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Setup Rate Limit / DDoS Control

This feature is in Early Availability
AppSec agents have the ability to limit the number of requests to a matched URI within a configured time scope, according to the source identifier.

How to set up rate limit in an AppSec agent

Prerequisites

An agent from version 1.2336.655850 and up is required.

Step 1: Activate Rate Limit from the Practices tab when editing an asset

Browse to Cloud->Assets and edit the relevant Web Application, or Web API asset.
In the left pane, under the Practices tab, click on "Rate Limit" under the "Access Control" practices.
Pay attention to the configuration of Source Identity. When counting requests to see if a limit was exceeded, the source identity is the key according to which they are counted.
i.e. "X requests from the same source identifier..."
If the source identity configuration doesn't match a value, the source IP address is used instead for the purposes of counting the request.

Step 2: Determine the mode of the Rate Limit configuration in the new "Access Control" tab

There are 3 optional modes:
  • Active - Rate limit is enforced.
  • Detect/Learn - Only logs will be issued if the rate limit is reached.
  • Inactive - Temporarily disable the rate limit altogether, instead of deleting the practice altogether.

Step 3: Configure Rate Limit Rules

A rate limit rule consists of 3 match conditions:
  • URI - The string written in this match is concatenated to all defined URLs of the Web Application or Web API asset.
Example - If the Asset's defined URLs are "http://www.myapp.com" and "https://www.mysecureapp.com" and the URI in the rule is "/docs", it will be matched on all requests starting with either http://www.myapp.com/docs or https://www.mysecureapp.com/docs
Use "/" to match all requests to the asset's domains
  • Limit - the maximum number of requests in a specific time scope.
  • Unit - the time scope in which the limit is enforced.
If Limit is set to 7000 and Unit is set to "Minute" then an Active Rate Limit practice will prevent requests to the matched URI if they exceed 7000 requests from the same source identifier, in a single minute.
Match priority - The rate is enforced according to a single matched rule. When the URI of the request matches multiple URIs in multiple rules, the longest match takes precedence and determines the rate limit count.
Example - if there are 2 rules - one limiting the URI "/docs" for 10000 requests from the same source identifier in one minute, and the second limiting "/docs/external" for 3000 requests from the same source identifier in one minute, then requests to /docs/external/latest will be blocked if they exceed 3000 requests from the same source identifier in one minute, as this rule creates a longer match.

Step 4: Configure a Trigger

Configure the trigger (usually the log trigger) that will activate when a Rate Limit rule is fully matched by URI as well as requests rate.
In Detect/Learn mode, the Trigger is the only action that will occur if the rate of matched URIs from the same source identifier has exceeded configured limits.

Step 5: Enforce Policy

Click Enforce on the top banner of the Infinity Portal.

Advanced option in AppSec Gateways - Limit only according to IP addresses

AppSec Gateway deployments provide a Check Point-managed reverse proxy as part of the deployment. It is possible to configure an AppSec Gateway to enforce rate limit by using the reverse proxy settings. As the Reverse Proxy server does not have access to the agent's parsing capabilities, the rate limit in this case is done only using source IP addresses as the key to count requests.
To configure rate limit using this enforcement method, go to your AppSec Gateway profile in Cloud->Profiles and open the Advanced tab. In the Advanced Settings table add the following key-value: agent.rpmanager.enableNginxRateLimit : true
Click "Enforce Policy".