq 0"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES" id="REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>This variable is a collection of the names of all request cookies.
For example, the following rule will trigger if the JSESSIONID cookie is
not present:
</p><p><code>SecRule &REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES:JSESSIONID "@eq 0"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_FILENAME" id="REQUEST_FILENAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_FILENAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the relative request URL without the query string
part (e.g., /index.php).
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME "^/cgi-bin/login\.php$"
phase:2,t:none,t:normalizePath</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Please note that anti-evasion
transformations are not used on REQUEST_FILENAME, which means that you
will have to specify them in the rules that use this variable.
</dd></dl>
<a name="REQUEST_HEADERS" id="REQUEST_HEADERS"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_HEADERS </span></h2>
<p>This variable can be used as either a collection of all of the
request headers or can be used to inspect selected headers (by using the
REQUEST_HEADERS:Header-Name syntax).
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "^[\d\.]+$"
"deny,log,status:400,msg:'Host header is a numeric IP address'"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES" id="REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>This variable is a collection of the names of all of the request
headers.
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES "^x-forwarded-for"
"log,deny,status:403,t:lowercase,msg:'Proxy Server Used'"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_LINE" id="REQUEST_LINE"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_LINE </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the complete request line sent to the server
(including the request method and HTTP version information).
</p>
<pre># Allow only POST, GET and HEAD request methods, as well as only
# the valid protocol versions
SecRule REQUEST_LINE "!(^((?:(?:POS|GE)T|HEAD))|HTTP/(0\.9|1\.0|1\.1)$)" "phase:1,log,block,t:none"
</pre>
<a name="REQUEST_METHOD" id="REQUEST_METHOD"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_METHOD </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the request method used in the transaction.
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_METHOD "^(?:CONNECT|TRACE)$" "t:none"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_PROTOCOL" id="REQUEST_PROTOCOL"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_PROTOCOL </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the request protocol version information.
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_PROTOCOL "!^HTTP/(0\.9|1\.0|1\.1)$"</code>
</p>
<a name="REQUEST_URI" id="REQUEST_URI"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_URI </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the full request URL including the query string
data (e.g., /index.php? p=X). However, it will never contain a domain
name, even if it was provided on the request line.
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_URI "attack"
"phase:1,t:none,t:urlDecode,t:lowercase,t:normalizePath"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Please note that anti-evasion
transformations are not used on REQUEST_URI, which means that you will
have to specify them in the rules that use this variable.
</dd></dl>
<a name="REQUEST_URI_RAW" id="REQUEST_URI_RAW"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> REQUEST_URI_RAW </span></h2>
<p>Same as REQUEST_URI but will contain the domain name if it was
provided on the request line (e.g., <a
href="http://www.example.com/index.php?p=X" class="external free"
title="http://www.example.com/index.php?p=X" rel="nofollow">http://www.example.com/index.php?p=X</a>).
</p><p><code>SecRule REQUEST_URI_RAW "http:/"
"phase:1,t:none,t:urlDecode,t:lowercase,t:normalizePath"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Please note that anti-evasion
transformations are not used on REQUEST_URI_RAW, which means that you
will have to specify them in the rules that use this variable.
</dd></dl>
<a name="RESPONSE_BODY" id="RESPONSE_BODY"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_BODY </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the data for the response body, but only when
response body buffering is enabled.
</p><p><code>SecRule RESPONSE_BODY "ODBC Error Code" "phase:4,t:none"</code>
</p>
<a name="RESPONSE_CONTENT_LENGTH" id="RESPONSE_CONTENT_LENGTH"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_CONTENT_LENGTH </span></h2>
<p>Response body length in bytes. Can be available starting with phase
3, but it does not have to be (as the length of response body is not
always known in advance). If the size is not known, this variable will
contain a zero. If RESPONSE_CONTENT_LENGTH contains a zero in phase 5
that means the actual size of the response body was 0. The value of this
variable can change between phases if the body is modified. For
example, in embedded mode, mod_deflate can compress the response body
between phases 4 and 5.
</p>
<a name="RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE" id="RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE </span></h2>
<p>Response content type. Available only starting with phase 3. The
value available in this variable is taken directly from the internal
structures of Apache, which means that it may contain the information
that is not yet available in response headers. In embedded deployments,
you should always refer to this variable, rather than to
RESPONSE_HEADERS:Content-Type.
</p>
<a name="RESPONSE_HEADERS" id="RESPONSE_HEADERS"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_HEADERS </span></h2>
<p>This variable refers to response headers, in the same way as
REQUEST_HEADERS does to request headers.
</p><p><code>SecRule RESPONSE_HEADERS:X-Cache "MISS"</code>
</p><p>This variable may not have access to some headers when running in
embedded mode. Headers such as Server, Date, Connection, and
Content-Type could be added just prior to sending the data to the
client. This data should be available in phase 5 or when deployed in
proxy mode.
</p>
<a name="RESPONSE_HEADERS_NAMES" id="RESPONSE_HEADERS_NAMES"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_HEADERS_NAMES </span></h2>
<p>This variable is a collection of the response header names.
</p><p><code>SecRule RESPONSE_HEADERS_NAMES "Set-Cookie"
"phase:3,t:none"</code>
</p><p>The same limitations apply as the ones discussed in
RESPONSE_HEADERS.
</p>
<a name="RESPONSE_PROTOCOL" id="RESPONSE_PROTOCOL"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_PROTOCOL </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the HTTP response protocol information.
</p><p><code>SecRule RESPONSE_PROTOCOL "^HTTP\/0\.9" "phase:3,t:none"</code>
</p>
<a name="RESPONSE_STATUS" id="RESPONSE_STATUS"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> RESPONSE_STATUS </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the HTTP response status code:
</p><p><code>SecRule RESPONSE_STATUS "^[45]" "phase:3,t:none"</code>
</p><p>This variable may not work as expected in embedded mode, as
Apache sometimes handles certain requests differently, and without
invoking ModSecurity (all other modules).
</p>
<a name="RULE" id="RULE"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> RULE </span></h2>
<p>This is a special collection that provides access to the id, rev,
severity, logdata, and msg fields of the rule that triggered the action.
It can be used to refer to only the same rule in which it resides.
</p><p><code>SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "@eq 0"
"log,deny,setvar:tx.varname=%{RULE.id}"</code>
</p>
<a name="SCRIPT_BASENAME" id="SCRIPT_BASENAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SCRIPT_BASENAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds just the local filename part of SCRIPT_FILENAME.
</p><p><code>SecRule SCRIPT_BASENAME "^login\.php$"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SCRIPT_FILENAME" id="SCRIPT_FILENAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SCRIPT_FILENAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the full internal path to the script that will be
used to serve the request.
</p><p><code>SecRule SCRIPT_FILENAME
"^/usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/login\.php$"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SCRIPT_GID" id="SCRIPT_GID"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SCRIPT_GID </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the numerical identifier of the group owner of
the script.
</p><p><code>SecRule SCRIPT_GID "!^46$"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SCRIPT_GROUPNAME" id="SCRIPT_GROUPNAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SCRIPT_GROUPNAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the name of the group owner of the script.
</p><p><code>SecRule SCRIPT_GROUPNAME "!^apache$"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SCRIPT_MODE" id="SCRIPT_MODE"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SCRIPT_MODE </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the script’s permissions mode data (e.g., 644).
</p>
<pre># Do not allow scripts that can be written to
SecRule SCRIPT_MODE "^(2|3|6|7)$"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SCRIPT_UID" id="SCRIPT_UID"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SCRIPT_UID </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the numerical identifier of the owner of the
script.
</p>
<pre># Do not run any scripts that are owned
# by Apache (Apache's user id is 46)
SecRule SCRIPT_UID "!^46$"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SCRIPT_USERNAME" id="SCRIPT_USERNAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SCRIPT_USERNAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the username of the owner of the script.
</p>
<pre># Do not run any scripts owned by Apache SecRule
SCRIPT_USERNAME "^apache$"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Not available in proxy mode.
</dd></dl>
<a name="SERVER_ADDR" id="SERVER_ADDR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SERVER_ADDR </span></h2>
<p>This variable contains the IP address of the server.
</p><p><code>SecRule SERVER_ADDR "@ipMatch 192.168.1.100"</code>
</p>
<a name="SERVER_NAME" id="SERVER_NAME"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SERVER_NAME </span></h2>
<p>This variable contains the transaction’s hostname or IP address,
taken from the request itself (which means that, in principle, it should
not be trusted).
</p><p><code>SecRule SERVER_NAME "hostname\.com$"</code>
</p>
<a name="SERVER_PORT" id="SERVER_PORT"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> SERVER_PORT </span></h2>
<p>This variable contains the local port that the web server (or reverse
proxy) is listening on.
</p><p><code>SecRule SERVER_PORT "^80$"</code>
</p>
<a name="SESSION" id="SESSION"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SESSION </span></h2>
<p>This variable is a collection that contains session information. It
becomes available only after setsid is executed.
</p><p>The following example shows how to initialize SESSION using
setsid, how to use setvar to increase the SESSION.score values, how to
set the SESSION.blocked variable, and finally, how to deny the
connection based on the SESSION:blocked value:
</p>
<pre># Initialize session storage
SecRule REQUEST_COOKIES:PHPSESSID !^$ "phase:2,nolog,pass,setsid:%{REQUEST_COOKIES.PHPSESSID}"
# Increment session score on attack
SecRule REQUEST_URI "^/cgi-bin/finger$" "phase:2,t:none,t:lowercase,t:normalizePath,pass,setvar:SESSION.score=+10"
# Detect too many attacks in a session
SecRule SESSION:score "@gt 50" "phase:2,pass,setvar:SESSION.blocked=1"
# Enforce session block
SecRule SESSION:blocked "@eq 1" "phase:2,deny,status:403"
</pre>
<a name="SESSIONID" id="SESSIONID"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
SESSIONID </span></h2>
<p>This variable contains the value set with setsid. See SESSION (above)
for a complete example.
</p>
<a name="STREAM_INPUT_BODY" id="STREAM_INPUT_BODY"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> STREAM_INPUT_BODY </span></h2>
<p>This variable give access to the raw request body content. This
variable is best used for two use-cases:
</p>
<ol><li>For fast pattern matching - using @pm/@pmf to prequalify large
text strings against any kind of content-type data. This is more
performant vs. using REQUEST_BODY/ARGS_POST/ARGS_POST_NAMES as it
happens before ModSecurity parsing in phase:2 variable population.
</li><li>For data substitution - using @rsub against this variable
allows you to manipulate live request body data. Example - to remove
offending payloads or to substitute benign data.
</li></ol>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> You must enable the
SecStreamInBodyInspection directive
</dd></dl>
<a name="STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY" id="STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY </span></h2>
<p>This variable give access to the raw response body content. This
variable is best used for case:
</p>
<ol><li>For data substitution - using @rsub against this variable allows
you to manipulate live request body data. Example - to remove
offending payloads or to substitute benign data.
</li></ol>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> You must enable the
SecStreamOutBodyInspection directive
</dd></dl>
<a name="TIME" id="TIME"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> TIME </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds a formatted string representing the time
(hour:minute:second).
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME "^(([1](8|9))|([2](0|1|2|3))):\d{2}:\d{2}$"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_DAY" id="TIME_DAY"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_DAY </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current date (1–31). The following rule
triggers on a transaction that’s happening anytime between the 10th and
20th in a month:
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_DAY "^(([1](0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9))|20)$"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_EPOCH" id="TIME_EPOCH"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_EPOCH </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the time in seconds since 1970.
</p>
<a name="TIME_HOUR" id="TIME_HOUR"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_HOUR </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current hour value (0–23). The following rule
triggers when a request is made “off hours”:
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_HOUR "^(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|[1](8|9)|[2](0|1|2|3))$"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_MIN" id="TIME_MIN"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_MIN </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current minute value (0–59). The following
rule triggers during the last half hour of every hour:
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_MIN "^(3|4|5)"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_MON" id="TIME_MON"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_MON </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current month value (0–11). The following
rule matches if the month is either November (value 10) or December
(value 11):
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_MON "^1"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_SEC" id="TIME_SEC"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_SEC </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current second value (0–59).
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_SEC "@gt 30"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_WDAY" id="TIME_WDAY"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_WDAY </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current weekday value (0–6). The following
rule triggers only on Satur- day and Sunday:
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_WDAY "^(0|6)$"</code>
</p>
<a name="TIME_YEAR" id="TIME_YEAR"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
TIME_YEAR </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the current four-digit year value.
