Network Configuration

Select the method of distribution that the FortiWeb appliance uses when it accepts connections for this policy.

The deployment modes that are available depend on the types of network topologies that the current operation mode supports.

• Single Server/Server Balance—Forwards connections to a server pool. Depending on the pool configuration, FortiWeb either forwards connections to a single physical server or domain server or distributes the connection among the pool members. Also configure a Server Pool . This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode.
• HTTP Content Routing—Use HTTP content routing to route HTTP requests to a specific server pool. This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode.

Note: When HTTP Content Routing is selected, FortiWeb can handle HTTP/2 client requests, but traffic from FortiWeb to the server(s) must use HTTP, so the HTTP/2 setting in a server pool configuration would have to remain disabled. For details, see Defining your web servers.

• Offline Protection—Allow connections to pass through the FortiWeb appliance, and apply an Offline Protection profile. Also configure a Server Pool . This option is available only in Offline Protection mode.
• Transparent Servers—Allow connections to pass through the FortiWeb appliance, and apply a protection profile. Also configure a Server Pool . This option is available only in True Transparent Proxy or Transparent Inspection mode.
• WCCP Servers—FortiWeb will act as a Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP) client that receives traffic from a FortiGate configured as a WCCP server. Also configure a Server Pool . This option is available only in WCCP mode.

Select the name of a virtual server, data capture (listening) network interface, or v-zone (bridge) according to the operation mode:

The name and purpose of these settings varies by operation mode:

• Virtual Server—Identifies the IP address and network interface of incoming traffic that FortiWeb routes and that the policy applies a profile to. This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode.

• Data Capture Port—Identifies the network interface of incoming traffic that the policy applies a profile to. The IP address is ignored. This option is available only in Offline Protection mode.

  If your FortiWeb model uses Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for packet processing (e.g., models 3000E, 3010E and 4000E), this option has the following limitations:

  • Only physical interfaces can be data capture ports. These models do not support VLAN subinterfaces or link aggregate interfaces as data capture ports.
  • You cannot edit the interface after you set it as a data capture port. If you need to configure the maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the interface (using the config system interface and config system v-zone CLI commands), do it before you select the interface as a data capture port.
    
• V-zone—Identifies the network interface of the incoming traffic that the policy applies a profile to. This option is available in True Transparent Proxy and Transparent Inspection mode.

To specify HTTP content routing policies and options that this policy uses, click Add, then complete the following settings for each entry:

• HTTP Content Routing Policy Name—The name of the policy.
• Inherit Web Protection Profile—Specify whether FortiWeb applies the web protection profile for the server policy to connections that match the routing policy.

• Web Protection Profile—Select the profile to apply to connections that match the routing policy. For details, see Configuring a protection profile for inline topologies.

  Note: FortiWeb does not block clients with source IP addresses designated as a trusted IP. For details, see "blocklisting & allowlisting clients using a source IP or source IP range" on page 1.

• Default—Specifies whether FortiWeb applies the specified protection profile to any traffic that does not match any HTTP content routing policy in the list.

You can specify up to 256 HTTP content routing policies in each server policy.

This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode and when the Deployment Mode is HTTP Content Routing.

Enable to forward subsequent requests from an identified client connection to the same server pool as the initial connection from the client.

This option allows FortiWeb to improve its performance by skipping the process of matching HTTP header content to content routing policies for connections it has already evaluated and routed.

This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode and when the Deployment Mode is HTTP Content Routing.

Select the server pool whose members receive the connections. A server pool can contain a single physical server or domain server. For details, see Creating an HTTP server pool.

This option is available only if the Deployment Mode is Single Server/Server Pool, Offline Protection, Transparent Server, or WCCP Servers.

Caution: Multiple virtual servers/policies can forward traffic to the same server pool. If you do this, consider the total maximum load of connections that all virtual servers forward to your server pool. This configuration can multiply traffic forwarded to your server pool, which can overload them and cause dropped connections.

Select a protected host names group to allow or reject connections based upon whether the Host: field in the HTTP header is empty or does or does not match the protected host names group. For details, see Defining your protected/allowed HTTP “Host:” header names.

If you do not select a protected host names group, FortiWeb accepts or blocks requests based on other criteria in the policy or protection profile, but will not accept or block requests based on the Host: field in the HTTP header.

Attack log messages contain HTTP Host Violation when this feature detects a hostname that is not allowed..

Caution: Unlike HTTP 1.1, HTTP 1.0 does not require the Host: field. The FortiWeb appliance does not block HTTP 1.0 requests because they do not have this field, regardless of whether or not you have selected a protected host names group.

By default, when the operation mode is Reverse Proxy, the source IP for connections between FortiWeb and back-end servers is the address of a FortiWeb network interface.

