This feature is available for the Enterprise package.
Similarly to WAAP custom rules, you can create, edit, and manage advanced custom rules. These rules also contain “If/Then” statements, but they support more complex conditions created with the Common Expression Language (CEL) syntax.
Due to the highly technical aspect of the advanced rules functionality, the ability to create and manage these rules is currently only available through our API.
Check out the following guides for details on how to create advanced rules and their key components:
API docs: Learn how to construct and manage advanced rules.
Advanced rule objects and attributes: Get the list of all available objects you can use in rule expressions along with their respective attributes and types.
Source field objects: Check the available source field objects you can use in your expressions along with their respective attributes and types.
Each rule can contain only one action—block, allow, captcha, handshake, or tag. If you use multiple actions in a single rule, the API will return an error.
Field
Description
Values
Details
name
Rule name
Can contain only ASCII letters, numbers, spaces, periods, and colons.
action
The action to execute when a condition is true.
block: WAAP blocked the request.
allow: WAAP allowed the request.
captcha: WAAP presented the user with a CAPTCHA
handshake: WAAP performed automatic browser validation.
For the blockaction, setting up the status_code (integer) and action_duration (time in seconds) is optional. By default, the status is set to "status_code": 403, and duration equals to 0s.
source
The condition part of the rule.
Can reference namespace objects: request, whois, session, response, tags, user_agent, client_data, as well as use data and functions.
Supported Python operand syntax: and, or, in, not, ==, !=, >, <, etc. Supported CEL operand syntax: ||, &&
Every string value should be enclosed in single quotation marks ' and not in double quotation marks ".
enabled
Whether or not the rule is enabled.
Boolean: true or false
Default value: false
description
A string to describe the purpose of the rule.
Any string. The character limit for the description field is 100 characters.
Default value: false
phase
The request processing phase.
access: The advanced rule applies to the request phase (request headers and body available).
header_filter: The advanced rule applies to the response headers phase.
body_filter: The advanced rule applies to the response body phase.
You can use our API documentation as a guide in constructing your own advanced rules. The following sections demonstrate a few examples of advanced rules created via our API using cURL.
Block IPs that hit more than 200 requests per 5 seconds (changeable) when the following cookies don’t exist. You can find more examples in our Rate limiting guide.
curl --request POST \--url https://api.gcore.com/waap/v1/domains/{domain_id}/advanced-rules \--header 'accept: application/json' \--header 'content-type: application/json' \--data '{ "action": { "block": { "status_code": 403, "action_duration": "10m" } }, "phase": "access", "name": "Block Scrappers", "description": "Block IPs that hit more than 200 requests per 5 seconds for any `events` paths", "enabled": false, "source": "(request.rate_limit([], '.*events', 5, 200, [], [], '', 'ip') and not ('mb-web-ui' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'mb-mobile-ios' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'mobile-android' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'mb-mobile-android' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'session-token' in request.headers['Cookie']) and not request.headers['session']) or tags.exists('penalty')"}'
If a block action triggers, WAAP will tag matching requests with the penalty tag as long as the block action is active.
To ensure the blocking of specific sources, you must also check for thepenalty tag by defining a separate rule that blocks requests with the penalty tag or by including the tag check as part of a rule’s source condition.
Use JavaScript validation to challenge IPs that are coming from countries without certain cookies:
curl --request POST \--url https://api.gcore.com/waap/v1/domains/{domain_id}/advanced-rules \--header 'accept: application/json' \--header 'content-type: application/json' \--data '{ "action": { "handshake": {} }, "phase": "access", "name": "Validate set of countries", "description": "Validate with JavaScript challenge IPs that are coming from the following countries", "enabled": false, "source": "whois.country in ['BR', 'VN', 'ID', 'TH', 'ME', 'XK', 'LK'] and not ('mb-web-ui' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'mb-mobile-ios' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'mobile-android' in request.headers['Cookie'] or 'mb-mobile-android' in request.headers['Cookie'])}'
After you create advanced rules, they will appear on the WAAP rules page in the Gcore Customer Portal. You can enable or disable the rules by clicking the relevant toggles.