</p><p><code>SecRule TIME_YEAR "^2006$"</code>
</p>
<a name="TX" id="TX"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> TX </span></h2>
<p>This is the transient transaction collection, which is used to store
pieces of data, create a transaction anomaly score, and so on. The
variables placed into this collection are available only until the
transaction is complete.
</p>
<pre># Increment transaction attack score on attack
SecRule ARGS attack "phase:2,nolog,pass,setvar:TX.score=+5"
# Block the transactions whose scores are too high
SecRule TX:SCORE "@gt 20" "phase:2,log,deny"
</pre>
<p>Some variable names in the TX collection are reserved and cannot be
used:
</p>
<ul><li>TX:0: the matching value when using the @rx or @pm operator with
the capture action
</li><li>TX:1-TX:9: the captured subexpression value when using the @rx
operator with capturing parens and the capture action
</li><li>TX:MSC_.*: ModSecurity processing flags
</li><li>MSC_PCRE_LIMITS_EXCEEDED: Set to nonzero if PCRE match limits
are exceeded. See SecPcreMatchLimit and SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion for
more information.
</li></ul>
<a name="UNIQUE_ID" id="UNIQUE_ID"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
UNIQUE_ID </span></h2>
<p>This variable holds the data created by mod_unique_id <a
href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_unique_id.html"
class="external autonumber"
title="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_unique_id.html"
rel="nofollow">[7]</a>. This module provides a magic token for each
request which is guaranteed to be unique across "all" requests under
very specific conditions. The unique identifier is even unique across
multiple machines in a properly configured cluster of machines. The
environment variable UNIQUE_ID is set to the identifier for each
request. The UNIQUE_ID environment variable is constructed by encoding
the 112-bit (32-bit IP address, 32 bit pid, 32 bit time stamp, 16 bit
counter) quadruple using the alphabet [A-Za-z0-9@-] in a manner similar
to MIME base64 encoding, producing 19 characters.
</p>
<a name="URLENCODED_ERROR" id="URLENCODED_ERROR"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> URLENCODED_ERROR </span></h2>
<p>This variable is created when an invalid URL encoding is encountered
during the parsing of a query string (on every request) or during the
parsing of an application/x-www-form-urlencoded request body (only on
the requests that use the URLENCODED request body processor).
</p>
<a name="USERID" id="USERID"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> USERID </span></h2>
<p>This variable contains the value set with setuid.
</p>
<pre># Initialize user tracking
SecAction "nolog,pass,setuid:%{REMOTE_USER}"
# Is the current user the administrator?
SecRule USERID "admin"
</pre>
<a name="WEBAPPID" id="WEBAPPID"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
WEBAPPID </span></h2>
<p>This variable contains the current application name, which is set in
configuration using SecWebAppId.
</p>
<a name="WEBSERVER_ERROR_LOG" id="WEBSERVER_ERROR_LOG"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> WEBSERVER_ERROR_LOG </span></h2>
<p>Contains zero or more error messages produced by the web server. This
variable is best accessed from phase 5 (logging).
</p><p><code>SecRule WEBSERVER_ERROR_LOG "File does not exist"
"phase:5,t:none,nolog,pass,setvar:TX.score=+5"</code>
</p>
<a name="XML" id="XML"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> XML </span></h2>
<p>Special collection used to interact with the XML parser. It can be
used standalone as a target for the validateDTD and validateSchema
operator. Otherwise, it must contain a valid XPath expression, which
will then be evaluated against a previously parsed XML DOM tree.
</p>
<pre>SecDefaultAction log,deny,status:403,phase:2
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Type ^text/xml$ "phase:1,t:lowercase,nolog,pass,ctl:requestBodyProcessor=XML"
SecRule REQBODY_PROCESSOR "!^XML$" skipAfter:12345
SecRule XML:/employees/employee/name/text() Fred
SecRule XML:/xq:employees/employee/name/text() Fred "id:12345,xmlns:xq=http://www.example.com/employees"
</pre>
<p>The first XPath expression does not use namespaces. It would match
against payload such as this one:
</p>
<pre><employees>
<employee>
<name>Fred Jones</name>
<address location="home">
<street>900 Aurora Ave.</street>
<city>Seattle</city>
<state>WA</state>
<zip>98115</zip>
</address>
<address location="work">
<street>2011 152nd Avenue NE</street>
<city>Redmond</city>
<state>WA</state>
<zip>98052</zip>
</address>
<phone location="work">(425)555-5665</phone>
<phone location="home">(206)555-5555</phone>
<phone location="mobile">(206)555-4321</phone>
</employee>
</employees>
</pre>
<p>The second XPath expression does use namespaces. It would match the
following payload:
</p>
<pre><xq:employees xmlns:xq="http://www.example.com/employees">
<employee>
<name>Fred Jones</name>
<address location="home">
<street>900 Aurora Ave.</street>
<city>Seattle</city>
<state>WA</state>
<zip>98115</zip>
</address>
<address location="work">
<street>2011 152nd Avenue NE</street>
<city>Redmond</city>
<state>WA</state>
<zip>98052</zip>
</address>
<phone location="work">(425)555-5665</phone>
<phone location="home">(206)555-5555</phone>
<phone location="mobile">(206)555-4321</phone>
</employee>
</xq:employees>
</pre>
<p>Note the different namespace used in the second example.
</p>
<a name="Transformation_functions" id="Transformation_functions"></a><h1>
<span class="mw-headline"> Transformation functions </span></h1>
<p>Transformation functions are used to alter input data before it is
used in matching (i.e., operator execution). The input data is never
modified, actually—whenever you request a transformation function to be
used, ModSecurity will create a copy of the data, transform it, and then
run the operator against the result.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> There are no default transformation
functions, as there were in the first generation of ModSecurity (1.x).
</dd></dl>
<p>In the following example, the request parameter values are converted
to lowercase before matching:
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS "xp_cmdshell" "t:lowercase"</code>
</p><p>Multiple transformation actions can be used in the same rule,
forming a transformation pipeline. The transformations will be performed
in the order in which they appear in the rule.
</p><p>In most cases, the order in which transformations are performed
is very important. In the following example, a series of transformation
functions is performed to counter evasion. Performing the
transformations in any other order would allow a skillful attacker to
evade detection:
</p><p><code>SecRule ARGS
"(asfunction|javascript|vbscript|data|mocha|livescript):"
"t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:lowercase,t:removeNulls,t:removeWhitespace"</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> It is currently possible to use
SecDefaultAction to specify a default list of transformation functions,
which will be applied to all rules that follow the SecDefaultAction
directive. However, this practice is not recommended, because it means
that mistakes are very easy to make. It is recommended that you always
specify the transformation functions that are needed by a particular
rule, starting the list with t:none (which clears the possibly inherited
transformation functions).
</dd></dl>
<p>The remainder of this section documents the transformation functions
currently available in ModSecurity.
</p>
<a name="base64Decode" id="base64Decode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> base64Decode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes a Base64-encoded string.
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Authorization "^Basic ([a-zA-Z0-9]+=*)$" "phase:1,capture,chain,logdata:%{TX.1}"
SecRule TX:1 ^(\w+): t:base64Decode,capture,chain
SecRule TX:1 ^(admin|root|backup)$
</pre>
<a name="sqlHexDecode" id="sqlHexDecode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> sqlHexDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decode sql hex data. Example (0x414243) will be decoded to (ABC).
Available as of 2.6.3
</p>
<a name="base64DecodeExt" id="base64DecodeExt"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> base64DecodeExt </span></h2>
<p>Decodes a Base64-encoded string. Unlike base64Decode, this version
uses a forgiving implementation, which ignores invalid characters.
Available as of 2.5.13.
</p><p>See blog post on Base64Decoding evasion issues on PHP sites - <a
href="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/04/impedance-mismatch-and-base64.html"
class="external free"
title="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/04/impedance-mismatch-and-base64.html"
rel="nofollow">http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/04/impedance-mismatch-and-base64.html</a>
</p>
<a name="base64Encode" id="base64Encode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> base64Encode </span></h2>
<p>Encodes input string using Base64 encoding.
</p>
<a name="cmdLine" id="cmdLine"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
cmdLine </span></h2>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This is a community contribution developed
by Marc Stern <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcstern"
class="external autonumber" title="http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcstern"
rel="nofollow">[8]</a>
</dd></dl>
<p>In Windows and Unix, commands may be escaped by different means, such
as:
</p>
<ul><li>c^ommand /c ...
</li><li>"command" /c ...
</li><li>command,/c ...
</li><li>backslash in the middle of a Unix command
</li></ul>
<p>The cmdLine transformation function avoids this problem by
manipulating the variable contend in the following ways:
</p>
<ul><li>deleting all backslashes [\]
</li><li>deleting all double quotes ["]
</li><li>deleting all sigle quotes [']
</li><li>deleting all carets [^]
</li><li>deleting spaces before a slash [/]
</li><li>deleting spaces before an open parentesis [(]
</li><li>replacing all commas [,] and semicolon [;] into a space
</li><li>replacing all multiple spaces (including tab, newline, etc.)
into one space
</li><li>transform all characters to lowercase
</li></ul>
<p><b>Example Usage:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS "(?:command(?:.com)?|cmd(?:.exe)?)(?:/.*)?/[ck]" "phase:2,t:none, t:cmdLine"
</pre>
<a name="compressWhitespace" id="compressWhitespace"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> compressWhitespace </span></h2>
<p>Converts any of the whitespace characters (0x20, \f, \t, \n, \r, \v,
0xa0) to spaces (ASCII 0x20), compressing multiple consecutive space
characters into one.
</p>
<a name="cssDecode" id="cssDecode"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
cssDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes characters encoded using the CSS 2.x escape rules <a
href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/" class="external text"
title="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/" rel="nofollow">syndata.html#characters</a>.
This function uses only up to two bytes in the decoding process,
meaning that it is useful to uncover ASCII characters encoded using CSS
encoding (that wouldn’t normally be encoded), or to counter evasion,
which is a combination of a backslash and non-hexadecimal characters
(e.g., ja\vascript is equivalent to javascript).
</p>
<a name="escapeSeqDecode" id="escapeSeqDecode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> escapeSeqDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes ANSI C escape sequences: \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v, \\, \?,
\', \", \xHH (hexadecimal), \0OOO (octal). Invalid encodings are left in
the output.
</p>
<a name="hexDecode" id="hexDecode"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
hexDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes a string that has been encoded using the same algorithm as
the one used in hexEncode (see following entry).
</p>
<a name="hexEncode" id="hexEncode"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
hexEncode </span></h2>
<p>Encodes string (possibly containing binary characters) by replacing
each input byte with two hexadecimal characters. For example, xyz is
encoded as 78797a.
</p>
<a name="htmlEntityDecode" id="htmlEntityDecode"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> htmlEntityDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes the characters encoded as HTML entities. The following
variants are supported:
</p>
<ul><li>&#xHH and &#xHH; (where H is any hexadecimal number)
</li><li>&#DDD and &#DDD; (where D is any decimal number)
</li><li>&quotand"
</li><li>&nbspand
</li><li>&ltand<
</li><li>&gtand>
</li></ul>
<p>This function always converts one HTML entity into one byte, possibly
resulting in a loss of information (if the entity refers to a character
that cannot be represented with the single byte). It is thus useful to
uncover bytes that would otherwise not need to be encoded, but it cannot
do anything meaningful with the characters from the range above 0xff.
</p>
<a name="jsDecode" id="jsDecode"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
jsDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes JavaScript escape sequences. If a \uHHHH code is in the range
of FF01-FF5E (the full width ASCII codes), then the higher byte is used
to detect and adjust the lower byte. Otherwise, only the lower byte
will be used and the higher byte zeroed (leading to possible loss of
information).
</p>
<a name="length" id="length"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> length </span></h2>
<p>Looks up the length of the input string in bytes, placing it (as
string) in output. For example, if it gets ABCDE on input, this
transformation function will return 5 on output.
</p>
<a name="lowercase" id="lowercase"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
lowercase </span></h2>
<p>Converts all characters to lowercase using the current C locale.
</p>
<a name="md5" id="md5"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> md5 </span></h2>
<p>Calculates an MD5 hash from the data in input. The computed hash is
in a raw binary form and may need encoded into text to be printed (or
logged). Hash functions are commonly used in combination with hexEncode
(for example: t:md5,t:hexEncode).
</p>
<a name="none" id="none"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> none </span></h2>
<p>Not an actual transformation function, but an instruction to
ModSecurity to remove all transformation functions associated with the
current rule.
</p>
<a name="normalisePath" id="normalisePath"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> normalisePath </span></h2>
<p>Removes multiple slashes, directory self-references, and directory
back-references (except when at the beginning of the input) from input
string.
</p>
<a name="normalisePathWin" id="normalisePathWin"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> normalisePathWin </span></h2>
<p>Same as normalisePath, but first converts backslash characters to
forward slashes.