If you enable Client Real IP, FortiWeb will use the source IP address of the client that originated the request when it connects to a back-end server on behalf of that client. This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode.

• If you set the server's IP address as the source address in a policy route, it is recommended that you do not enable Client Real IP, otherwise it may cause your application inaccessible.
• Client Real IP is not supported if the back-end server uses domain instead of IP address. Do not enable Client Real IP in this case.

Note: To ensure FortiWeb receives the server's response when you enable Client Real IP, configure FortiWeb as the server’s gateway.

Specify an IP address or address range to directly connect to the back-end server.

If no IP address or address range is specified when Client Real IP is enabled, FortiWeb will use the client IP address to connect to the back-end server.

Available only when Client Real IP is enabled.

Select which network interface FortiWeb uses to send TCP RST (connection reset) packets when it attempts to block the request or connection after it detects traffic that violates a policy. For details on blocking behavior, see Topology for Offline Protection mode.

This option is available only in Offline Protection mode.

Select the custom or predefined service that defines the TCP port number where the virtual server receives HTTP traffic.

This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode.

Select the custom or predefined service that defines the TCP port number where the virtual server receives HTTPS traffic. Also configure Configuring a server policy.

Enable if requests from clients to the FortiWeb appliance or back-end servers use SSL or TLS. See also Supported cipher suites & protocol versions.

When enabled, the FortiWeb appliance handles SSL negotiations and encryption and decryption, instead of the web servers, also known as SSL offloading. For details, see Offloading vs. inspection.

Connections between the client and the FortiWeb appliance are encrypted. The server pool configuration specifies whether connections between the FortiWeb appliance and each web server are encrypted.

This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode. For other operation modes, use the server pool configuration to enable SSL inspection. For details, see Creating an HTTP server pool.

Caution: If you do not enable an HTTPS option and provide a certificate for HTTPS connections, FortiWeb cannot decrypt connections and scan content in the HTTP body.

Tip: FortiWeb appliances contain specialized hardware to accelerate SSL processing. Offloading SSL/TLS processing can improve the performance of secure HTTP (HTTPS) connections.

Enable FortiWeb to negotiate HTTP/2 with clients via SSL ALPN (Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation) during the SSL handshake if the client's browser supports the HTTP/2 protocol. If HTTP/2 is enabled, FortiWeb will recognize HTTP/2 traffic and apply the security services to it.

Note: This option is available only if the Deployment Mode is Single Server/Server Pool or HTTP Content Routingand HTTPS Service is configured correctly. This is because FortiWeb supports HTTP/2 only for HTTPS connections. Please keep in mind that if the Deployment Mode is HTTP Content Routing, client requests can use HTTP/2, but traffic between FortiWeb and the server(s) must use HTTP, so the HTTP/2 setting in a server pool configuration would have to remain disabled. For details, see Defining your web servers.

To configure HTTP/2 in True Transparent Proxy mode, see HTTP/2 support.

Local: Select the server certificate that FortiWeb uses to encrypt or decrypt SSL-secured connections for the website specified by Protected Hostnames. For details, see How to offload or inspect HTTPS.

Multi-certificate: Select the local server certificate created in Server Objects > Certificates > Local > Multi-certificate that FortiWeb uses to encrypt or decrypt SSL-secured connections for the website specified by Protected Hostnames. For details, see How to offload or inspect HTTPS.

Letsencrypt: Select the Letsencrypt certificate you have created. See How to offload or inspect HTTPSLet's Encrypt certificates

If Enable Server Name Indication (SNI) is selected, FortiWeb uses a Server Name Indication (SNI) configuration instead of or in addition to this server certificate.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service.

Select the name of a group of intermediate certificate authority (CA) certificates, if any, that FortiWeb presents to clients. An intermediate CA can complete the signing chain and validate the server certificate’s CA signature.

Configure this option when clients receive certificate warnings that an intermediary CA has signed the server certificate specified by the selected Certificate, not a root CA or other CA currently trusted by the client directly.

Alternatively, you can include the entire signing chain in the server certificate itself before you upload it to FortiWeb. For details, see How to offload or inspect HTTPS and How to offload or inspect HTTPS.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service.

Click to show or hide the settings that allow you to specify a Server Name Indication (SNI) configuration, increase security by disabling specific versions of TLS and SSL for this policy, and other advanced SSL settings.

For example, if FortiWeb can use a single certificate to decrypt and encrypt traffic for all the websites that reside on the servers in a pool, you may not have to set any advanced SSL settings.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service.

Certificate Verification—Select the name of a certificate verifier, if any, that FortiWeb uses to validate an HTTP client’s personal certificate.

Personal certificates, sometimes also called user certificates, establish the identity of the person connecting to the website (PKI authentication). If a User Tracking Policy or Site Publish rule fails to track a user, FortiWeb will attempt to track a user with his or her email address provided in the client certificate via Certificate Verification.

