20 AWS WAF Interview Questions and Answers

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. If you are interviewing for a position that involves AWS WAF, you should be prepared to answer questions about its features and capabilities. In this article, we will review some of the most common AWS WAF interview questions.

AWS WAF Interview Questions and Answers

Here are 20 commonly asked AWS WAF interview questions and answers to prepare you for your interview:

1. What is AWS WAF?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF gives you control over which traffic to allow or block to your web applications by defining customizable web security rules.

2. Can you explain the main features of AWS WAF?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF gives you control over which traffic to allow or block to your web applications by defining customizable web security rules. You can use AWS WAF to create rules that allow, block, or monitor HTTP requests based on the criteria that you define. AWS WAF also lets you control access to your web applications using IP addresses, URL paths, and other request components.

3. How does AWS WAF work with Amazon CloudFront?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. When you create a web ACL, you specify the AWS resources that you want to protect, such as an Amazon CloudFront distribution. You also specify the rules that you want AWS WAF to use to inspect web requests that are forwarded to CloudFront. Based on the conditions that you specify in the rules, AWS WAF blocks, allows, or counts web requests that are forwarded to CloudFront.

4. What are some situations where using AWS WAF can be beneficial for an ecommerce site?

AWS WAF can be beneficial for an ecommerce site in a number of situations, including protecting against web scraping, denial of service attacks, and SQL injection attacks.

5. What are the different types of access control lists?

There are three types of access control lists:

1. Standard ACLs
2. Extended ACLs
3. Default ACLs

Standard ACLs are the most basic type of ACL and only allow or deny traffic based on the source or destination IP address. Extended ACLs are more complex and can allow or deny traffic based on a variety of criteria, such as the source or destination IP address, port, or protocol. Default ACLs are applied to all traffic that does not match any other ACLs and can be used to deny all traffic or allow all traffic.

6. What’s the difference between white and black listing in context with AWS WAF?

When you white list an IP address with AWS WAF, you are telling AWS WAF to allow all traffic from that IP address through to your web application, regardless of whether or not it triggers any of your AWS WAF rules. When you black list an IP address with AWS WAF, you are telling AWS WAF to block all traffic from that IP address, regardless of whether or not it triggers any of your AWS WAF rules.

7. What do you understand about SQL injection attacks?

SQL injection attacks are a type of attack where malicious code is inserted into a SQL statement in order to gain access to data that the user should not have access to. This can be done in a number of ways, but the most common is to insert code into an input field that is then executed by the database.

8. What type of requests will be blocked if we create a rule to block specific IP addresses?

If you create a rule to block specific IP addresses, then any requests from those IP addresses will be blocked. This includes any type of request, such as GET, POST, or PUT.

9. How can we use AWS WAF to mitigate cross-site scripting attacks?

AWS WAF can mitigate cross-site scripting attacks by providing a web ACL that can filter out malicious requests before they reach your web application. The web ACL can be configured to allow only requests that originate from trusted sources, and to block or flag requests that contain malicious content.

10. What do you understand by rate limiting on AWS WAF? When would it be useful?

Rate limiting is a feature of AWS WAF that allows you to control the rate at which requests are allowed to come in from a given IP address. This can be useful in a number of situations, such as preventing denial of service attacks or limiting the amount of traffic that a given user can generate.

11. What are regular expressions? Why are they used?

Regular expressions are a way of describing patterns in text. They are often used in search engines to help find the right results, and in programming languages to help validate data.

12. What are signature-based rules?

Signature-based rules are a type of AWS WAF rule that uses a predefined set of criteria to identify malicious or unwanted traffic. This can include things like specific strings of characters or code, or certain types of behavior that are known to be associated with attacks. By creating rules that look for these signatures, AWS WAF can more effectively block traffic that is likely to be malicious.

13. What is the purpose of web ACLs and how do they prevent attacks?

Web ACLs are used to help protect web applications from attack. They work by allowing you to specify a set of rules that will be used to filter traffic to your web application. This can help to block malicious traffic, such as SQL injection attempts, before they reach your application.

14. Is there any way to test our rules before applying them? If yes, then what are the options available?

Yes, there are a few ways to test your AWS WAF rules before applying them. You can use the AWS WAF console to test your rules against a specific web request. Alternatively, you can use the AWS CLI to test your rules against a sample web request. Finally, you can use the AWS API to test your rules against a sample web request.

15. What kind of protection does AWS WAF provide against DDoS attacks?

AWS WAF provides protection against DDoS attacks by filtering out illegitimate traffic before it reaches your web application. This prevents your application from being overwhelmed by requests from malicious users, and helps to ensure that legitimate users can still access your application.

16. What are the best practices that should be followed when configuring AWS WAF?

There are a few key things to keep in mind when configuring AWS WAF:

– Make sure that you create separate WAF rules for each different type of traffic that you want to filter. For example, you might have one rule for web traffic and another for API traffic.
– Be as specific as possible when creating your WAF rules. The more specific you are, the more effective your WAF will be.
– Test your WAF rules before deploying them to production. This will help you to catch any potential issues and ensure that your WAF is working as intended.

17. What are the limitations of AWS WAF?

The biggest limitation of AWS WAF is that it can only be used to protect resources that are hosted on AWS. Additionally, AWS WAF is only effective against common web-based attacks, and may not be able to protect against more sophisticated attacks.

18. What are the steps involved in setting up AWS WAF?

The first step is to create an AWS WAF web ACL. This is done through the AWS Management Console. Next, you will need to select the AWS resources that you want to protect with AWS WAF. Finally, you will need to configure the rules that you want AWS WAF to use in order to protect your resources.

19. Does AWS WAF apply equally well to both HTTP and HTTPS requests?

Yes, AWS WAF can be used to protect both HTTP and HTTPS requests.

20. What is your understanding of CIDR blocks and why are they used?

CIDR blocks are a way of representing a range of IP addresses. They are commonly used in networking because they provide a more concise way of representing a range of IP addresses than listing each individual IP address in the range. CIDR blocks are also used in AWS WAF in order to specify the range of IP addresses that a web ACL should apply to.