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A TechBlog by Torben Hansen


Freelance Full Stack Web Developer located in Germany.
I create web applications mainly using TYPO3, PHP, Python and JavaScript.
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Logwatch filter for ModSecurity 2

I often use ModSecurity 2 and the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) to protect a website from potential attacks. ModSecurity 2 is able to write blocked attacks to a audit logfile, so you actually can see, which Core Rule and which data matched the attack that has been blocked. The logfile can also help you to analyze false positives, so you can modify the CRS to your needs.

As a server admin, you regulary should check the logfiles of your server. One tool to help you analyzing your server´s logfiles is Logwatch, which can send reports by e-mail with a summary of the logfile analysis. Sadly Logwatch was´nt able to analyze ModSecurity 2 audit logfiles and I could´nt find a filter for Logwatch, which fullfilled my needs.

So I wrote a filter for Logwatch, which analyzes a ModSecurity 2 audit logfile for blocked attacks and collects those information for a given time period as a report. The report is seperated by vhost, so you can have a quick overview on which attacks have been blocked on which vhost. Also the reports contains a top 10 summary of blocked IP addresses.

Here is a sample output from the filter:
--------------------- ModSecurity2 (mod_security2) Begin ------------------------

ATTACKS BLOCKED ON VHOSTS:

subdomain.domain.tld - 2 time(s)
[ip: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] [id: 981231 ] [msg: SQL Comment Sequence Detected.] - 1 time(s)
[ip: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] [id: 981231 ] [msg: SQL Comment Sequence Detected.] - 1 time(s)

www.site.tld - 1 time(s)
[ip: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] [id: 990012 ] [msg: Rogue web site crawler] - 1 time(s)
[ip: xxx.xxx.xxx.xx] [id: 981318 ] [msg: SQL Injection Attack: Common Injection Testing Detected] - 5 time(s)
[ip: xxx.xxx.xxx.xx] [id: 950901 ] [msg: SQL Injection Attack: SQL Tautology Detected.] - 2 time(s)

www.anothersite.tld - 1 time(s)
[ip: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] [id: 958291 ] [msg: Range: field exists and begins with 0.] - 1 time(s)

TOP 10 BLOCKED IPS:
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - 2 time(s)
xx.xxx.xxx.xxx - 1 time(s)
xxx.xxx.xx.xx - 1 time(s)
xxx.xxx.xxx.xx - 1 time(s)
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - 1 time(s)

---------------------- ModSecurity2 (mod_security2) End -------------------------

The filter has been tested with ModSecurity 2 version 2.6.0 (CRS 2.2.0) and version 2.7.1 (CRS 2.2.6)

I published the Logwatch filter for Mod Security 2 on Github, so feel free to submit change requests or bug reports.