You can require clients to present a certificate instead of, or in addition to, HTTP authentication. For details, see Offloading HTTP authentication & authorization.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service.

For True Transparent Proxy mode, configure this setting in the server pool configuration instead. For details, see Certificate Verification.

Note: The client must support TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2, and TLS 1.3.

If you select Enable Server Name Indication (SNI) and the domain in the client request matches an entry in the specified SNI policy, FortiWeb uses the SNI configuration to determine which certificate verifier to use instead.

If you do not select a verifier, clients are not required to present a personal certificate. For details, see How to apply PKI client authentication (personal certificates).

Enable Server Name Indication(SNI)—Select to use a Server Name Indication (SNI) configuration instead of or in addition to the server certificate specified by the Configuring a server policy.

The SNI configuration enables FortiWeb to determine which certificate to present on behalf of the members of a pool based on the domain in the client request. For details, see How to offload or inspect HTTPS.

If you specify both an SNI configuration and Configuring a server policy, FortiWeb uses the certificate specified by Configuring a server policy when the requested domain does not match a value in the SNI configuration.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

Enable Strict SNI—Select so that FortiWeb will ignore the Certificate when it determines which certificate to present on behalf of server pool members, even if the domain in a client request does not match a value in the SNI configuration.

Available only if Enable Server Name Indication (SNI) is selected.

SNI Policy—Select the Server Name Indication (SNI) configuration that determines which certificate FortiWeb presents on behalf of the members of a server pool.

Available only if Enable Server Name Indication (SNI) is selected.

Enable URL Based Client Certificate—Specifies whether FortiWeb uses a URL-based client certificate group to determine whether a client is required to present a personal certificate.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

Note: This function is not supported for HTTP/2 communication between the Client and this back-end web server.

URL Based Client Certificate Group—Specifies the URL-based client certificate group that determines whether a client is required to present a personal certificate.

If the URL the client requests does not match an entry in the group, the client is not required to present a personal certificate.

For information on creating a group, see Use URLs to determine whether a client is required to present a certificate.

Available only if Enable URL Based Client Certificate is selected.

Max HTTP Request Length—Specifies the maximum allowed length for an HTTP request with a URL that matches an entry in the URL-based client certificate group.

FortiWeb blocks any matching requests that exceed the specified size.

This setting prevents a request from exceeding the maximum buffer size.

Available only if Enable URL Based Client Certificate is selected.

Supported SSL Protocols—Specify which versions of the SSL or TLS cryptographic protocols clients can use to connect securely to the FortiWeb appliance.

TLS protocol changes a lot since version 1.3, including the handshake algorithm, the supported ciphers and certificates. Make sure you understand how it works before enabling TLS 1.3.

Note: O-RTT in TLS 1.3 is disabled by default. You can use the following command to enable it:

config server-policy setting

set tls13-early-data-mode enable

end

For the supported ciphers of each TLS version, see Supported cipher suites & protocol versions.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

SSL/TLS Encryption Level—Specify whether the set of cipher suites that FortiWeb allows creates a medium-security, high-security or customized security configuration.

If you select Customized, you can select a cipher and then use the arrow keys to move it to the appropriate list.

For details, see Supported cipher suites & protocol versions.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

Disable Client-Initiated SSL Renegotiation—Select to configure FortiWeb to ignore requests from clients to renegotiate TLS or SSL.

Protect against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that use TLS/SSL renegotiation to overburden the server.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

Client Certificate Forwarding—Enable to configure FortiWeb to include the X.509 personal certificate presented by the client during the SSL/TLS handshake, if any, in an X-Client-Cert: HTTP header when it forwards the traffic to the protected web server.

FortiWeb still validates the client certificate itself, but this forwarding action can be useful if the web server requires the client certificate for server-side identity-based functionality

Note: It is necessary to set Certificate Verification to make this option effective.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

Custom Header of CCF Subject—Enter a custom subject header that will be inserted in the X.509 personal certificate presented by the client during the SSL/TLS handshake.

Available only if Client Certificate Forwarding is selected.

Custom Header of CCF Certificate—Enter a custom certificate header that will be inserted in the X.509 personal certificate presented by the client during the SSL/TLS handshake.

Available only if Client Certificate Forwarding is selected.

Add HSTS Header—Enable to combat MITM attacks on HTTP by injecting the RFC 6797 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797) strict transport security header into the reply. For example:

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000

This header forces clients to use HTTPS for subsequent visits to this domain. If the certificate is invalid, the client’s web browser receives a fatal connection error and does not display a dialog that allows the user to override the certificate mismatch error and continue.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service and select Show advanced SSL settings.

Max. Age—Specify the time to live in seconds for the HSTS header.

Available only if Add HSTS Header is selected.