</p>
<a name="parityEven7bit" id="parityEven7bit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> parityEven7bit </span></h2>
<p>Calculates even parity of 7-bit data replacing the 8th bit of each
target byte with the calculated parity bit.
</p>
<a name="parityOdd7bit" id="parityOdd7bit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> parityOdd7bit </span></h2>
<p>Calculates odd parity of 7-bit data replacing the 8th bit of each
target byte with the calculated parity bit.
</p>
<a name="parityZero7bit" id="parityZero7bit"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> parityZero7bit </span></h2>
<p>Calculates zero parity of 7-bit data replacing the 8th bit of each
target byte with a zero-parity bit, which allows inspection of even/odd
parity 7-bit data as ASCII7 data.
</p>
<a name="removeNulls" id="removeNulls"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> removeNulls </span></h2>
<p>Removes all NUL bytes from input.
</p>
<a name="removeWhitespace" id="removeWhitespace"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> removeWhitespace </span></h2>
<p>Removes all whitespace characters from input.
</p>
<a name="replaceComments" id="replaceComments"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> replaceComments </span></h2>
<p>Replaces each occurrence of a C-style comment (/* ... */) with a
single space (multiple consecutive occurrences of which will not be
compressed). Unterminated comments will also be replaced with a space
(ASCII 0x20). However, a standalone termination of a comment (*/) will
not be acted upon.
</p>
<a name="removeCommentsChar" id="removeCommentsChar"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> removeCommentsChar </span></h2>
<p>Removes common comments chars (/*, */, --, #).
</p>
<a name="removeComments" id="removeComments"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> removeComments </span></h2>
<p>Removes each occurrence of comment (/* ... */, --, #). Multiple
consecutive occurrences of which will not be compressed.
</p>
<a name="replaceNulls" id="replaceNulls"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> replaceNulls </span></h2>
<p>Replaces NUL bytes in input with space characters (ASCII 0x20).
</p>
<a name="urlDecode" id="urlDecode"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
urlDecode </span></h2>
<p>Decodes a URL-encoded input string. Invalid encodings (i.e., the ones
that use non-hexadecimal characters, or the ones that are at the end of
string and have one or two bytes missing) are not converted, but no
error is raised. To detect invalid encodings, use the
@validateUrlEncoding operator on the input data first. The
transformation function should not be used against variables that have
already been URL-decoded (such as request parameters) unless it is your
intention to perform URL decoding twice!
</p>
<a name="urlDecodeUni" id="urlDecodeUni"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> urlDecodeUni </span></h2>
<p>Like urlDecode, but with support for the Microsoft-specific %u
encoding. If the code is in the range of FF01-FF5E (the full-width ASCII
codes), then the higher byte is used to detect and adjust the lower
byte. Otherwise, only the lower byte will be used and the higher byte
zeroed.
</p>
<a name="urlEncode" id="urlEncode"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
urlEncode </span></h2>
<p>Encodes input string using URL encoding.
</p>
<a name="sha1" id="sha1"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> sha1 </span></h2>
<p>Calculates a SHA1 hash from the input string. The computed hash is in
a raw binary form and may need encoded into text to be printed (or
logged). Hash functions are commonly used in combination with hexEncode
(for example, t:sha1,t:hexEncode).
</p>
<a name="trimLeft" id="trimLeft"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
trimLeft </span></h2>
<p>Removes whitespace from the left side of the input string.
</p>
<a name="trimRight" id="trimRight"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
trimRight </span></h2>
<p>Removes whitespace from the right side of the input string.
</p>
<a name="trim" id="trim"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> trim </span></h2>
<p>Removes whitespace from both the left and right sides of the input
string.
</p>
<a name="Actions" id="Actions"></a><h1> <span class="mw-headline">
Actions </span></h1>
<p>Each action belongs to one of five groups:
</p>
<ul><li><b>Disruptive actions</b> - Cause ModSecurity to do something.
In many cases something means block transaction, but not in all. For
example, the allow action is classified as a disruptive action, but it
does the opposite of blocking. There can only be one disruptive action
per rule (if there are multiple disruptive actions present, or
inherited, only the last one will take effect), or rule chain (in a
chain, a disruptive action can only appear in the first rule).
</li></ul>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> <b>Disruptive actions will NOT be executed
if the SecRuleEngine is set to DetectionOnly</b>. If you are creating
exception/whitelisting rules that use the allow action, you should also
add the ctl:ruleEngine=DetectionOnly action to execute the action.
</dd></dl>
<ul><li> <b>Non-disruptive action</b>s - Do something, but that
something does not and cannot affect the rule processing flow. Setting a
variable, or changing its value is an example of a non-disruptive
action. Non-disruptive action can appear in any rule, including each
rule belonging to a chain.
</li><li> <b>Flow actions</b> - These actions affect the rule flow (for
example skip or skipAfter).
</li><li> <b>Meta-data actions</b> - Meta-data actions are used to
provide more information about rules. Examples include id, rev, severity
and msg.
</li><li> <b>Data actions</b> - Not really actions, these are mere
containers that hold data used by other actions. For example, the status
action holds the status that will be used for blocking (if it takes
place).
</li></ul>
<a name="allow" id="allow"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> allow </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Stops rule processing on a successful match and
allows the transaction to proceed.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p>Example:
</p>
<pre># Allow unrestricted access from 192.168.1.100
SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "^192\.168\.1\.100$" phase:1,nolog,allow
</pre>
<p><br>
Prior to ModSecurity 2.5 the allow action would only affect the current
phase. An allow in phase 1 would skip processing the remaining rules in
phase 1 but the rules from phase 2 would execute. Starting with v2.5.0
allow was enhanced to allow for fine-grained control of what is done.
The following rules now apply:
</p>
<ol><li>If used one its own, like in the example above, allow will
affect the entire transaction, stopping processing of the current phase
but also skipping over all other phases apart from the logging phase.
(The logging phase is special; it is designed to always execute.)
</li><li>If used with parameter "phase", allow will cause the engine to
stop processing the current phase. Other phases will continue as normal.
</li><li>If used with parameter "request", allow will cause the engine
to stop processing the current phase. The next phase to be processed
will be phase RESPONSE_HEADERS.
</li></ol>
<p>Examples:
</p>
<pre># Do not process request but process response.
SecAction phase:1,allow:request
# Do not process transaction (request and response).
SecAction phase:1,allow
</pre>
<p>If you want to allow a response through, put a rule in phase
RESPONSE_HEADERS and simply use allow on its own:
</p>
<pre># Allow response through.
SecAction phase:3,allow
</pre>
<a name="append" id="append"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> append </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Appends text given as parameter to the end of
response body. Content injection must be en- abled (using the
SecContentInjection directive). No content type checks are made, which
means that before using any of the content injection actions, you must
check whether the content type of the response is adequate for
injection.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Processing Phases:</b> 3 and 4.
</p><p>Example:
</p>
<pre>SecRule RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE "^text/html" "nolog,pass,append:'<hr>Footer'"</pre>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> Although macro expansion is allowed in
the additional content, you are strongly cau- tioned against inserting
user-defined data fields into output. Doing so would create a cross-site
scripting vulnerability.
</dd></dl>
<a name="auditlog" id="auditlog"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
auditlog </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Marks the transaction for logging in the audit
log.
</p><p><b>Action Group</b>: Non-disruptive
</p><p>Example:
</p><p><code>SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "^192\.168\.1\.100$"
auditlog,phase:1,allow</code>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The auditlog action is now explicit if log
is already specified.
</dd></dl>
<a name="block" id="block"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> block </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs the disruptive action defined by the
previous SecDefaultAction.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p>This action is essentially a placeholder that is intended to be
used by rule writers to request a blocking action, but without
specifying how the blocking is to be done. The idea is that such
decisions are best left to rule users, as well as to allow users, to
override blocking if they so desire.
In future versions of ModSecurity, more control and functionality will
be added to define "how" to block.
</p><p>Examples:
</p>
<pre># Specify how blocking is to be done
SecDefaultAction phase:2,deny,status:403,log,auditlog
# Detect attacks where we want to block
SecRule ARGS attack1 phase:2,block
# Detect attacks where we want only to warn
SecRule ARGS attack2 phase:2,pass
</pre>
<p>It is possible to use the SecRuleUpdateActionById directive to
override how a rule handles blocking. This is useful in three cases:
</p>
<ol><li>If a rule has blocking hard-coded, and you want it to use the
policy you determine
</li><li>If a rule was written to block, but you want it to only warn
</li><li>If a rule was written to only warn, but you want it to block
</li></ol>
<p>The following example demonstrates the first case, in which the
hard-coded block is removed in favor of the user-controllable block:
</p>
<pre># Specify how blocking is to be done
SecDefaultAction phase:2,deny,status:403,log,auditlog
# Detect attacks and block
SecRule ARGS attack1 phase:2,id:1,deny
# Change how rule ID 1 blocks
SecRuleUpdateActionById 1 block
</pre>
<a name="capture" id="capture"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
capture </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> When used together with the regular expression
operator (@rx), the capture action will create copies of the regular
expression captures and place them into the transaction variable
collection.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p>Example:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_BODY "^username=(\w{25,})" phase:2,capture,t:none,chain
SecRule TX:1 "(?:(?:a(dmin|nonymous)))"
</pre>
<p>Up to 10 captures will be copied on a successful pattern match, each
with a name consisting of a digit from 0 to 9. The TX.0 variable always
contains the entire area that the regular expression matched. All the
other variables contain the captured values, in the order in which the
capturing parentheses appear in the regular expression.
</p>
<a name="chain" id="chain"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> chain </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Chains the current rule with the rule that
immediately follows it, creating a rule chain. Chained rules allow for
more complex processing logic.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Flow
</p><p>Example:
</p>
<pre># Refuse to accept POST requests that do not contain Content-Length header.
# (Do note that this rule should be preceded by a rule
# that verifies only valid request methods are used.)
SecRule REQUEST_METHOD "^POST$" phase:1,chain,t:none
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Length "@eq 0" t:none
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Rule chains allow you to simulate logical
AND. The disruptive actions specified in the first portion of the
chained rule will be triggered only if all of the variable checks return
positive hits. If any one aspect of a chained rule comes back negative,
then the entire rule chain will fail to match. Also note that
disruptive actions, execution phases, metadata actions (id, rev, msg),
skip, and skipAfter actions can be specified only by the chain starter
rule.
</dd></dl>
<p>The following directives can be used in rule chains:
</p>
<ul><li>SecAction
</li><li>SecRule
</li><li>SecRuleScript
</li></ul>
<p>Special rules control the usage of actions in chained rules:
</p>
<ul><li>Any actions that affect the rule flow (i.e., the disruptive
actions, skip and skipAfter) can be used only in the chain starter. They
will be executed only if the entire chain matches.
</li><li>Non-disruptive rules can be used in any rule; they will be
executed if the rule that contains them matches and not only when the
entire chain matches.
</li><li>The metadata actions (e.g., id, rev, msg) can be used only in
the chain starter.
</li></ul>
<a name="ctl" id="ctl"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> ctl </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Changes ModSecurity configuration on transient,
per-transaction basis. Any changes made using this action will affect
only the transaction in which the action is executed. The default
configuration, as well as the other transactions running in parallel,
will be unaffected.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Parse requests with Content-Type "text/xml" as XML
SecRule REQUEST_CONTENT_TYPE ^text/xml "nolog,pass,ctl:requestBodyProcessor=XML"
</pre>
<p>The following configuration options are supported:
</p>
<ol><li><b>auditEngine</b>
</li><li><b>auditLogParts</b>
</li><li><b>debugLogLevel</b>
</li><li><b>forceRequestBodyVariable</b>
</li><li><b>requestBodyAccess</b>
</li><li><b>requestBodyLimit</b>
</li><li><b>requestBodyProcessor</b>
</li><li><b>responseBodyAccess</b>
</li><li><b>responseBodyLimit</b>
</li><li><b>ruleEngine</b>
</li><li><b>ruleRemoveById</b> - since this action us triggered at run
time, it should be specified <b>before</b> the rule in which it is
disabling.
</li><li><b>ruleUpdateTargetById</b>
</li></ol>
<p>With the exception of the requestBodyProcessor and
forceRequestBodyVariable settings, each configuration option corresponds
to one configuration directive and the usage is identical.
</p><p>The requestBodyProcessor option allows you to configure the
request body processor. By default, ModSecurity will use the URLENCODED
and MULTIPART processors to process an application/x-www-form-urlencoded
and a multipart/form-data body, respectively. A third processor, XML,
is also supported, but it is never used implicitly. Instead, you must
tell ModSecurity to use it by placing a few rules in the REQUEST_HEADERS
processing phase. After the request body is processed as XML, you will
be able to use the XML-related features to inspect it.
