What do you know about your APIs? Why are the vulnerable v2 and v3 still exposed if they are deprecated for almost a year? What else is exposed, and you don’t even know? Are Swagger specs up to date? (Teaser: Surely not). A lot of questions, right? Meet Wallarm’s latest feature for API Discovery and Observability to better understand and protect your APIs.

Wallarm API Discovery identifies all APIs including shadow and zombie APIs and gives you up-to-date specs — based on the actual API usage.

So how where exactly can API Discovery help? There are two major ways:

• Firstly, API inventory. The larger the company, the fewer the people that actually know what you have exposed. Different endpoints are owned by different teams. Add here multiple versions of APIs — some that are already deprecated and some still maintained — and this very soon becomes a total mess. You can easily have some outdated (and vulnerable) version of the API method exposed — and nobody will even know! It’s called a Shadow API. The only way to get full visibility is to see what APIs are actually used and how they are used, based on the traffic.
• Secondly, up-to-date API specs. We bet you wouldn’t be surprised that specs are very often behind. It’s a life after all and docs are rarely properly updated. But you would be amazed by how significant the difference between docs and reality can be. For some APIs, you can have no Swagger at all. Or, you can have docs that clearly say that /checkout method has five parameters. Meanwhile, real traffic can show that there are plenty of requests that actually have six parameters, with one of them optional. Think of it as Swagger / OpenAPI specs generated based on the traffic.

Join the early access program by sending a note to request@wallarm.com and read a blog post for more details.

Now we have a Wallarm service status page available at https://status.wallarm.com. The page displays live and historical data on the availability of the Wallarm Console and Wallarm API services for each Wallarm Cloud.

You can use Subscribe to updates to receive a notification when a service status changes via Email, Slack, SMS, Webhooks, and other methods.

On this page, we also post planned maintenance announcements and a description of which parts of the service may not be available during maintenance.

We have expanded the set of rules for detecting LFI attacks (Local File Inclusion) and new RCE attacks (Remote Code Execution) against Symphony.

We have also added new scanner extensions to detect the following vulnerabilities:

• Remote code execution in ExacqVision Web Service - CVE-2020-9047
• Remote code execution in HP LinuxKI 6.01 - CVE-2020-7209
• LFI in Spring Cloud Config Server - CVE-2020-5410
• JFrog Artifactory Authentication Bypass - CVE-2019-9733
• Remote code execution in Apache Unomi - CVE-2020-13942

A new type of integration is available in the Wallarm Console - Webhook. Webhook is a widespread technology for integrating web services with each other based on callback technology.

The modern approach in information security is the use of specialized tools that are closely integrated with one another. Therefore, one of Wallarm’s priority areas is the support of modern security tools.

You can now send Wallarm WAF events to Webhook or configure conditions and filters for the Trigger to send a particular message to Webhook when conditions are met.

For setting up Webhook integration, only the API URL is required. You can find more details in our documentation.

With the growing complexity of new applications, technology stacks, and evolving attack techniques, we can implement regular improvements in how the Wallarm WAF detects attacks. This month we have added new Scanner rules to detect:

• Open access to the Consul UI web interface. Read the details on our blog
• Server-Side Template Injection in SEOmatic plugin for Craft CMS - CVE-2020-9757
• Reflected Code Injection in Citrix ADC and NetScaler Gateway - СVE-2020-8194
• Remote code execution in WebLogic Server - CVE-2020-14882
• Remote code execution in Liferay CE Portal - CVE-2019-11444

We have also improved the detection of Bash command injection and path traversal attacks in Wallarm WAF.

Wallarm extends deployment support for the Wallarm filtering node to more platforms. We consistently monitor new application architectures and the latest trends in application deployment. Additionally, as current platforms evolve and release new versions, we adapt the software and test compatibility to support the latest releases.

In the new 2.16 version of WAF nodes, our clients have access to:

• Updated packages for installing WAF on CentOS 8.

Updated packages are already available in our repositories!

Next in line is support for the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) release!

With the growing complexity of new applications, technology stacks, and evolving attack techniques, we can implement regular improvements in how the Wallarm WAF detects attacks. This month we have added new Scanner rules to detect:

• Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Web Interface Vulnerability — CVE-2020-3452
• Open web interfaces for VMware ESXi, vCenter, and vSphere.

We've also added new rules for detecting attacks in the Wallarm WAF:

• RCE in MobileIron Core & Connector, Sentry and Monitor and Reporting Database (RDB) — CVE-2020-15505
• RCE on some NGINX + PHP-FPM installation configurations — CVE-2019-11043

In addition, Bitrix 0-day LFI detection is available within our WAF and Scanner. We sent notifications and created virtual patches for all clients that have this vulnerability in their applications.

You have probably already noticed that new blocks have appeared in the WAF node card in the Wallarm Console with information about the versions of the LOM file and proton.db used.

Starting from version 2.16 of the WAF node, these sections will display information about the versions of installed components and indicators of available updates.

The latest versions of the Wallarm WAF node uses new technologies and capabilities to protect applications and APIs from hacker attacks. We recommend that you always keep WAF nodes up to date.

We remind you that we only support the last two versions of the Wallarm WAF node. You can find more information on versioning in the versioning policy documentation.

We are pleased to announce the general availability of the Wallarm Node 2.16. This is a major update that is recommended to install.

Highlights

• New WAF node component — Libdetection, a second-generation attack detection library
• Expanded options for custom block pages and response code
• Added display of WAF node component versions in the Wallarm Console
• Added new statistical parameters for the WAF node
• A few improvements have been made to the monitoring and other system components
• Support for CentOS 8 operating system has been added

How to upgrade

The installation and update packages for all supported platforms are already available in the repositories. AWS AMI and GCP VM Image have been updated. The migration guide is available in the docs portal.

A frequently asked question from customers is, "Why didn't FAST find a vulnerability when it definitely exists in the application?" We began to explore the logs and look for the reasons for this behavior. In most cases, the answer is simple: FAST failed to path authentication.

And we took the first steps in solving this problem.

The first move was to highlight the problems of authentication themselves. Now, the Wallarm Console displays the new "Auth failed" status if FAST was unable to test due to an authentication error.

The second move was to add a simple authentication method. What does that mean? Now, you can provide the FAST node with the test client credentials and specify the query parameters they need to substitute. These credentials will be used when executing test queries. Such a mechanism will avoid the use of an expired token, QA credentials, etc.

Read more about the FAST authentication process on our docs portal