Add HPKP Header—Select an HPKP profile, if any, to use to verify certificates when clients attempt to access a server.

HPKP prevents attackers from carrying out Man in the Middle (MITM) attacks with forged certificates. For details, see HTTP Public Key Pinning.

Available only if you specify a value for HTTPS Service.

Select to automatically redirect all HTTP requests to the HTTPS service with the same URL and parameters. If you select this option, ensure to configure HTTPS Service.

If selected, FortiWeb does not apply the protection profile for this policy specified by the Web Protection Profile to the redirected traffic.

This option can replace redirection functionality that you create using URL rewriting rules. For details, see Example: HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect.

This option is available only in Reverse Proxy mode.

Enable to mirror all traffic to the third party devices per the traffic mirror policy.

Select the traffic mirror policy you have created to determine which policy to apply to the connection.

For True Transparent Proxy mode, only Client Side type is available, which only allows traffic from client side to be sent to IPS/IDS devices.

For Reverse Proxy mode:

• Client Side—only allow traffic from client side to be sent to IPS/IDS devices.
• Server Side—only allow traffic from server side to be sent to IPS/IDS devices.
• Client and Server—allow traffic from both client and server sides to be sent to IPS/IDS devices.

Security Configuration

Enable to override any actions included in the profiles. Instead, FortiWeb will accept all requests and generate an alert email and/or log message for all policy violations.

This setting does not affect any rewriting or redirection actions in the protection profiles, including the action to remove poisoned cookies.

Note: Logging and/or alert email occur only if you enable and configure them. For details, see Logging and Alert email.

Enable to prevent TCP SYN floods. Also configure Half Open Threshold.

For details, see Preventing a TCP SYN flood.

This option is available only in Reverse Proxy, True Transparent Proxy, and WCCP mode.

Type the TCP SYN cookie threshold in packets per second. Also configure Syn Cookie.

Available only when the operating mode is Reverse Proxy, True Transparent Proxy, or WCCP.

Select the profile to apply to the connections that this policy accepts, or select Create New to add a new profile in a pop-up window, without leaving the current page.

For details on specific protection profiles, see one of the following topics:

• Configuring a protection profile for inline topologies
• Configuring a protection profile for an out-of-band topology or asynchronous mode of operation

Note: The current operation mode determines which profiles are available. For details, see How operation mode affects server policy behavior.

Note: FortiWeb does not block clients with source IP addresses designated as a trusted IP. For details, see "blocklisting & allowlisting clients using a source IP or source IP range" on page 1.

If the Deployment Mode is set to HTTP Content Routing, this option is effective when you create the list of content routing policies.

Select the replacement message to apply to the policy.

Click to display the settings of the current profile without leaving the current page. When viewing a profile, you can also modify its settings from here.

To return to the policy settings, click Back to Policy Settings.

Enable to differentiate uniform resource locators (URLs) according to upper case and lower case letters for features that act upon the URLs in the headers of HTTP requests, such as IP list rules.

For example, when this option is enabled, an HTTP request involving http://www.Example.com/ would not match profile features that specify http://www.example.com (difference is lower case “e”).

Machine Learning

Click Create to create an anomaly detection policy. See Enabling machine learning policy for details.

Click Create to create a bot detection policy. See Enabling machine learning policy for details.

Application Delivery

Enable this option when proxy servers or load balancers are installed before FortiWeb, for example, when a load balancer with proxy protocol enabled is deployed before FortiWeb-VM on AWS.

When Proxy Protocol is enabled, FortiWeb can receive client connection information in the proxy protocol package passed through proxy servers and load balancers.

Enable to configure whether to retry a failed TCP connection or HTTP request in Reverse Proxy mode.

A TCP connection failure retry can help when pserver is unreachable unexpectedly, FortiWeb will reconnect the single server or switch to the other server when more than one pserver is available in the server pool.

An HTTP layer retry can help when pserver can be connected but it returns certain failure response codes, such as 404, 408, 500, 501, 502, 503, and 504. FortiWeb will reconnect the single server or switch to the other server when more than one pserver is available in the server pool.

Enable to configure the retry times in case of any TCP connection failure.

Enter the retry times when FortiWeb reconnects the single server or switch to the other pserver. The valid range is 1-5.

Enter a cache size limit for the HTTP request packet.
HTTP failure retry will take effect once the request packet size is smaller than this defined size.

TCP connection failure retry will take effect once the HTTP request packet size in TCP connection is smaller than this defined size.

Enable to configure the retry times and failure response code in case of any TCP connection failure.

Enter the retry times when FortiWeb reconnects the single server or switch to the other pserver. The valid range is 1-5.

Select the failure return code when pserver can be connected to determine enabling HTTP failure retry.

Enable to create a web cache policy to allow FortiWeb to cache responses from your servers.