</p><p>Request body processors will not interrupt a transaction if an
error occurs during parsing. Instead, they will set the variables
REQBODY_PROCESSOR_ERROR and REQBODY_PROCESSOR_ERROR_MSG. These variables
should be inspected in the REQUEST_BODY phase and an appropriate action
taken.
The forceRequestBodyVariable option allows you to configure the
REQUEST_BODY variable to be set when there is no request body processor
configured. This allows for inspection of request bodies of unknown
types.
</p>
<a name="deny" id="deny"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> deny </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Stops rule processing and intercepts transaction.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p>Example:
<code>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "nikto" "log,deny,msg:'Nikto
Scanners Identified'"</code>
</p>
<a name="deprecatevar" id="deprecatevar"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> deprecatevar </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Decrements numerical value over time, which makes
sense only applied to the variables stored in persistent storage.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-Disruptive
</p><p>Example: The following example will decrement the counter by 60
every 300 seconds.
</p>
<pre>SecAction phase:5,nolog,pass,deprecatevar:SESSION.score=60/300
</pre>
<p>Counter values are always positive, meaning that the value will never
go below zero. Unlike expirevar, the deprecate action must be executed
on every request.
</p>
<a name="drop" id="drop"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> drop </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Initiates an immediate close of the TCP
connection by sending a FIN packet.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b> The following example initiates an IP collection
for tracking Basic Authentication attempts. If the client goes over the
threshold of more than 25 attempts in 2 minutes, it will DROP subsequent
connections.
</p>
<pre>SecAction phase:1,initcol:ip=%{REMOTE_ADDR},nolog
SecRule ARGS:login "!^$" "nolog,phase:1,setvar:ip.auth_attempt=+1,deprecatevar:ip.auth_attempt=20/120"
SecRule IP:AUTH_ATTEMPT "@gt 25" "log,drop,phase:1,msg:'Possible Brute Force Attack'"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This action is currently not available on
Windows based builds.
</dd></dl>
<p>This action is extremely useful when responding to both Brute Force
and Denial of Service attacks in that, in both cases, you want to
minimize both the network bandwidth and the data returned to the client.
This action causes error message to appear in the log "(9)Bad file
descriptor: core_output_filter: writing data to the network"
</p>
<a name="exec" id="exec"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> exec </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Executes an external script/binary supplied as
parameter. As of v2.5.0, if the parameter supplied to exec is a Lua
script (detected by the .lua extension) the script will be processed
internally. This means you will get direct access to the internal
request context from the script. Please read the SecRuleScript
documentation for more details on how to write Lua scripts.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Run external program on rule match
SecRule REQUEST_URI "^/cgi-bin/script\.pl" "phase:2,t:none,t:lowercase,t:normalizePath,block,\ exec:/usr/local/apache/bin/test.sh"
# Run Lua script on rule match
SecRule ARGS:p attack "phase:2,block,exec:/usr/local/apache/conf/exec.lua"
</pre>
<p>The exec action is executed independently from any disruptive actions
specified. External scripts will always be called with no parameters.
Some transaction information will be placed in environment variables.
All the usual CGI environment variables will be there. You should be
aware that forking a threaded process results in all threads being
replicated in the new process. Forking can therefore incur larger
overhead in a multithreaded deployment. The script you execute must
write something (anything) to stdout; if it doesn’t, ModSecurity will
assume that the script failed, and will record the failure.
</p>
<a name="expirevar" id="expirevar"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
expirevar </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures a collection variable to expire after
the given time period (in seconds).
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_COOKIES:JSESSIONID "!^$" "nolog,phase:1,pass,setsid:%{REQUEST_COOKIES:JSESSIONID}"
SecRule REQUEST_URI "^/cgi-bin/script\.pl" "phase:2,t:none,t:lowercase,t:normalisePath,log,allow,setvar:session.suspicious=1,expirevar:session.suspicious=3600,phase:1"
</pre>
<p>You should use the expirevar actions at the same time that you use
setvar actions in order to keep the indented expiration time. If they
are used on their own (perhaps in a SecAction directive), the expire
time will be reset.
</p>
<a name="id" id="id"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> id </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Assigns a unique ID to the rule or chain in which
it appears.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Meta-data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "@eq 0" "log,id:60008,severity:2,msg:'Request Missing a Host Header'"
</pre>
<p>These are the reserved ranges:
</p>
<ul><li>1–99,999: reserved for local (internal) use. Use as you see fit,
but do not use this range for rules that are distributed to others
</li><li>100,000–199,999: reserved for internal use of the engine, to
assign to rules that do not have explicit IDs
</li><li>200,000–299,999: reserved for rules published at
modsecurity.org
</li><li>300,000–399,999: reserved for rules published at gotroot.com
</li><li>400,000–419,999: unused (available for reservation)
</li><li>420,000–429,999: reserved for ScallyWhack <a
href="http://projects.otaku42.de/wiki/Scally-Whack" class="external
autonumber" title="http://projects.otaku42.de/wiki/Scally-Whack"
rel="nofollow">[9]</a>
</li><li>430,000–699,999: unused (available for reservation)
</li><li>700,000–799,999: reserved for Ivan Ristic
</li><li>900,000–999,999: reserved for the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule
Set <a
href="http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_Project"
class="external autonumber"
title="http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_Project"
rel="nofollow">[10]</a> project
</li><li>1,000,000-1,999,999: unused (available for reservation)
</li><li>2,000,000-2,999,999: reserved for rules from Trustwave's
SpiderLabs Research team
</li><li>3,000,000 and above: unused (available for reservation)
</li></ul>
<a name="initcol" id="initcol"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
initcol </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Initializes a named persistent collection, either
by loading data from storage or by creating a new collection in memory.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b> The following example initiates IP address
tracking, which is best done in phase 1:
</p>
<pre>SecAction phase:1,nolog,pass,initcol:ip=%{REMOTE_ADDR}
</pre>
<p>Collections are loaded into memory on-demand, when the initcol action
is executed. A collection will be persisted only if a change was made
to it in the course of transaction processing.
</p><p>See the "Persistant Storage" section for further details.
</p>
<a name="log" id="log"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> log </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Indicates that a successful match of the rule
needs to be logged.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecAction phase:1,pass,initcol:ip=%{REMOTE_ADDR},log
</pre>
<p>This action will log matches to the Apache error log file and the
ModSecurity audit log.
</p>
<a name="logdata" id="logdata"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
logdata </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Logs a data fragment as part of the alert
message.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS:p "@rx <script>" "phase:2,log,pass,logdata:%{MATCHED_VAR}"
</pre>
<p>The logdata information appears in the error and/or audit log files.
Macro expansion is performed, so you may use variable names such
as %{TX.0} or %{MATCHED_VAR}. The information is properly
escaped for use with logging of binary data.
</p>
<a name="msg" id="msg"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> msg </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Assigns a custom message to the rule or chain in
which it appears. The message will be logged along with every alert.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Meta-data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "@eq 0" "log,id:60008,severity:2,msg:'Request Missing a Host Header'"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The msg information appears in the error
and/or audit log files and is not sent back to the client in response
headers.
</dd></dl>
<a name="multiMatch" id="multiMatch"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
multiMatch </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> If enabled, ModSecurity will perform multiple
operator invocations for every target, before and after every
anti-evasion transformation is performed.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS "attack" "phase1,log,deny,t:removeNulls,t:lowercase,multiMatch"
</pre>
<p>Normally, variables are inspected only once per rule, and only after
all transformation functions have been completed. With multiMatch,
variables are checked against the operator before and after every
transformation function that changes the input.
</p>
<a name="noauditlog" id="noauditlog"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
noauditlog </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Indicates that a successful match of the rule
should not be used as criteria to determine whether the transaction
should be logged to the audit log.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "Test" allow,noauditlog
</pre>
<p>If the SecAuditEngine is set to On, all of the transactions will be
logged. If it is set to RelevantOnly, then you can control the logging
with the noauditlog action.
</p><p>The noauditlog action affects only the current rule. If you
prevent audit logging in one rule only, a match in another rule will
still cause audit logging to take place. If you want to prevent audit
logging from taking place, regardless of whether any rule matches, use
ctl:auditEngine=Off.
</p>
<a name="nolog" id="nolog"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> nolog </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prevents rule matches from appearing in both the
error and audit logs.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "Test" allow,nolog
</pre>
<p>Although nolog implies noauditlog, you can override the former by
using nolog,auditlog.
</p>
<a name="pass" id="pass"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> pass </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Continues processing with the next rule in spite
of a successful match.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "Test" "log,pass"
</pre>
<p>When using pass with a SecRule with multiple targets, all variables
will be inspected and all non-disruptive actions trigger for every
match. In the following example, the TX.test variable will be
incremented once for every request parameter:
</p>
<pre># Set TX.test to zero
SecAction "phase:2,nolog,pass,setvar:TX.test=0"
# Increment TX.test for every request parameter
SecRule ARGS "test" "phase:2,log,pass,setvar:TX.test=+1"
</pre>
<a name="pause" id="pause"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> pause </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Pauses transaction processing for the specified
number of milliseconds.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "Test" "log,deny,status:403,pause:5000"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> This feature can be of limited benefit
for slowing down brute force authentication attacks, but use with care.
If you are under a denial of service attack, the pause feature may make
matters worse, as it will cause an entire Apache worker (process or
thread, depending on the deployment mode) to sit idle until the pause is
completed.
</dd></dl>
<a name="phase" id="phase"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> phase </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Places the rule or chain into one of five
available processing phases. It can also be used in SecDefaultAction to
establish the rule defaults.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Meta-data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Initialize IP address tracking in phase 1
SecAction phase:1,nolog,pass,initcol:IP=%{REMOTE_ADDR}
</pre>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> Keep in mind that if you specify the
incorrect phase, the variable used in the rule may not yet be available.
This could lead to a false negative situation where your variable and
operator may be correct, but it misses malicious data because you
specified the wrong phase.
</dd></dl>
<a name="prepend" id="prepend"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
prepend </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prepends the text given as parameter to response
body. Content injection must be enabled (using the SecContentInjection
directive). No content type checks are made, which means that before
using any of the content injection actions, you must check whether the
content type of the response is adequate for injection.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Processing Phases:</b> 3 and 4.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE ^text/html \ "phase:3,nolog,pass,prepend:'Header<br>'"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> Although macro expansion is allowed in
the injected content, you are strongly cautioned against inserting user
defined data fields int output. Doing so would create a cross-site
scripting vulnerability.
</dd></dl>
<a name="proxy" id="proxy"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> proxy </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Intercepts the current transaction by forwarding
the request to another web server using the proxy backend. The
forwarding is carried out transparently to the HTTP client (i.e.,
there’s no external redirection taking place).
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "Test" log,proxy:http://honeypothost/
</pre>
<p>For this action to work, mod_proxy must also be installed. This
action is useful if you would like to proxy matching requests onto a
honeypot web server, and especially in combination with IP address or
session tracking.
</p>
<a name="redirect" id="redirect"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
redirect </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Intercepts transaction by issuing an external
(client-visible) redirection to the given location..
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "Test" "phase:1,log,redirect:http://www.example.com/failed.html"
</pre>
<p>If the status action is present on the same rule, and its value can
be used for a redirection (i.e., is one of the following: 301, 302, 303,
or 307), the value will be used for the redirection status code.
Otherwise, status code 302 will be used.
</p>
<a name="rev" id="rev"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> rev </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Specifies rule revision. It is useful in
combination with the id action to provide an indication that a rule has
been changed.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Meta-data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/* "(?:(?:[\;\|\`]\W*?\bcc|\b(wget|curl))\b|\/cc(?:[\'\"\|\;\`\-\s]|$))" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.3',capture,t:none,t:normalisePath,t:lowercase,ctl:auditLogParts=+E,block,msg:'System Command Injection',id:'950907',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-31',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A1',tag:'PCI/6.5.2',logdata:'%{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.command_injection_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION-%{matched_var_name}=%{tx.0},skipAfter:END_COMMAND_INJECTION1"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> This action is used in combination with the
id action to allow the same rule ID to be used after changes take place
but to still provide some indication the rule changed.
</dd></dl>
<a name="sanitiseArg" id="sanitiseArg"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> sanitiseArg </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prevents sensitive request parameter data from
being logged to audit log. Each byte of the named parameter(s) is
replaced with an asterisk.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Never log passwords
SecAction "nolog,phase:2,sanitiseArg:password,sanitiseArg:newPassword,sanitiseArg:oldPassword"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The sanitize actions affect only the data
as it is logged to audit log. High-level debug logs may contain
sensitive data. Apache access log may contain sensitive data placed in
the request URI.
