Bypassing WAF

Master techniques to understand, exploit, and bypass WAFs, covering signature and pattern bypasses, parsing and normalisation evasion, protocol manipulation, and exploiting weak/outdated configurations.

This module will focus on the exploitation of Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), a crucial component of modern web security. We will first cover WAF fundamentals, including architecture, detection methods, rule creation, and limitations. We will examine how WAFs detect malicious traffic, distinguish between signature and behavioural analysis, and enforce filtering rules. We will also cover hands-on exploitation, targeting outdated OWASP CRS versions, weak configurations, and various evasion techniques like signature manipulation, parsing and normalisation bypasses, and protocol-level exploits to evade detection. The module concludes with two real-world challenges where you can apply these techniques to analyse, bypass, and exploit WAF protections in realistic environments.