How to Configure GCP for a WAF to Use Appdome MOBILEBot Defense

Introduction

Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) play a crucial role in protecting web applications from a wide range of cyber threats. When combined with Appdome’s MOBILEBot™ Defense solution, businesses can achieve an unparalleled level of protection for their mobile applications. This article will guide you on configuring Google Cloud Platform to connect to a WAF so it can work seamlessly with Appdome MOBILEBot Defense.

Before delving into the steps, let’s understand some of the terms used:

MTLS (Mutual Transport Layer Security): Mutual TLS (mTLS) is a method for mutual authentication in which both parties in a network connection validate the SSL certificates presented by each other against a trusted root Certificate Authority (CA) certificate.

Client Certificate: In cryptography, a client certificate is a type of digital certificate that is used by client systems to make authenticated requests to a remote server.

Safe Session: Represents sessions that are determined to be safe or not at risk of any threat.

At Risk Session: Represents sessions that are potentially under threat or have detected anomalies.

Header Payload: The data transferred in the header of HTTP requests or responses. Protecting this data ensures that it cannot be tampered with during transit.

Prerequisites For Using GCP & Appdome Docker Image

In order to use the GCP Virtual Server in conjunction with Appdome, you’ll need:

• A GCP account with admin permissions
• A GCP server
• An Android or iOS app secured by Appdome MOBILEBot Defense
• An Appdome MOBILEBot Defense License

Getting Started with GCP Setup and Configuration

Set up a Linux Server on GCP

1. Create a Project
   • Navigate to the GCP Console.
   • Click on the project drop-down and create a new project.

2. Enable Compute Engine API

   • In the GCP Console, navigate to “APIs & Services” > “Dashboard“
   • Click on “+ ENABLE APIS AND SERVICES” and search for “Compute Engine API” Enable it for your project.

3. Create a Virtual Machine (VM)

   • In the GCP Console, navigate to “Compute Engine” > “VM instances“
   • Click on “Create Instance“
   • Configure your VM instance, including selecting the Linux distribution you prefer (e.g., Ubuntu, CentOS).
     Note: Make sure to allow HTTP/HTTPS traffic when configuring the firewall rules.

Connect SSH to your VM

gcloud compute ssh YOUR_VM_NAME

Running a Docker Container on GCP

To learn more, see the installation instructions for Installing Docker Engine on Ubuntu

Configure Appdome’s Docker Image

Appdome’s Docker Image is a custom solution to secure apps built on the Appdome platform with the Anti-Bot service enabled. This service functions within a Docker container based on Nginx. To facilitate its operation, users must supply an SSL certificate, config files and keys, and designated environment variables.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with Docker and UNIX-based machines is beneficial.

How Does It Work?

Based on Nginx and Lua, the service employs the Lua module to decrypt the payload and validate the signature, then it proxies the request to the target route as specified in the config file.

The module can be used with either the built-in LRU cache or with Redis, but it is recommended to use the built-in LRU to reduce the overhead of making the calls to Redis and ease the setup. If working in a cluster, it is necessary to use Redis to share storage across multiple instances.

Setup

The following environment variables are required to set up the service.

Configs: Located in /home/configs, this folder contains JSON files. The name of the file is task_id, as built on Appdome and the content of the file is a JSON array of the mobile anti bot configuration as provided by Appdome.

Optional: How to Configure SSL & mTLS

How to run Appdome Docker Image

Connect to your VM, and run the following commands:

• • Pull the docker image from our public repository:

    docker pull public.ecr.aws/n2i7f1e2/appdome-waf:1.0.0

• • Run the docker image with the following command:

    docker run -p 443:443 -p 80:80 -d \
    -v "$(pwd)"/certs:/etc/nginx/certs \
    -v "$(pwd)"/keys:/home/keys \
    -v "$(pwd)"/configs:/home/configs \
    -e AD_REDIS_HOST=<redis address> \
    -e PASSTHROUGH=false \
    -e RESOLVER=<resolver address> \
    -e SSL_ON=true \
    -e MTLS_ON=true \
    -e FINGERPRINTS=asd, zxc, qwe \
    -e LOG_LEVEL=debug \
    --restart unless-stopped \
    public.ecr.aws/n2i7f1e2/appdome-waf:1.0.0

At this point, you have a machine that will run the Appdome Docker Image. Make sure that your application traffic is routing correctly to the Appdome Docker Image and that the Appdome Docker Image is passing the traffic correctly to the target.

Conclusion

Integrating GCP Virtual Server with Appdome provides robust protection for mobile apps. By understanding and applying the configurations above, businesses can ensure that their mobile app traffic is both secure and optimized.

Related Articles:

• • MOBILEBot™ Defense
  • Using F5 WAF with Appdome MOBILEBot Defense
  • Using Akamai WAF with Appdome MOBILEBot Defense

Thank you!

Thanks for visiting Appdome! Our mission is to secure every app on the planet by making mobile app defense easy. We hope we’re living up to the mission with your project. If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up for free