</dd></dl>
<a name="sanitiseMatched" id="sanitiseMatched"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> sanitiseMatched </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prevents the matched variable (request argument,
request header, or response header) from being logged to audit log. Each
byte of the named parameter(s) is replaced with an asterisk.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b> This action can be used to sanitise arbitrary
transaction elements when they match a condition. For example, the
example below will sanitise any argument that contains the word password
in the name.
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS_NAMES password nolog,pass,sanitiseMatched
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The sanitize actions affect only the data
as it is logged to audit log. High-level debug logs may contain
sensitive data. Apache access log may contain sensitive data placed in
the request URI.
</dd></dl>
<a name="sanitiseMatchedBytes" id="sanitiseMatchedBytes"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> sanitiseMatchedBytes </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prevents the matched string in a variable from
being logged to audit log. Each or a range of bytes of the named
parameter(s) is replaced with an asterisk.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b> This action can be used to sanitise arbitrary
transaction elements when they match a condition. For example, the
example below will sanitise the credit card number.
</p>
<ul><li>sanitiseMatchedBytes -- This would x out only the bytes that
matched.
</li><li>sanitiseMatchedBytes:1/4 -- This would x out the bytes that
matched, but keep the first byte and last 4 bytes
</li></ul>
<pre># Detect credit card numbers in parameters and
# prevent them from being logged to audit log
SecRule ARGS "@verifyCC \d{13,16}" "phase:2,nolog,capture,pass,msg:'Potential credit card number in request',sanitiseMatchedBytes"
SecRule RESPONSE_BODY "@verifyCC \d{13,16}" "phase:4,t:none,log,capture,block,msg:'Potential credit card number is response body',sanitiseMatchedBytes:0/4"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The sanitize actions affect only the data
as it is logged to audit log. High-level debug logs may contain
sensitive data. Apache access log may contain sensitive data placed in
the request URI. You must use capture action with sanitiseMatchedBytes,
so the operator must support capture action. ie: @rx, @verifyCC.
</dd></dl>
<a name="sanitiseRequestHeader" id="sanitiseRequestHeader"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> sanitiseRequestHeader </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prevents a named request header from being logged
to audit log. Each byte of the named request header is replaced with an
asterisk..
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b> This will sanitise the data in the Authorization
header.
</p>
<pre>SecAction "phase:1,nolog,pass,sanitiseRequestHeader:Authorization"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The sanitize actions affect only the data
as it is logged to audit log. High-level debug logs may contain
sensitive data. Apache access log may contain sensitive data placed in
the request URI.
</dd></dl>
<a name="sanitiseResponseHeader" id="sanitiseResponseHeader"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> sanitiseResponseHeader </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Prevents a named response header from being
logged to audit log. Each byte of the named response header is replaced
with an asterisk.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b> This will sanitise the Set-Cookie data sent to
the client.
</p>
<pre>SecAction "phase:3,nolog,pass,sanitiseResponseHeader:Set-Cookie"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> The sanitize actions affect only the data
as it is logged to audit log. High-level debug logs may contain
sensitive data. Apache access log may contain sensitive data placed in
the request URI.
</dd></dl>
<a name="severity" id="severity"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
severity </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Assigns severity to the rule in which it is used.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Meta-data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_METHOD "^PUT$" "id:340002,rev:1,severity:CRITICAL,msg:'Restricted HTTP function'"
</pre>
<p>Severity values in ModSecurity follows the numeric scale of syslog
(where 0 is the most severe). The data below is used by the OWASP
ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS):
</p>
<ul><li><b>0 - EMERGENCY</b>: is generated from correlation of anomaly
scoring data where there is an inbound attack and an outbound leakage.
</li><li><b>1 - ALERT</b>: is generated from correlation where there is
an inbound attack and an outbound application level error.
</li><li><b>2 - CRITICAL</b>: Anomaly Score of 5. Is the highest
severity level possible without correlation. It is normally generated
by the web attack rules (40 level files).
</li><li><b>3 - ERROR</b>: Error - Anomaly Score of 4. Is generated
mostly from outbound leakage rules (50 level files).
</li><li><b>4 - WARNING</b>: Anomaly Score of 3. Is generated by
malicious client rules (35 level files).
</li><li><b>5 - NOTICE</b>: Anomaly Score of 2. Is generated by the
Protocol policy and anomaly files.
</li><li><b>6 - INFO</b>
</li><li><b>7 - DEBUG</b>
</li></ul>
<p>It is possible to specify severity levels using either the numerical
values or the text values, but you should always specify severity levels
using the text values, because it is difficult to remember what a
number stands for. The use of the numerical values is deprecated as of
version 2.5.0 and may be removed in one of the subsequent major updates.
</p>
<a name="setuid" id="setuid"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> setuid </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Special-purpose action that initializes the USER
collection using the username provided as parameter.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS:username ".*" "phase:2,t:none,pass,nolog,noauditlog,capture,setvar:session.username=%{TX.0},setuid:%{TX.0}"
</pre>
<p>After initialization takes place, the variable USERID will be
available for use in the subsequent rules. This action understands
application namespaces (configured using SecWebAppId), and will use one
if it is configured.
</p>
<a name="setsid" id="setsid"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> setsid </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Special-purpose action that initializes the
SESSION collection using the session token provided as parameter.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Initialise session variables using the session cookie value
SecRule REQUEST_COOKIES:PHPSESSID !^$ "chain,nolog,pass,setsid:%{REQUEST_COOKIES.PHPSESSID}"
</pre>
<p>Note
</p><p>After the initialization takes place, the variable SESSIONID will
be available for use in the subsequent rules. This action understands
application namespaces (configured using SecWebAppId), and will use one
if it is configured.
</p>
<a name="setenv" id="setenv"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> setenv </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Creates, removes, and updates environment
variables that can be accessed by Apache.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Examples:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule RESPONSE_HEADERS:/Set-Cookie2?/ "(?i:(j?sessionid|(php)?sessid|(asp|jserv|jw)?session[-_]?(id)?|cf(id|token)|sid))" "phase:3,t:none,pass,nolog,setvar:tx.sessionid=%{matched_var}"
SecRule TX:SESSIONID "!(?i:\;? ?httponly;?)" "phase:3,t:none,setenv:httponly_cookie=%{matched_var},pass,log,auditlog,msg:'AppDefect: Missing HttpOnly Cookie Flag.'"
Header set Set-Cookie "%{httponly_cookie}e; HTTPOnly" env=httponly_cookie
</pre>
<a name="setvar" id="setvar"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> setvar </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Creates, removes, or updates a variable. Variable
names are case-insensitive.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Examples:</b>
To create a variable and set its value to 1 (usually used for setting
flags), use: <code>setvar:TX.score</code>
</p><p>To create a variable and initialize it at the same time, use: <code>setvar:TX.score=10</code>
</p><p>To remove a variable prefix the name with exclamation mark, use: <code>setvar:!TX.score</code>
</p><p>To increase or decrease variable value, use + and - characters in
front of a numerical value: <code>setvar:TX.score=+5</code>
</p><p>Example from OWASP CRS:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/* "\bsys\.user_catalog\b" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.3',capture,t:none,t:urlDecodeUni,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:lowercase,t:replaceComments,t:compressWhiteSpace,ctl:auditLogParts=+E, \
block,msg:'Blind SQL Injection Attack',id:'959517',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/SQL_INJECTION',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-19',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A1',tag:'OWASP_AppSensor/CIE1', \
tag:'PCI/6.5.2',logdata:'%{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.sql_injection_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score}, \
setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/SQL_INJECTION-%{matched_var_name}=%{tx.0}"
</pre>
<a name="skip" id="skip"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> skip </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Skips one or more rules (or chains) on successful
match.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Flow
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Require Accept header, but not from access from the localhost
SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "^127\.0\.0\.1$" "phase:1,skip:1"
# This rule will be skipped over when REMOTE_ADDR is 127.0.0.1
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Accept "@eq 0" "phase:1,deny,msg:'Request Missing an Accept Header'"
</pre>
<p>The skip action works only within the current processing phase and
not necessarily in the order in which the rules appear in the
configuration file. If you place a phase 2 rule after a phase 1 rule
that uses skip, it will not skip over the phase 2 rule. It will skip
over the next phase 1 rule that follows it in the phase.
</p>
<a name="skipAfter" id="skipAfter"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
skipAfter </span></h2>
<p>Description: Skips one or more rules (or chains) on a successful
match, resuming rule execution with the first rule that follows the rule
(or marker created by SecMarker) with the provided ID.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Flow
</p><p><b>Example:</b> The following rules implement the same logic as
the skip example, but using skipAfter:
</p>
<pre># Require Accept header, but not from access from the localhost
SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "^127\.0\.0\.1$" "phase:1,skipAfter:IGNORE_LOCALHOST"
# This rule will be skipped over when REMOTE_ADDR is 127.0.0.1
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Accept "@eq 0" "phase:1,deny,msg:'Request Missing an Accept Header'"
SecMarker IGNORE_LOCALHOST
</pre>
<p>Example from the OWASP ModSecurity CRS:
</p>
<pre>SecMarker BEGIN_HOST_CHECK
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "@eq 0" \
"skipAfter:END_HOST_CHECK,phase:2,rev:'2.1.3',t:none,block,msg:'Request Missing a Host Header',id:'960008',tag:'PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER_HOST',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-21', \
tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A7',tag:'PCI/6.5.10',severity:'5',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score}, \
setvar:tx.protocol_violation_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER-%{matched_var_name}=%{matched_var}"
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Host "^$" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.3',t:none,block,msg:'Request Missing a Host Header',id:'960008',tag:'PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER_HOST',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-21',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A7', \
tag:'PCI/6.5.10',severity:'5',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.protocol_violation_score=+%{tx.notice_anomaly_score}, \
setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/MISSING_HEADER-%{matched_var_name}=%{matched_var}"
SecMarker END_HOST_CHECK
</pre>
<p>The skipAfter action works only within the current processing phase
and not necessarily the order in which the rules appear in the
configuration file. If you place a phase 2 rule after a phase 1 rule
that uses skip, it will not skip over the phase 2 rule. It will skip
over the next phase 1 rule that follows it in the phase.
</p>
<a name="status" id="status"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> status </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Specifies the response status code to use with
actions deny and redirect.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Deny with status 403
SecDefaultAction "phase:1,log,deny,status:403"
</pre>
<p>Status actions defined in Apache scope locations (such as Directory,
Location, etc...) may be superseded by phase:1 action settings. The
Apache ErrorDocument directive will be triggered if present in the
configuration. Therefore if you have previously defined a custom error
page for a given status then it will be executed and its output
presented to the user.
</p>
<a name="t" id="t"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> t </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> This action is used to specify the transformation
pipeline to use to transform the value of each variable used in the
rule before matching.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Non-disruptive
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule ARGS "(asfunction|javascript|vbscript|data|mocha|livescript):" "t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:lowercase,t:removeNulls,t:removeWhitespace"
</pre>
<p>Any transformation functions that you specify in a SecRule will be
added to the previous ones specified in SecDefaultAction. It is
recommended that you always use t:none in your rules, which prevents
them depending on the default configuration.
</p>
<a name="tag" id="tag"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> tag </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Assigns a tag (category) to a rule or a chain.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Meta-data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_FILENAME|ARGS_NAMES|ARGS|XML:/* "\bgetparentfolder\b" \
"phase:2,rev:'2.1.3',capture,t:none,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:compressWhiteSpace,t:lowercase,ctl:auditLogParts=+E,block,msg:'Cross-site Scripting (XSS) Attack',id:'958016',tag:'WEB_ATTACK/XSS',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-8',tag:'WASCTC/WASC-22',tag:'OWASP_TOP_10/A2',tag:'OWASP_AppSensor/IE1',tag:'PCI/6.5.1',logdata:'% \
{TX.0}',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.xss_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.critical_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-WEB_ATTACK/XSS-%{matched_var_name}=%{tx.0}"
</pre>
<p>The tag information appears along with other rule metadata. The
purpose of the tagging mechanism to allow easy automated categorization
of events. Multiple tags can be specified on the same rule. Use forward
slashes to create a hierarchy of categories (as in the example). Since
ModSecurity 2.6.0 tag supports macro expansion.
</p>
<a name="xmlns" id="xmlns"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> xmlns </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Configures an XML namespace, which will be used
in the execution of XPath expressions.
</p><p><b>Action Group:</b> Data
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Type "text/xml" "phase:1,pass,ctl:requestBodyProcessor=XML,ctl:requestBodyAccess=On, \
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
SecRule XML:/soap:Envelope/soap:Body/q1:getInput/id() "123" phase:2,deny
</pre>
<a name="Operators" id="Operators"></a><h1> <span class="mw-headline">
Operators </span></h1>
<p>This section documents the operators currently available in
ModSecurity.
</p>
<a name="beginsWith" id="beginsWith"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
beginsWith </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Returns true if the parameter string is found at
the beginning of the input. Macro expansion is performed on the
parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect request line that does not begin with "GET"
SecRule REQUEST_LINE "!@beginsWith GET"
</pre>
<a name="contains" id="contains"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
contains </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Returns true if the parameter string is found
anywhere in the input. Macro expansion is performed on the parameter
string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect ".php" anywhere in the request line
SecRule REQUEST_LINE "@contains .php"
</pre>
<a name="endsWith" id="endsWith"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
endsWith </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Returns true if the parameter string is found at
the end of the input. Macro expansion is performed on the parameter
string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect request line that does not end with "HTTP/1.1"
SecRule REQUEST_LINE "!@endsWith HTTP/1.1"
</pre>
<a name="eq" id="eq"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> eq </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs numerical comparison and returns true if
the input value is equal to the provided parameter. Macro expansion is
performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect exactly 15 request headers
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES "@eq 15"
</pre>
<a name="ge" id="ge"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> ge </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs numerical comparison and returns true if
the input value is greater than or equal to the provided parameter.
Macro expansion is performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect 15 or more request headers
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES "@ge 15"
</pre>
<a name="geoLookup" id="geoLookup"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
geoLookup </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a geolocation lookup using the IP
address in input against the geolocation database previously configured
using SecGeoLookupDb. If the lookup is successful, the obtained
information is captured in the GEO collection.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
The geoLookup operator matches on success and is thus best used in
combination with nolog,pass. If you wish to block on a failed lookup
(which may be over the top, depending on how accurate the geolocation
database is), the following example demonstrates how best to do it:
</p>
<pre># Configure geolocation database
SecGeoLookupDb /path/to/GeoLiteCity.dat
...
# Lookup IP address
SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "@geoLookup" "phase:1,nolog,pass"
# Block IP address for which geolocation failed
SecRule &GEO "@eq 0" "phase:1,deny,msg:'Failed to lookup IP'"
</pre>
<p>See the GEO variable for an example and more information on various
fields available.
</p>
<a name="gsbLookup" id="gsbLookup"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
gsbLookup </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a local lookup of Google's Safe Browsing
using URLs in input against the GSB database previously configured
using SecGsbLookupDb. When combined with capture operator it will save
the matched url into tx.0 variable.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>SecRule TARGET "@gsbLookup REGEX" ACTIONS</code>
</p><p><b>Version:</b> 2.6
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
The gsbLookup operator matches on success and is thus best used in
combination with a block or redirect action. If you wish to block on
successful lookups, the following example demonstrates how best to do
it:
</p>
<pre># Configure Google Safe Browsing database
SecGsbLookupDb /path/to/GsbMalware.dat
...
# Check response bodies for malicious links
SecRule RESPONSE_BODY "@gsbLookup =\"https?\:\/\/(.*?)\"" "phase:4,capture,log,block,msg:'Bad url detected in RESPONSE_BODY (Google Safe Browsing Check)',logdata:'http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=%{tx.0}'"
</pre>
<a name="gt" id="gt"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> gt </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs numerical comparison and returns true if
the input value is greater than the operator parameter. Macro expansion
is performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect more than 15 headers in a request
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES "@gt 15"
</pre>
<a name="inspectFile" id="inspectFile"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> inspectFile </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Executes an external program for every variable
in the target list. The contents of the variable is provided to the
script as the first parameter on the command line. The program must be
specified as the first parameter to the operator. As of version 2.5.0,
if the supplied program filename is not absolute, it is treated as
relative to the directory in which the configuration file resides. Also
as of version 2.5.0, if the filename is determined to be a Lua script
(based on its .lua extension), the script will be processed by the
internal Lua engine. Internally processed scripts will often run faster
(there is no process creation overhead) and have full access to the
transaction context of ModSecurity.
</p><p>The @inspectFile operator was initially designed for file
inspection (hence the name), but it can also be used in any situation
that requires decision making using external logic.
</p><p>The OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) includes a utility
script in the /util directory called runav.pl <a
href="http://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mod-security/crs/trunk/util/"
class="external autonumber"
title="http://mod-security.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mod-security/crs/trunk/util/"
rel="nofollow">[11]</a> that allows the file approval mechanism to
integrate with the ClamAV virus scanner. This is especially handy to
prevent viruses and exploits from entering the web server through file
upload.
</p>
<pre>#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# runav.pl
# Copyright (c) 2004-2011 Trustwave
#
# This script is an interface between ModSecurity and its
# ability to intercept files being uploaded through the
# web server, and ClamAV
$CLAMSCAN = "clamscan";
if ($#ARGV != 0) {
print "Usage: modsec-clamscan.pl <filename>\n";
exit;
}
my ($FILE) = shift @ARGV;
$cmd = "$CLAMSCAN --stdout --disable-summary $FILE";
$input = `$cmd`;
$input =~ m/^(.+)/;
$error_message = $1;
$output = "0 Unable to parse clamscan output [$1]";
if ($error_message =~ m/: Empty file\.?$/) {
$output = "1 empty file";
}
elsif ($error_message =~ m/: (.+) ERROR$/) {
$output = "0 clamscan: $1";
}
elsif ($error_message =~ m/: (.+) FOUND$/) {
$output = "0 clamscan: $1";
}
elsif ($error_message =~ m/: OK$/) {
$output = "1 clamscan: OK";
}
print "$output\n";
</pre>
<p><b>Example:</b> Using the runav.pl script:
</p>
<pre># Execute external program to validate uploaded files
SecRule FILES_TMPNAMES "@inspectFile /path/to/util/runav.pl"
</pre>
<p>Example of using Lua script (placed in the same directory as the
configuration file):
</p>
<pre>SecRule FILES_TMPNANMES "@inspectFile inspect.lua"
</pre>
<p>The contents of inspect.lua:
</p>
<pre>function main(filename)
-- Do something to the file to verify it. In this example, we
-- read up to 10 characters from the beginning of the file.
local f = io.open(filename, "rb");
local d = f:read(10);
f:close();
-- Return null if there is no reason to believe there is ansything
-- wrong with the file (no match). Returning any text will be taken
-- to mean a match should be trigerred.
return null;
end
</pre>
<p><b>Reference:</b> <a
href="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/10/advanced-topic-of-the-week-preventing-malicious-pdf-file-uploads.html"
class="external free"
title="http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/10/advanced-topic-of-the-week-preventing-malicious-pdf-file-uploads.html"
rel="nofollow">http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2010/10/advanced-topic-of-the-week-preventing-malicious-pdf-file-uploads.html</a>
</p>
<a name="ipMatch" id="ipMatch"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
ipMatch </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a fast ipv4 or ipv6 match of REMOTE_ADDR
variable data. Can handle the following formats:
</p>
<ul><li>Full IPv4 Address - 192.168.1.100
</li><li>Network Block/CIDR Address - 192.168.1.0/24
</li><li>Full IPv6 Address - 2001:db8:85a3:8d3:1319:8a2e:370:7348
</li><li>Network Block/CIDR Address -
2001:db8:85a3:8d3:1319:8a2e:370:0/24
</li></ul>
<p><b>Examples:</b>
</p><p>Individual Address:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "@ipMatch 192.168.1.100"
</pre>
<p>Multiple Addresses w/network block:
</p>
<pre>SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "@ipMatch 192.168.1.100,192.168.1.50,10.10.50.0/24"
</pre>
<a name="le" id="le"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> le </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs numerical comparison and returns true if
the input value is less than or equal to the operator parameter. Macro
expansion is performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example</b>:
</p>
<pre># Detect 15 or fewer headers in a request
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES "@le 15"
</pre>
<a name="lt" id="lt"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> lt </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs numerical comparison and returns true if
the input value is less than to the operator parameter. Macro expansion
is performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect fewer than 15 headers in a request
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS_NAMES "@lt 15"
</pre>
<a name="pm" id="pm"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> pm </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a case-insensitive match of the provided
phrases against the desired input value. The operator uses a set-based
matching algorithm (Aho-Corasick), which means that it will match any
number of keywords in parallel. When matching of a large number of
keywords is needed, this operator performs much better than a regular
expression.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect suspicious client by looking at the user agent identification
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "@pm WebZIP WebCopier Webster WebStripper ... SiteSnagger ProWebWalker CheeseBot"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Starting on ModSecurity v2.6.0 this
operator supports a snort/suricata content style. ie: "@pm A|42|C|44|F".
</dd></dl>
<a name="pmf" id="pmf"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> pmf </span></h2>
<p>Short alias for pmFromFile.
</p>
<a name="pmFromFile" id="pmFromFile"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
pmFromFile </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a case-insensitive match of the provided
phrases against the desired input value. The operator uses a set-based
matching algorithm (Aho-Corasick), which means that it will match any
number of keywords in parallel. When matching of a large number of
keywords is needed, this operator performs much better than a regular
expression.
</p><p>This operator is the same as @pm, except that it takes a list of
files as arguments. It will match any one of the phrases listed in the
file(s) anywhere in the target value.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect suspicious user agents using the keywords in
# the files /path/to/blacklist1 and blacklist2 (the latter
# must be placed in the same folder as the configuration file)
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "@pm /path/to/blacklist1 blacklist2"
</pre>
<p>Notes:
</p>
<ol><li>Files must contain exactly one phrase per line. End of line
markers (both LF and CRLF) will be stripped from each phrase and any
whitespace trimmed from both the beginning and the end. Empty lines and
comment lines (those beginning with the # character) will be ignored.
</li><li>To allow easier inclusion of phrase files with rule sets,
relative paths may be used to the phrase files. In this case, the path
of the file containing the rule is prepended to the phrase file path.
</li><li>The @pm operator phrases do not support metacharacters.
</li><li>Because this operator does not check for boundaries when
matching, false positives are possible in some cases. For example, if
you want to use @pm for IP address matching, the phrase 1.2.3.4 will
potentially match more than one IP address (e.g., it will also match
1.2.3.40 or 1.2.3.41). To avoid the false positives, you can use your
own boundaries in phrases. For example, use /1.2.3.4/ instead of just
1.2.3.4. Then, in your rules, also add the boundaries where appropriate.
You will find a complete example in the example.
</li></ol>
<pre># Prepare custom REMOTE_ADDR variable
SecAction "phase:1,nolog,pass,setvar:tx.REMOTE_ADDR=/%{REMOTE_ADDR}/"
# Check if REMOTE_ADDR is blacklisted
SecRule TX:REMOTE_ADDR "@pmFromFile blacklist.txt" "phase:1,deny,msg:'Blacklisted IP address'"
</pre>
<p>The file blacklist.txt may contain:
</p>
<pre># ip-blacklist.txt contents:
# NOTE: All IPs must be prefixed/suffixed with "/" as the rules
# will add in this character as a boundary to ensure
# the entire IP is matched.
# SecAction "phase:1,pass,nolog,setvar:tx.remote_addr='/%{REMOTE_ADDR}/'"
/1.2.3.4/
/5.6.7.8/
</pre>
<dl><dt> Warning </dt><dd> Before ModSecurity 2.5.12, the
@pmFromFile operator understood only the LF line endings and did not
trim the whitespace from phrases. If you are using an older version of
ModSecurity, you should take care when editing the phrase files to avoid
using the undesired characters in patterns.e files should be one phrase
per line. End of line markers will be stripped from the phrases (LF and
CRLF), and whitespace is trimmed from both sides of the phrases. Empty
lines and comment lines (beginning with a '#') are ignored. To allow
easier inclusion of phrase files with rulesets, relative paths may be
used to the phrase files. In this case, the path of the file containing
the rule is prepended to the phrase file path.
</dd></dl>
<p><br>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Starting on ModSecurity v2.6.0 this
operator supports a snort/suricata content style. ie: "A|42|C|44|F".
</dd></dl>
<a name="rbl" id="rbl"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> rbl </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Looks up the input value in the RBL (real-time
block list) given as parameter. The parameter can be an IPv4 address or a
hostname.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre>SecRule REMOTE_ADDR "@rbl sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org" "phase:1,t:none,pass,nolog,auditlog,msg:'RBL Match for SPAM Source',tag:'AUTOMATION/MALICIOUS',severity:'2',setvar:'tx.msg=%{rule.msg}',setvar:tx.automation_score=+%{tx.warning_anomaly_score},setvar:tx.anomaly_score=+%{tx.warning_anomaly_score}, \
setvar:tx.%{rule.id}-AUTOMATION/MALICIOUS-%{matched_var_name}=%{matched_var},setvar:ip.spammer=1,expirevar:ip.spammer=86400,setvar:ip.previous_rbl_check=1,expirevar:ip.previous_rbl_check=86400,skipAfter:END_RBL_CHECK"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> If the RBL used is dnsbl.httpbl.org
(Honeypot Project RBL) then the SecHttpBlKey directive must specify the
user's registered API key.
</dd><dt> Note </dt><dd> If the RBL used is either multi.uribl.com
or zen.spamhaus.org combined RBLs, it is possible to also parse the
return codes in the last octet of the DNS response to identify which
specific RBL the IP was found in.
</dd></dl>
<a name="rsub" id="rsub"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> rsub </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Performs regular expression data substitution
when applied to either the STREAM_INPUT_BODY or STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY
variables. This operator also supports macro expansion.
</p><p><b>Syntax:</b> <code>@rsub s/regex/str/[id]</code>
</p><p><b>Examples:</b>
Removing HTML Comments from response bodies:
</p>
<pre>SecStreamOutBodyInspection On
SecRule STREAM_OUTPUT_BODY "@rsub s/<!--.*?-->/ /" "phase:4,t:none,nolog,pass"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> If you plan to manipulate live data by
using @rsub with the STREAM_ variables, you must also enable
SecContentInjection directive.
</dd></dl>
<p>Regular expressions are handled by the PCRE library <a
href="http://www.pcre.org/" class="external autonumber"
title="http://www.pcre.org" rel="nofollow">[12]</a>. ModSecurity
compiles its regular expressions with the following settings:
</p>
<ol><li>The entire input is treated as a single line, even when there
are newline characters present.
</li><li>All matches are case-sensitive. If you wish to perform
case-insensitive matching, you can either use the lowercase
transformation function or force case-insensitive matching by prefixing
the regular expression pattern with the (?i) modifier (a PCRE feature;
you will find many similar features in the PCRE documentation). Also a
flag [d] should be used if you want to escape the regex string chars
when use macro expansion.
</li><li>The PCRE_DOTALL and PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY flags are set during
compilation, meaning that a single dot will match any character,
including the newlines, and a $ end anchor will not match a trailing
newline character.
</li></ol>
<p>Regular expressions are a very powerful tool. You are strongly
advised to read the PCRE documentation to get acquainted with its
features.
</p>
<a name="rx" id="rx"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> rx </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Performs a regular expression match of the
pattern provided as parameter. <b>This is the default operator; the
rules that do not explicitly specify an operator default to @rx</b>.
</p><p><b>Examples:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect Nikto
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "@rx nikto" phase:1,t:lowercase
# Detect Nikto with a case-insensitive pattern
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "@rx (?i)nikto" phase:1,t:none
# Detect Nikto with a case-insensitive pattern
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "(?i)nikto"
</pre>
<p>Regular expressions are handled by the PCRE library <a
href="http://www.pcre.org/" class="external autonumber"
title="http://www.pcre.org" rel="nofollow">[13]</a>. ModSecurity
compiles its regular expressions with the following settings:
</p>
<ol><li>The entire input is treated as a single line, even when there
are newline characters present.
</li><li>All matches are case-sensitive. If you wish to perform
case-insensitive matching, you can either use the lowercase
transformation function or force case-insensitive matching by prefixing
the regular expression pattern with the (?i) modifier (a PCRE feature;
you will find many similar features in the PCRE documentation).
</li><li>The PCRE_DOTALL and PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY flags are set during
compilation, meaning that a single dot will match any character,
including the newlines, and a $ end anchor will not match a trailing
newline character.
</li></ol>
<p>Regular expressions are a very powerful tool. You are strongly
advised to read the PCRE documentation to get acquainted with its
features.
</p>
<a name="streq" id="streq"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> streq </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a string comparison and returns true if
the parameter string is identical to the input string. Macro expansion
is performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect request parameters "foo" that do not # contain "bar", exactly.
SecRule ARGS:foo "!@streq bar"
</pre>
<a name="strmatch" id="strmatch"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
strmatch </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Performs a string match of the provided word
against the desired input value. The operator uses the pattern matching
Boyer-Moore-Horspool algorithm, which means that it is a single pattern
matching operator. This operator performs much better than a regular
expression.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect suspicious client by looking at the user agent identification
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent "@strmatch WebZIP"
</pre>
<p><br>
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Starting on ModSecurity v2.6.0 this
operator supports a snort/suricata content style. ie: "@strmatch
A|42|C|44|F".
</dd></dl>
<a name="validateByteRange" id="validateByteRange"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> validateByteRange </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Validates that the byte values used in input fall
into the range specified by the operator parameter. This operator
matches on an input value that contains bytes that are not in the
specified range.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Enforce very strict byte range for request parameters (only
# works for the applications that do not use the languages other
# than English).
SecRule ARGS "@validateByteRange 10, 13, 32-126"
</pre>
<p>The validateByteRange is most useful when used to detect the presence
of NUL bytes, which don’t have a legitimate use, but which are often
used as an evasion technique.
</p>
<pre># Do not allow NUL bytes
SecRule ARGS "@validateByteRange 1-255"
</pre>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> You can force requests to consist only of
bytes from a certain byte range. This can be useful to avoid stack
overflow attacks (since they usually contain "random" binary content).
Default range values are 0 and 255, i.e. all byte values are allowed.
This directive does not check byte range in a POST payload when
multipart/form-data encoding (file upload) is used. Doing so would
prevent binary files from being uploaded. However, after the parameters
are extracted from such request they are checked for a valid range.
</dd></dl>
<p>validateByteRange is similar to the ModSecurity 1.X
SecFilterForceByteRange Directive however since it works in a rule
context, it has the following differences:
</p>
<ul><li>You can specify a different range for different variables.
</li><li>It has an "event" context (id, msg....)
</li><li>It is executed in the flow of rules rather than being a built
in pre-check.
</li></ul>
<a name="validateDTD" id="validateDTD"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> validateDTD </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Validates the XML DOM tree against the supplied
DTD. The DOM tree must have been built previously using the XML request
body processor. This operator matches when the validation fails.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Parse the request bodies that contain XML
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Type ^text/xml$ "phase:1,nolog,pass,t:lowercase,ctl:requestBodyProcessor=XML"
# Validate XML payload against DTD
SecRule XML "@validateDTD /path/to/xml.dtd" "phase:2,deny,msg:'Failed DTD validation'"
</pre>
<a name="validateSchema" id="validateSchema"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> validateSchema </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Validates the XML DOM tree against the supplied
XML Schema. The DOM tree must have been built previously using the XML
request body processor. This operator matches when the validation fails.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Parse the request bodies that contain XML
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Type ^text/xml$ "phase:1,nolog,pass,t:lowercase,ctl:requestBodyProcessor=XML"
# Validate XML payload against DTD
SecRule XML "@validateSchema /path/to/xml.xsd" "phase:2,deny,msg:'Failed DTD validation'"
</pre>
<a name="validateUrlEncoding" id="validateUrlEncoding"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> validateUrlEncoding </span></h2>
<p><b>Description</b>: Validates the URL-encoded characters in the
provided input string.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Validate URL-encoded characters in the request URI
SecRule REQUEST_URI_RAW "@validateUrlEncoding"
</pre>
<p>ModSecurity will automatically decode the URL-encoded characters in
request parameters, which means that there is little sense in applying
the @validateUrlEncoding operator to them —that is, unless you know that
some of the request parameters were URL-encoded more than once. Use
this operator against raw input, or against the input that you know is
URL-encoded. For example, some applications will URL-encode cookies,
although that’s not in the standard. Because it is not in the standard,
ModSecurity will neither validate nor decode such encodings.
</p>
<a name="validateUtf8Encoding" id="validateUtf8Encoding"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> validateUtf8Encoding </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Check whether the input is a valid UTF-8 string.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Make sure all request parameters contain only valid UTF-8
SecRule ARGS "@validateUtf8Encoding"
</pre>
<p>The @validateUtf8Encoding operator detects the following problems:
</p>
<dl><dt> Not enough bytes </dt><dd> UTF-8 supports two-, three-,
four-, five-, and six-byte encodings. ModSecurity will locate cases when
one or more bytes is/are missing from a character.
</dd><dt> Invalid characters </dt><dd> The two most significant
bits in most characters should be fixed to 0x80. Some attack techniques
use different values as an evasion technique.
</dd><dt> Overlong characters </dt><dd> ASCII characters are mapped
directly into UTF-8, which means that an ASCII character is one UTF-8
character at the same time. However, in UTF-8 many ASCII characters can
also be encoded with two, three, four, five, and six bytes. This is no
longer legal in the newer versions of Unicode, but many older
implementations still support it. The use of overlong UTF-8 characters
is common for evasion.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dt> Notes </dt><dd>
</dd></dl>
<ul><li>Most, but not all applications use UTF-8. If you are dealing
with an application that does, validating that all request parameters
are valid UTF-8 strings is a great way to prevent a number of evasion
techniques that use the assorted UTF-8 weaknesses. False positives are
likely if you use this operator in an application that does not use
UTF-8.
</li><li>Many web servers will also allow UTF-8 in request URIs. If
yours does, you can verify the request URI using @validateUtf8Encoding.
</li></ul>
<a name="verifyCC" id="verifyCC"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
verifyCC </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Detects credit card numbers in input. This
operator will first use the supplied regular expression to perform an
initial match, following up with the Luhn algorithm calculation to
minimize false positives.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect credit card numbers in parameters and
# prevent them from being logged to audit log
SecRule ARGS "@verifyCC \d{13,16}" "phase:2,nolog,pass,msg:'Potential credit card number',sanitiseMatched"
</pre>
<a name="verifyCPF" id="verifyCPF"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
verifyCPF </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Detects CPF numbers (Brazilian social number) in
input. This operator will first use the supplied regular expression to
perform an initial match, following up with an algorithm calculation to
minimize false positives.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect CPF numbers in parameters and
# prevent them from being logged to audit log
SecRule ARGS "@verifyCPF /^([0-9]{3}\.){2}[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}$/" "phase:2,nolog,pass,msg:'Potential CPF number',sanitiseMatched"
</pre>
<a name="verifySSN" id="verifySSN"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline">
verifySSN </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Detects US social security numbers (SSN) in
input. This operator will first use the supplied regular expression to
perform an initial match, following up with an SSN algorithm calculation
to minimize false positives.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect social security numbers in parameters and
# prevent them from being logged to audit log
SecRule ARGS "@verifySSN \d{3}-?\d{2}-?\d{4}" "phase:2,nolog,pass,msg:'Potential social security number',sanitiseMatched"
</pre>
<p><b>Version:</b> 2.6
</p><p><b>SSN Format</b>:
</p><p>A Social Security number is broken up into 3 sections:
</p>
<ul><li>Area (3 digits)
</li><li>Group (2 digits)
</li><li>Serial (4 digits)
</li></ul>
<p><b>verifySSN checks:</b>
</p>
<ul><li>Must have 9 digits
</li><li>Cannot be a sequence number (ie,, 123456789, 012345678)
</li><li>Cannot be a repetition sequence number ( ie 11111111 ,
222222222)
</li><li>Cannot have area and/or group and/or serial zeroed sequences
</li><li>Area code must be less than 740
</li><li>Area code must be different then 666
</li></ul>
<a name="within" id="within"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> within </span></h2>
<p><b>Description:</b> Returns true if the input value is found anywhere
within the parameter value (the opposite of @contains). Macro expansion
is performed on the parameter string before comparison.
</p><p><b>Example:</b>
</p>
<pre># Detect request methods other than GET, POST and HEAD SecRule REQUEST_METHOD "!@within GET,POST,HEAD"
</pre>
<a name="Macro_Expansion" id="Macro_Expansion"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Macro Expansion </span></h1>
<p>Macros allow for using place holders in rules that will be expanded
out to their values at runtime. Currently only variable expansion is
supported, however more options may be added in future versions of
ModSecurity.
</p><p>Format:
</p>
<pre>%{VARIABLE}
%{COLLECTION.VARIABLE}
</pre>
<p>Macro expansion can be used in actions such as initcol, setsid,
setuid, setvar, setenv, logdata. Operators that are evaluated at runtime
support expansion and are noted above. Such operators include
@beginsWith, @endsWith, @contains, @within and @streq. You cannot use
macro expansion for operators that are "compiled" such as @pm, @rx, etc.
as these operators have their values fixed at configure time for
efficiency.
</p><p>Some values you may want to expand include: TX, REMOTE_ADDR,
USERID, HIGHEST_SEVERITY, MATCHED_VAR, MATCHED_VAR_NAME,
MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR, RULE, SESSION, USERID, among others.
</p>
<a name="Persistant_Storage" id="Persistant_Storage"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Persistant Storage </span></h1>
<p>At this time it is only possible to havefive collections in which
data is stored persistantly (i.e. data available to multiple requests).
These are: GLOBAL, RESOURCE, IP, SESSION and USER.
</p><p>Every collection contains several built-in variables that are
available and are read-only unless otherwise specified:
</p>
<ol><li><b>CREATE_TIME</b> - date/time of the creation of the
collection.
</li><li><b>IS_NEW</b> - set to 1 if the collection is new (not yet
persisted) otherwise set to 0.
</li><li><b>KEY</b> - the value of the initcol variable (the client's IP
address in the example).
</li><li><b>LAST_UPDATE_TIME</b> - date/time of the last update to the
collection.
</li><li><b>TIMEOUT</b> - date/time in seconds when the collection will
be updated on disk from memory (if no other updates occur). This
variable may be set if you wish to specifiy an explicit expiration time
(default is 3600 seconds).
</li><li><b>UPDATE_COUNTER</b> - how many times the collection has been
updated since creation.
</li><li><b>UPDATE_RATE</b> - is the average rate updates per minute
since creation.
</li></ol>
<p>To create a collection to hold session variables (SESSION) use action
setsid. To create a collection to hold user variables (USER) use action
setuid. To create a collection to hold client address variables (IP),
global data or resource-specific data, use action initcol.
</p>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> Persistent collections can only be
initialized once per transaction.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> ModSecurity implements atomic updates of
persistent variables only for integer variables (counters) at this time.
Variables are read from storage whenever initcol is encountered in the
rules and persisted at the end of request processing. Counters are
adjusted by applying a delta generated by re-reading the persisted data
just before being persisted. This keeps counter data consistent even if
the counter was modified and persisted by another thread/process during
the transaction.
</dd></dl>
<dl><dt> Note </dt><dd> ModSecurity uses a Berkley Database (SDBM)
for persistant storage. This type of database is generally limited to
storing a maximum of 1008 bytes per key. This may be a limitation if you
are attempting to store a considerable amount of data in variables for a
single key. Some of this limitation is planned to be reduced in a
future version of ModSecurity.
</dd></dl>
<a name="Miscellaneous_Topics" id="Miscellaneous_Topics"></a><h1> <span
class="mw-headline"> Miscellaneous Topics </span></h1>
<a name="Impedance_Mismatch" id="Impedance_Mismatch"></a><h2> <span
class="mw-headline"> Impedance Mismatch </span></h2>
<p>Web application firewalls have a difficult job trying to make sense
of data that passes by, without any knowledge of the application and its
business logic. The protection they provide comes from having an
independent layer of security on the outside. Because data validation is
done twice, security can be increased without having to touch the
application. In some cases, however, the fact that everything is done
twice brings problems. Problems can arise in the areas where the
communication protocols are not well specified, or where either the
device or the application do things that are not in the specification.
In such cases it may be possible to design payload that will be
interpreted in one way by one device and in another by the other device.
This problem is better known as Impedance Mismatch. It can be exploited
to evade the security devices.
</p><p>While we will continue to enhance ModSecurity to deal with
various evasion techniques the problem can only be minimized, but never
solved. With so many different application backend chances are some will
always do something completely unexpected. The only solution is to be
aware of the technologies in the backend when writing rules, adapting
the rules to remove the mismatch. See the next section for some
examples.
</p>
<a name="Impedance_Mismatch_with_PHP_Apps"
id="Impedance_Mismatch_with_PHP_Apps"></a><h3> <span class="mw-headline">
Impedance Mismatch with PHP Apps </span></h3>
<ol><li>When writing rules to protect PHP applications you need to pay
attention to the following facts:
</li><li>When "register_globals" is set to "On" request parameters are
automatically converted to script variables. In some PHP versions it is
even possible to override the $GLOBALS array.
</li><li>Whitespace at the beginning of parameter names is ignored.
(This is very dangerous if you are writing rules to target specific
named variables.)
</li><li>The remaining whitespace (in parameter names) is converted to
underscores. The same applies to dots and to a "[" if the variable name
does not contain a matching closing bracket. (Meaning that if you want
to exploit a script through a variable that contains an underscore in
the name you can send a parameter with a whitespace or a dot instead.)
</li><li>Cookies can be treated as request parameters.
</li><li>The discussion about variable names applies equally to the
cookie names.
</li><li>The order in which parameters are taken from the request and
the environment is EGPCS (environment, GET, POST, Cookies, built-in
variables). This means that a POST parameter will overwrite the
parameters transported on the request line (in QUERY_STRING).
</li><li>When "magic_quotes_gpc" is set to "On" PHP will use backslash
to escape the following characters: single quote, double quote,
backslash, and the nul byte.
</li><li>If "magic_quotes_sybase" is set to "On" only the single quote
will be escaped using another single quote. In this case the
"magic_quotes_gpc" setting becomes irrelevant. The "magic_quotes_sybase"
setting completely overrides the "magic_quotes_gpc" behaviour but
"magic_quotes_gpc" still must be set to "On" for the Sybase-specific
quoting to be work.
</li><li>PHP will also automatically create nested arrays for you. For
example "p[x][y]=1" results in a total of three variables.
</li></ol>
<a name="A_Recommended_Base_Configuration"
id="A_Recommended_Base_Configuration"></a><h1> <span class="mw-headline">
A Recommended Base Configuration </span></h1>
<p>The following is a recommended configuration file which handles the
main ModSecurity directives/setting. These are the items that the Admin
should handle and configure for their own site. These settings should
not be including within 3rd party rules files.
</p>
<pre># -- Rule engine initialization ----------------------------------------------
# Enable ModSecurity, attaching it to every transaction. Use detection
# only to start with, because that minimises the chances of post-installation
# disruption.
#
SecRuleEngine DetectionOnly
# -- Request body handling ---------------------------------------------------
# Allow ModSecurity to access request bodies. If you don't, ModSecurity
# won't be able to see any POST parameters, which opens a large security
# hole for attackers to exploit.
#
SecRequestBodyAccess On
# Enable XML request body parser.
# Initiate XML Processor in case of xml content-type
#
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Type "text/xml" \
"phase:1,t:none,t:lowercase,pass,nolog,ctl:requestBodyProcessor=XML"
# Maximum request body size we will accept for buffering. If you support
# file uploads then the value given on the first line has to be as large
# as the largest file you are willing to accept. The second value refers
# to the size of data, with files excluded. You want to keep that value as
# low as practical.
#
SecRequestBodyLimit 13107200
SecRequestBodyNoFilesLimit 131072
# Store up to 128 KB of request body data in memory. When the multipart
# parser reachers this limit, it will start using your hard disk for
# storage. That is slow, but unavoidable.
#
SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit 131072
# What do do if the request body size is above our configured limit.
# Keep in mind that this setting will automatically be set to ProcessPartial
# when SecRuleEngine is set to DetectionOnly mode in order to minimize
# disruptions when initially deploying ModSecurity.
#
SecRequestBodyLimitAction Reject
# Verify that we've correctly processed the request body.
# As a rule of thumb, when failing to process a request body
# you should reject the request (when deployed in blocking mode)
# or log a high-severity alert (when deployed in detection-only mode).
#
SecRule REQBODY_ERROR "!@eq 0" \
"phase:2,t:none,log,deny,status:400,msg:'Failed to parse request body.',logdata:'%{reqbody_error_msg}',severity:2"
# By default be strict with what we accept in the multipart/form-data
# request body. If the rule below proves to be too strict for your
# environment consider changing it to detection-only. You are encouraged
# _not_ to remove it altogether.
#
SecRule MULTIPART_STRICT_ERROR "!@eq 0" \
"phase:2,t:none,log,deny,status:44,msg:'Multipart request body \
failed strict validation: \
PE %{REQBODY_PROCESSOR_ERROR}, \
BQ %{MULTIPART_BOUNDARY_QUOTED}, \
BW %{MULTIPART_BOUNDARY_WHITESPACE}, \
DB %{MULTIPART_DATA_BEFORE}, \
DA %{MULTIPART_DATA_AFTER}, \
HF %{MULTIPART_HEADER_FOLDING}, \
LF %{MULTIPART_LF_LINE}, \
SM %{MULTIPART_SEMICOLON_MISSING}, \
IQ %{MULTIPART_INVALID_QUOTING}, \
IH %{MULTIPART_INVALID_HEADER_FOLDING}, \
IH %{MULTIPART_FILE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED}'"
# Did we see anything that might be a boundary?
#
SecRule MULTIPART_UNMATCHED_BOUNDARY "!@eq 0" \
"phase:2,t:none,log,deny,status:44,msg:'Multipart parser detected a possible unmatched boundary.'"
# PCRE Tuning
# We want to avoid a potential RegEx DoS condition
#
SecPcreMatchLimit 1000
SecPcreMatchLimitRecursion 1000
# Some internal errors will set flags in TX and we will need to look for these.
# All of these are prefixed with "MSC_". The following flags currently exist:
#
# MSC_PCRE_LIMITS_EXCEEDED: PCRE match limits were exceeded.
#
SecRule TX:/^MSC_/ "!@streq 0" \
"phase:2,t:none,deny,msg:'ModSecurity internal error flagged: %{MATCHED_VAR_NAME}'"
# -- Response body handling --------------------------------------------------
# Allow ModSecurity to access response bodies.
# You should have this directive enabled in order to identify errors
# and data leakage issues.
#
# Do keep in mind that enabling this directive does increases both
# memory consumption and response latency.
#
SecResponseBodyAccess On
# Which response MIME types do you want to inspect? You should adjust the
# configuration below to catch documents but avoid static files
# (e.g., images and archives).
#
SecResponseBodyMimeType text/plain text/html text/xml
# Buffer response bodies of up to 512 KB in length.
SecResponseBodyLimit 524288
# What happens when we encounter a response body larger than the configured
# limit? By default, we process what we have and let the rest through.
# That's somewhat less secure, but does not break any legitimate pages.
#
SecResponseBodyLimitAction ProcessPartial
# -- Filesystem configuration ------------------------------------------------
# The location where ModSecurity stores temporary files (for example, when
# it needs to handle a file upload that is larger than the configured limit).
#
# This default setting is chosen due to all systems have /tmp available however,
# this is less than ideal. It is recommended that you specify a location that's private.
#
SecTmpDir /tmp/
# The location where ModSecurity will keep its persistent data. This default setting
# is chosen due to all systems have /tmp available however, it
# too should be updated to a place that other users can't access.
#
SecDataDir /tmp/
# -- File uploads handling configuration -------------------------------------
# The location where ModSecurity stores intercepted uploaded files. This
# location must be private to ModSecurity. You don't want other users on
# the server to access the files, do you?
#
#SecUploadDir /opt/modsecurity/var/upload/
# By default, only keep the files that were determined to be unusual
# in some way (by an external inspection script). For this to work you
# will also need at least one file inspection rule.
#
#SecUploadKeepFiles RelevantOnly
# Uploaded files are by default created with permissions that do not allow
# any other user to access them. You may need to relax that if you want to
# interface ModSecurity to an external program (e.g., an anti-virus).
#
#SecUploadFileMode 0600
# -- Debug log configuration -------------------------------------------------
# The default debug log configuration is to duplicate the error, warning
# and notice messages from the error log.
#
#SecDebugLog /opt/modsecurity/var/log/debug.log
#SecDebugLogLevel 3
# -- Audit log configuration -------------------------------------------------
# Log the transactions that are marked by a rule, as well as those that
# trigger a server error (determined by a 5xx or 4xx, excluding 404,
# level response status codes).
#
SecAuditEngine RelevantOnly
SecAuditLogRelevantStatus "^(?:5|4(?!04))"
# Log everything we know about a transaction.
SecAuditLogParts ABIJDEFHKZ
# Use a single file for logging. This is much easier to look at, but
# assumes that you will use the audit log only ocassionally.
#
SecAuditLogType Serial
SecAuditLog /var/log/modsec_audit.log
# Specify the path for concurrent audit logging.
#SecAuditLogStorageDir /opt/modsecurity/var/audit/
# -- Miscellaneous -----------------------------------------------------------
# Use the most commonly used application/x-www-form-urlencoded parameter
# separator. There's probably only one application somewhere that uses
# something else so don't expect to change this value.
#
SecArgumentSeparator &
# Settle on version 0 (zero) cookies, as that is what most applications
# use. Using an incorrect cookie version may open your installation to
# evasion attacks (against the rules that examine named cookies).
#
SecCookieFormat 0
</pre>
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